Model Y Tops August Sales- EVs Outnumber Oil for the First Time

Battery-electric cars stormed in with 24.9% of the Australian market in August, the biggest month this backward country of ours has ever had. As we predicted, Chinese brands would dominate by year’s end. But wait, there’s more, 5 Chinese brands finished in the FCAI top 10. Add plug-in hybrids and the conventional hybrids alongside the EVs and anything else with a battery, and it makes up 51.8% of everything sold.

August car sales came to 100,939, up 0.4% on the same month last year.

Across all reporting sources (eg VFacts and EV Council), 27,089 battery-electric vehicles sold last month. That’s 24.9% of the market, up 171% on August 2025, and the biggest month for electric cars this country ever scored. The anti EV white noise has zero effect when sensible people discover EVs cost “for cheap” to own.

Plenty of them haven’t found out yet. Savvy’s 2026 EV Sentiments Survey found 77% of people have no idea what it costs to charge an EV, and 47% guessed $31 or more for a charge at home. The real average is about $20.40, and less again with solar on the roof.

Then add the rest of the battery count: Plug-in hybrids did 10,591, conventional hybrids at18,662. Together, 56,342 of the 108,760 vehicles sold in August had a battery in the driveline. That’s 51.8% of the market. Remember the demented conservative government telling us that Labor was trying to steal your weekend? It seems people ignored them.

Petrol and diesel, added together, made 49,432 sales. Petrol alone fell 32.6%., and diesel fell 22.5%, so da graffiti is on da wall for fossils and their flunkies.

Every (conservative) forecast that said Australians wouldn’t buy them, that the charging would strangle it, that it was an inner-city indulgence, got its answer last month in the industry’s own count. To them we say, we told you so.

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The best-selling car in the country isn’t on the FCAI list

Far from being a flash in the pan, Tesla sold 7,685 cars in August, up 162.6% year on year. To show how one-sided reporting can be, Model Y took 6,414 of those. Toyota RAV4, the car at the top of the FCAI’s model chart, managed 5,470.

You might well ask why the best-selling vehicle in Australia last month doesn’t appear in the FCAI top 10 at all, and it is because Tesla walked out of the FCAI and stopped reporting into VFACTS. Polestar left too, and added another 136. Read both tables below with Tesla and Polestar put back where they belong.

Top 10 brands, August 2026

Rank	Name	Aug-26	Aug-25	Change	Up / Down
1	Toyota	19,712	20,791	-5.2%	Down
2	BYD	8,231	4,877	+68.8%	Up
3	Tesla	7,685	2,927	+162.6%	Up
4	Kia	6,500	7,402	-12.2%	Down
5	Mazda	6,203	6,814	-9.0%	Down
6	Hyundai	5,355	6,322	-15.3%	Down
7	GWM	4,870	4,488	+8.5%	Up
8	Ford	4,816	8,002	-39.8%	Down
9	MG	4,767	3,927	+21.4%	Up
10	Geely	4,504	401	+1,023%	Up

Tesla’s 7,685 puts it third and pushes Chery out of the 10 altogether.

Top 10 models, August 2026

Rank	Name	Aug-26	Aug-25	Change	Up / Down	YTD
1	Tesla Model Y	6,414	2,324	+176.0%	Up	31,454
2	Toyota RAV4	5,470	4,115	+32.9%	Up	26,585
3	Toyota HiLux	4,833	4,823	+0.2%	Up	32,161
4	Toyota Prado	2,475	2,033	+21.7%	Up	13,659
5	Ford Ranger	2,440	4,942	-50.6%	Down	32,796
6	BYD Sealion 7	2,213	1,413	+56.6%	Up	17,277
7	Chery Tiggo 4 Pro	2,012	1,780	+13.0%	Up	17,806
8	Geely EX5	1,947	401	+385.5%	Up	10,737
9	GWM Haval Jolion	1,891	1,562	+21.1%	Up	15,033
10	Zeekr 7X	1,748	0	new entry	New	9,172

HiLux and Ranger figures cover 4×2 and 4×4. Model Y’s 6,414 tops the lot, and Isuzu D-Max drops out to 11th on 1,708. An EV is the top seller 3rd month on the trot. Barnaby’s head must be spinning of it’s lugs.

