Petrol and diesel cars and light commercials dominate January count.

PRE-electric vehicle era habits returned to the new car scene last month, with registrations of vehicles wholly reliant on internal combustion “surging” while battery-fed types fell away.

The organisation representing new car distributors says that, with the Clean Car Discount gone, it was not surprised petrol and diesel vehicle registrations lifted last month to comprise 96.2 percent of the total 12,173 registrations.  

The breakdown by motive power came to 274 full electrics, 202 plug-in hybrids, 2366 Hybrids and 9807 fully fossil fuel reliant vehicles, the Motor Industry Association says.

Mitsubishi took out first and second place on the passenger car sales scoreboard, but the brand whose solid run over the past few years has been largely fed by consumer interest its plug-in hybrid cars saw the sole type without that technology, the ASX (above) - also its oldest car, being in its 14th year of production - take the biggest result, with 438 sold. 

Next was the Outlander, which is primarily a PHEV, with 421 units. The Kia Seltos, another small petrol product, was third, with 310 units.

After a December where electric cars ran strongly, the following month saw minimal impact with potentially January being the leanest month in years. 

The top-selling battery model was the BYD Seal, but it claimed the spot with a mere 31 registrations. 

Next was the Tesla Model Y, last year’s biggest-selling electric getting to a slow 20245 start, with just 24 signed out. 

The Toyota bZ4X was in third, with 23 sales. The Seal and bZ4X are new to the market, so conceivably the registrations count could in the main have simply been dealer demonstrators and cars that will stay with their distributors, as staff and press fleet examples. 

The same might be true for the top and third-strongest plug-in hybrid car for the month: Porsche Cayenne (24 units) and Volkswagen Touareg (14 units), as they are also brand-new to the market. The second best-selling PHEV is a well-established product, Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (18 units).

There was much brisker action in the non-plug-in hybrid sector, where Toyota held complete sway. The RAV4 headed with 568 units, followed by Highlander (297) then Corolla Cross (242).

However, the strongest sector was, as always, the one-tonne utility zone, where last year’s overall market leader, the Ford Ranger, utterly dominated with 1470 units, followed by Toyota Hilux on 657 then Mitsubishi Triton (330). January was the first month in which utes escaped CO2 penalties, these having been pulled by the Government.

Toyota was also the market leader, with 2586 sales provisioning a 20.4 percent market share. Ford followed by Ford with 2062, for 16.2 percent, then Mitsubishi with 1474 units, for an 11.7 percent slice.

Motor Industry Association chief executive Aimee Wiley says that the January registrations total was 1.3 percent higher than that for the same month of 2023, but 6.2 percent down on January, 2022.