Tesla storms into the top five! Electric car sales increase in Australia thanks to Model 3 as Kia and Hyundai battle it out for sales glory

The Tesla Model 3 is officially one of Australia’s best-selling cars, entering the top five for the first time and helping to increase overall EV sales in August.

According to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) figures, electric vehicle sales hit a high last month of 4235 units, which equates to 4.4 per cent of total August sales.

Last month also saw a general uptick in new-vehicle sales of 17.3 per cent, with 95,256 units finding homes.

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FCAI chief executive Tony Weber said the boost in sales was a positive sign that the issues that have impacted deliveries in the past year or so could be clearing up.

“The August VFacts sales are the best August result since 2017. This gives hope that the supply of vehicles to the Australian market is beginning to show signs of improvement,” he said.

But Tesla's performance last month is the biggest surprise, with the Californian EV brand sliding into seventh place overall with 3397 sales. The bulk of those were for the Model 3 (2380) which shot up into fourth place in the best-selling models chart, although the Model Y SUV did very well too, recording 1017 sales.

But once again Toyota ruled to roost, with a 3.3 per cent increase in sales for 20,616. That was led by the dominant HiLux ute that chalked up a whopping 6214 sales, up 39 per cent on August 2021’s result.

The Ranger was the second most popular model last month.

The RAV4 was the country’s top-selling SUV in third (2482, -21.7%), while the Corolla (2115, -40.6%) landed in sixth place, and the Prado (1903, -30.3%) just scraped into the top 10.

Mazda turned around its recent bad fortunes with a 15.4 per cent increase to hold on to second place. The CX-5 SUV (2325, +3.8%) took fifth place overall.

The Kia and Hyundai battle got spicier last month, with Kia outplaying its larger sister brand, 6780 (+33.9%) sales to 6643 (+32.4%). They landed in third and fourth respectively, but Hyundai was the only one of the two with a model in the top 10. The i30 small sedan and hatch range was eighth overall, trailing the Corolla on 1975 (-3.5%) sales.

Year-to-date Kia is just ahead of Hyundai, with 52,910 sales versus 51,602 for Hyundai. This is going to be interesting to see which one of the two Korean giants can come out on top at the end of the year.

Hyundai is battling sister brand Kia for sales this year.

Mitsubishi had a bumper month (6380, +32.9%), with the Triton in seventh place recording a sales jump (2087, +152.4%).

Ford (5839, +15.4%) was also up on last, and it looks like the roll out of the new-gen Ranger is in full swing with sales of the popular ute by 13.6 per cent.

Following Tesla in seventh was MG in eighth place (3074, +2.1%), recording a slight boost thanks to a significant increase in MG HS SUV sales (902, +226.8%).

Subaru (2960, -8.4%) in ninth was one of only two top-10 brands to lose ground last month, and the other was Volkswagen (2868, -24.4%) which scraped into the top 10 with a bigger dip.

In terms of the states and territories, only South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia saw sales declines. All key categories of vehicles, so passenger, SUV, light and heavy commercial vehicles recorded double-digit growth last month.

Most popular brands of August 2022

Most poplar models of August 2022