Australian EV lobby group blasts "fragmented, paywalled" new-vehicle sales data

Australia's Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) has called for an independent database for new-vehicle sales, which it says is critical in tracking Australia’s EV uptake and determining subsequent broader policy-making decisions.

In its State of EVs 2026 report, which examines the recent record market share of EVs, the EVC said Australia is currently not on track to achieve the federal government’s 2035 emissions reduction target.

After setting a goal of reaching net zero by 2050, the Australian Government also declared an interim target of reducing the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 62-70 per cent compared with 2005 levels by 2035.

Despite EVs reaching a record market share of 24.9 per cent of all new vehicle sales in August 2026, the EVC's report said around a 50 per cent market share is needed by 2035, requiring the number of EVs on Australian roads to grow around 10-fold to achieve emissions ambitions.

This would mean around five million EVs would need to be on Australian roads, given there were just over 500,000 as of August 2026, and only an estimated 550,000 by the start of 2027.

Yet tracking the number of EVs being added to our roads, alongside comparative sales of petrol, diesel and various types of hybrids, is becoming more difficult, the EVC report said.

“Data for sales is increasingly fragmented, locked behind paywalls and increasingly withheld for commercial gain,” the report stated.

“Automotive journalists who had previously accessed monthly sales data are now reporting restrictions and gag orders on republishing critical metrics about the EV transition.”

New-vehicle sales figures in Australia are recorded in a monthly VFACTS report issued by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), while the EVC separately publishes monthly sales data from its members.

“The EV Council publishes the sales data of its reporting OEM [manufacturers] members every month, free of charge,” the EVC report said.

“Australia’s electric vehicle future needs data to accurately convey the enormous changes happening in the market,” it added.

“The diminishing visibility and increasing fragmentation of monthly sales data leaves Australia flying blind in the EV transition.”

Neither data set includes every brand. Mahindra, for example, has previously said it plans to become part of the FCAI’s monthly VFACTS sales report, while recent additions include GAC and Xpeng.

Cadillac and Smart, which only offer EVs in Australia, don't report their sales figures in either the monthly EVC or VFACTS sales reports.

Notable brands absent from VFACTS reports include electric-only brands Tesla and Polestar, which resigned their membership of the FCAI within days of each other in March 2024.

As a result, both Tesla and Polestar stopped reporting their sales figures to the FCAI, and continue to supply their sales data only to the EVC instead.

The decision, according to a letter to the FCAI by then-Polestar Australia boss Samantha Johnson, was prompted by the FCAI’s stance on the federal government's New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES), which came into effect on January 1, 2025.

The Polestar letter said the FCAI “may have irrevocably damaged consumer perception and trust in the proposed policy”.

“The brand cannot in good faith continue to allow its membership fees to fund a campaign designed to deliberately slow the car industry’s contribution to Australia’s emissions reduction potential,” it said.

It’s worth noting that Ms Johnson went on to become interim CEO of the EVC after its original CEO, Behyad Jafari, left in May 2024, before current CEO Julie Delvecchio was appointed in January 2025.

While Ms Johnson is no longer at the automaker, current Polestar Australia boss Scott Maynard has backed the move, telling CarExpert in July 2025 the brand had no intention to rejoin the FCAI.

MORE: VFACTS September 2026: EVs beat petrol, diesel models once again in new-vehicle sales