Electric Vehicle Council calls for open national new-vehicle sales database as data becomes 'fragmented and paywalled'

What the Electric Vehicle Council is asking for

Australia's Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) has called for an independent database of new-vehicle sales, which it says is critical to tracking the country's electric vehicle uptake and informing broader policy decisions. CarExpert reports the peak EV industry body argues that visibility of monthly sales results is deteriorating at precisely the moment the transition needs measuring. In its State of EVs 2026 report, the EVC states: "Data for sales is increasingly fragmented, locked behind paywalls and increasingly withheld for commercial gain." The report adds that automotive journalists who previously accessed monthly sales data are now reporting restrictions and gag orders on republishing critical metrics about the EV transition. ¹

"The diminishing visibility and increasing fragmentation of monthly sales data leaves Australia flying blind in the EV transition," the EVC report states, according to CarExpert. The council notes it publishes the sales data of its reporting manufacturer members every month, free of charge, and says Australia's electric vehicle future needs data to accurately convey the enormous changes happening in the market. ¹

Why no single dataset covers the market

New-vehicle sales figures in Australia are recorded in the monthly VFACTS report issued by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), while the EVC separately publishes monthly sales data from its members. As CarExpert details, neither set includes every brand: recent additions to VFACTS include GAC and Xpeng, Mahindra has previously said it plans to join, and electric-only Cadillac and Smart do not report their sales figures in either the monthly EVC or VFACTS reports. ¹

The most notable absentees from VFACTS are electric-only brands Tesla and Polestar, which resigned their FCAI membership within days of each other in March 2024 and since then have supplied their sales data only to the EVC. CarExpert reports that a letter to the FCAI from then-Polestar Australia boss Samantha Johnson attributed the decision to the peak body's stance on the federal government's New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES), which came into effect on January 1, 2025. The letter said the FCAI "may have irrevocably damaged consumer perception and trust in the proposed policy" and that the brand could not "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". ¹

CarExpert also notes the connection between the two organisations: Ms Johnson went on to become interim CEO of the EVC after Behyad Jafari left in May 2024, before current CEO Julie Delvecchio was appointed in January 2025. While Ms Johnson has since left the automaker, current Polestar Australia boss Scott Maynard told CarExpert in July 2025 that the brand had no intention to rejoin the FCAI. ¹

The gap the EVC says stands between Australia and its 2035 target

The State of EVs 2026 report examines the recent record market share of electric vehicles but concludes Australia is not currently on track to achieve the federal government's 2035 emissions reduction target. After setting a goal of net zero by 2050, the Australian Government has declared an interim target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 62-70 per cent compared with 2005 levels by 2035. ¹

Despite EVs reaching a record 24.9 per cent of all new-vehicle sales in August 2026, the EVC's report says around a 50 per cent market share is needed by 2035, requiring the number of EVs on Australian roads to grow roughly tenfold. CarExpert reports this would mean about five million EVs on Australian roads, given there were just over 500,000 as of August 2026 and an estimated 550,000 by the start of 2027. ¹

The EVC's own monthly figures and the wider record quarter

The State of EVs report is the definitive annual snapshot of Australia's EV industry, according to the EVC, which says the 10th edition covers EV sales across cars, vans, trucks and buses, charging infrastructure, government policy and industry progress. The council says it was joined by Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen to launch the 2026 edition, underscoring the federal policy weight attached to the report's findings. ²

The EVC's monthly Vehicle Sales Report covers only Tesla and Polestar deliveries, a limitation the council itself states openly, noting all brands are welcome to provide their data for the free, public report on a non-exclusive basis and that its aim is publicly available data for all Australian new-vehicle sales to enhance transparency and consumer confidence. Its September 2026 report shows Tesla and Polestar recorded combined battery electric vehicle sales of 5,854 vehicles in September, with a three-month September-quarter average of 6,199 deliveries. A combined 43,386 Tesla and Polestar vehicles have been sold in 2026 to date, a 77 per cent increase over the same period last year, with the Model Y family accounting for 4,476 September sales, or 76 per cent of all models sold across the two brands' ranges. Model 3 deliveries rose 60 per cent year-on-year to 1,178, and on a year-to-date basis all states and territories recorded increases ranging from 45.7 per cent to 113.3 per cent. The EVC notes deliveries are recorded at the point of delivery rather than when orders are made, and flags that Tesla this week announced a new base-model variant of the Model 3 sedan priced from less than $46,000 before on-road costs. ²

The broader record quarter supports the council's argument that the transition is accelerating. Autotalk reports the EVC saying nearly 30,000 battery electric vehicles were sold in Australia during the September quarter, while the Australian Automobile Association's latest EV Index shows BEVs reached 9.7 per cent of total new-vehicle sales in the quarter – a new high for Australia. According to the same Autotalk report, BEVs made up more than 40 per cent of sales in the medium-car segment while internal combustion models fell below 20 per cent, and BEVs reached 22.7 per cent in the medium-SUV category, Australia's largest. ³

The data-transparency argument is not new from the council. Autotalk reports that EVC chief executive Julie Delvecchio told the Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity that Australia needs a single, publicly available national source of vehicle-sales data to counter misinformation, saying the lack of a single source leads to fragmented and sometimes inaccurate reporting, confusion for consumers and underrepresentation of EV sales figures. The same Autotalk report noted errors caused by double-counting Tesla figures in 2024, which led some outlets to wrongly claim EV sales had fallen that year, while the AAA's EV Index showed year-on-year growth. ³

Record sales context as policy settings come under review

The transparency push lands against a backdrop of record EV adoption. Carsales for Business reports that annual battery electric vehicle sales in Australia broke through 100,000 units for the first time in 2025, growing 13.1 per cent from 91,290 in 2024 to 103,270, lifting BEV market share to 8.3 per cent from 7.4 per cent in a static overall market. Growth came despite Tesla's sales dipping 24.8 per cent as Model 3 sales faltered, in the first year of the NVES CO2 reduction scheme. ⁴

Those figures emerged as federal incentives face scrutiny. Carsales for Business reports a statutory investigation into the future of the Electric Car Discount, led by the Australian Centre for Evaluation within Treasury with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water also contributing, took submissions until February 6 with findings expected by mid-2027. The same report notes Treasury estimates the policy will cost $23.4 billion in lost revenues if it continues out to the middle of the next decade, and that a road user charge for EVs and PHEVs to replace petrol excise revenue is potentially on the federal government's agenda. National Automotive Leasing and Salary Packaging Association chief executive Rohan Martin said in the statement accompanying the annual figures: "Without the tax incentive on electric cars, tens of thousands fewer EVs would be on Australian roads today." ⁴

FCAI chief executive Tony Weber said in a statement accompanying the annual figures that the NVES had provided policy certainty and increased EV availability but had "had little discernible effect on EV demand", warning that countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United States had seen sharp declines in EV sales when incentives were reduced or removed. That industry view sits alongside the EVC's position that open, complete sales data is needed to judge how the transition is actually tracking. ⁴