The year-to-date column tells you it isn’t a one-month wonder. Model Y is on 31,454 for the year, third behind Ranger on 32,796 and HiLux on 32,161, with 4 months still to run. RAV4 grew 32.9% in August and still lost the month, and at 26,585 for the year it’s nearly 5,000 behind a car it was comfortably clear of last August. Zeekr 7X has 9,172 sales in a country where it sold nothing 12 months ago, and Geely EX5 has 10,737 on its own, against 2,736 for all of Geely to this point last year.

China took 4 of the top 10 (but, Model Y is also made in China)

BYD, GWM, MG and Geely took 4 of the 10 places, with Chery down at 11th. The 5 of them sold 26,610 between them, or 26.4% of the VFACTS market.

The country-of-origin table is an absolute belter. Vehicles built in China: 36,070 in August, up 79.7%. Built in Japan: 24,892, down 12.8%. Built in Korea: 11,060, down 14.2%. Thailand, where most of the utes come from, dropped 24.7% to 15,658. China out-sold Japan by 11,178 units in a single month. This should be another siganl to legacy brands, and we have warned them month after month. They still appear to be ignoring facts.

Look past those 5 and it gets worse for the old legacy brands. Geely sold 4,504 cars against 401 a year ago. Zeekr went from 88 to 2,120, and its 7X went from nothing into the model top 10 in 12 months. GAC posted 1,066 from a standing start, Xpeng 511, and Omoda Jaecoo climbed 340.6% to 2,203. Denza, Deepal, Leapmotor, Foton and Farizon all have scores on the board that didn’t exist last August.

None of that’s a rounding error any more. Added up, it’s a mid-sized car company that appeared out of nowhere while the incumbents were still arguing about whether the shift was real.

What August car sales mean for the beleaguered legacy brands

poor sad old Ford fell 39.8% to 4,816, and Ranger halved, down 50.6% to 2,440. Mitsubishi slumped 42.6% and Subaru 36.7%, while Nissan lost a third of its volume. Volkswagen fell 38.0%, Audi 49.7% and Mercedes-Benz 25.9%. GWM went the other way, up 8.5%, having passed 250,000 Australian sales last month.

Toyota held the lead with 19,712 sales and 19.5% share, so the month looks survivable. The year doesn’t: 135,262 sales to the end of August, down 17.3%, with share cut from 20.1% to 16.7%. That’s another 28,229 sales gone in 8 months from the company that sets the floor for everyone else., at least until now

The ute market is where the carnage bites hardest. Four-wheel-drive pick-ups fell 27.1% to 13,507, and light commercials as a whole dropped 22.1%. The work ute carried Japanese and Thai-built volume for 20 years. It’s now shrinking faster than any other part of the market.

The Koreans and the Japanese

Hyundai and Kia both sell electric cars, and both slid unceremoniously, Hyundai down 15.3%, Kia down 12.2%. They were early to the technology and slow to the price. Geely EX5 and BYD Sealion 7 didn’t beat them on engineering. They beat them at the wallet in the segment where the volume is, while Hyundai and Kia were still treating electric as a premium item to be rationed out. It is all going terribly wrong.

The Japanese question is a complex one, but results in the same problem and that is they did not read the memo. Mazda fell 9.0% in the month and 15.9% for the year with a range still clinging petrol. Subaru, Mitsubishi and Nissan are down by a third or more. Toyota’s hybrids are selling, with RAV4 up 32.9% and Prado up 21.7%, but hybrids took 18.5% of August and battery-electric took 24.9%, and Toyota spent years telling anyone that hybrids were the go. They may be eating their words.

That’s what slow costs. A punter walked into a showroom, found something cheaper with a plug in it, and signed for that instead. The companies hit hardest in August are the ones that spent the longest explaining why this wouldn’t happen. OK, let’s call it what it was: gaslighting. It was nothing less than protecting profit. Report card should read: Do Better.

Interestingly, go to Beijing or any of the large Chinese cities, and all you’ll hear is bird calls.

The final string to the bow is one that is more of a noose. Petrol sold 25,824 vehicles last month, battery-electric sold 27,089.

Sources: VFACTS, EV Council

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