In 2021, Polestar launched the Polestar 2 in Australia. Image: Riz Akhtar
The Polestar 2 and Volvo’s XC40 Recharge models have led a continued surge in Australian EV sales in the month of May, despite the global supply problems that have caused a big slump in petrol and diesel car sales.
Interim data – we have yet to get the final figures from all the car makers – show that the Volvo XC40 recharge led the pack with 174 sales in May and Polestar 2 was not far behind with 153 sales. Both cars share the parent company, Geely Automotive.
But the biggest story is perhaps the continued decline of Tesla sales, with just 12 Model 3 deliveries in the entire month, according to VFacts data released by the Federated Chamber of Automotive Industries.
Tesla, however, still easily leads the year to date sales with nearly 4,500 Model 3s delivered – nearly 10 times its nearest rival – but new customers have been told of a wait list of up to 12 months.
A good bit of news was recently reported by Tesla Australian ship tracking expert, VedaPrime, around a shipment of over 150 Tesla Model 3s that will be arriving before the end of June. This shipment includes a mixture of Tesla Model 3 RWD, Long Range and the stealthy Performance model.
VedaPrime also noted that some of the customers that will be receiving their cars from this shipment were waiting as far back as November 2021 when they first placed their orders for the Model 3.
Overall, Australian new car sales were down by 6.4 per cent in May over the same month last year, while EV sales were up 180 per cent to 415 in the month.
Although the year ago figures is not strictly comparable because Tesla did not release its monthly data last year, that represents an EV market share of less than 0.5 per cent – at a time when even the US has jumped to a record 6.1 per cent, many countries in Europe are in double figure percentage shares, and Norway is apporaching 90 per cent.
All EVs, indeed most cars of any type, have faced production and delivery problems. Volvo Australia was forced to cancel Australian orders last month on their only current EV, the XC40 Recharge, due to the global semi-conductor outage.
In absence of Tesla deliveries into Australia, other brands like Hyundai did well with the Kona electric (78), and the Ioniq 5 (56) and the Ioniq electric fastback (53) in the month of May.
Other EV sales for the month of May include the Mercedes Benz EQA (32), the Porsche Taycan (42), Kia EV6 (40), the Mercedes EQC (16), and nthe Nissan Leaf (46).
More expensive models in May included the Audi e-tron (8), the BMW i4 (49), the Mazda MX-30 (44) and the BMW iX (36). No BMW i3 made it into the tally.
Over the year to date, Tesla so far has sold and delivered over 4,481 of its Model 3 EVs in 2022 with the majority of the deliveries in the first 3 months of the year. The next best selling model is the Hyundai Kona EV which has had 472 new customers until the end of May.
Keyword: Volvo and Polestar lead Australian EV sales as Tesla delivery drought continues into May