Chery and BYD shake up new-car sales chart

MG feels the pinch as newer Chinese rivals gobble up market share

Photo: Chery Tiggo 4

Key points

Sales figures show Australia’s new-car market is off to a sluggish start in 2025, down 9.6 per cent compared to last year
The Toyota RAV4 was Australia’s most popular vehicle in February, with the Ford Ranger dual-cab ute a close second
Chinese brands Chery and BYD both recorded impressive sales spikes in February 2025
Sales of electric cars continue to slump with consumer demand for EVs down 37 per cent

Chinese brands Chery and BYD were the big car sales winners in February 2025 according to VFACTS data, both recording more than a 100 per cent increase on the same period in 2024.

Chery, which produces models such as the Tiggo 4 and Tiggo 8 SUVs, saw a phenomenal 224 per cent spike from 629 sales in February last year to 2038 in February 2025.

The most popular BYD model, the Shark 6 ute, helped the brand jump from an already respectable 1549 units in 2024 to 3281 in February this year.

At least some of this gained market share appears to have come at the expense of more established Chinese rival MG Motors, which saw a 16.4 per cent drop to 3739 from 4474 in the same month last year.

MG does, however, remain the top-selling Chinese marque in Australia, its 7479 vehicles sold for the first two months of 2025 also keeping it ahead of brands such as Nissan (6594), Subaru (6435), Volkswagen (4498), and Honda (2478).

Nissan’s well-publicised slump continues, with the Japanese automaker recording the biggest fall of any volume-selling brand in Australia – sales for the month of February 2025 were 46.2 per lower than in February 2024, and its sales are down 29.2 per cent year on year.

Nissan is hardly alone in having a tough start to 2025, with the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) noting a 9.6 per cent drop in sales nationally from the same time last year and claiming “consumer demand remains subdued amid cost-of-living pressures”.

BYD Shark

Chery Tiggo

Toyota Rav4 hybrid

1/3

These pressures have especially come to bear on electric vehicle sales, which only accounted for 5.9 per cent of total market share compared to 9.6 in February 2024.

“We are now two months into the Government’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, and while the supply of battery electric vehicles has risen dramatically, consumer demand has fallen by 37 per cent this year compared with the first two months of 2024,” said FCAI chief executive, Tony Weber.

“We knew the supply of EVs would increase and there are now 88 models supplied to the Australian market. However, our grave concern has always been the rate of EV adoption and what assumptions the Government had made in its modelling around consumer demand for EVs in the NVES. This modelling remains secret.

“The easy part is to set aspirational targets but without consumers demanding EVs, the NVES will not succeed. It is time for the Government to consider the realities faced by consumers.”

Toyota continues to dominate Australian car sales, its 20.5 per cent market share more than double that of nearest competitor Mazda (9.4 per cent).