Tesla sold a whopping 15,054 all-electric Model 3 sedans in Australia in 2021, topping electric vehicle (EV) sales in the country by a huge margin and outselling automotive market leader Toyota’s Camry (13,081 units) in the region’s medium-sized sedan market — reports The Driven.
The data comes from the Australian Electric Vehicle Council (EVC), which previously signed a new agreement with Tesla to publicize the EV pioneer’s sales figures in the country.
Tesla by far led Australia’s transition to all-electric vehicles in 2021, with MG and Porsche following far behind in second and third place, selling 1,388 ZS EVs and 531 Taycans respectively. The Model 3 also placed in the top 20 best-selling cars by volume in Australia across all drivetrains.
What’s more, Tesla was able to achieve all of that with the Model 3 being the only one of its mass-market vehicles available for sale in Australia since late 2019. Significant growth should be expected in the near future, with the EV pioneer gearing up to launch its Model Y CUV in the region.
New South Wales registered the most EVs of any Australian state during 2021, with Tesla leading the charge.
EV uptake in Australia lags behind other parts of the world, mainly due to a lack of policy support at the national level.
The country is looking to fix that, though, and three states — NSW, Victoria, and South Australia, for the first time introduced EV purchase rebates of $3,000 AUD in 2021 for cars meeting threshold requirements, along with other benefits such as stamp duty waivers and registration discounts.
EVC CEO Behyad Jafari also said that Australia does not have a demand problem for EVs — there’s plenty of that, but does have a supply problem.
Most carmakers simply aren’t allocating enough product to the Australian market for there to be units available for delivery year-round, so any automaker that is able to provide adequate supply to the region should be able to bolster sales moving forward.
Update January 31, 2021: The Driven has received a statement from the EVC, noting the Tesla numbers provided by the automaker were incorrectly stated.
“Due to a human error, the Tesla delivery figures for 2020 were erroneously added to the delivery figures for 2021 by Tesla before the figure was provided to the EVC,” it said.
“So instead of 15,054 Tesla Model 3 deliveries in 2021, the figure reported should have been 12,094. Correcting the total Tesla deliveries (all models) reduces the total number of EVs delivered in 2021 from 24,078 to 20,665,” said the EVC.
The change means the Model 3 did not quite outsell the Toyota Camry at 13,081, but still managed some impressive sales numbers for 2021 in Australia.
