Utes, EVs Star in New Zealand Sales for August: Month of Extremes – News

August was a month of extremes in the New Zealand car market. The top three sellers were the Ford Ranger (934 registrations) and Toyota Hilux (897) – but it was followed by the pure electric Tesla Model 3 (745).

It was also August’s biggest month for the new car market ever with 14,690 sales, which the CEO of the MIA attributes to “the arrival of shipments allowing returns to be met.” It rose 118 per cent in August 2021, which was hit hard by the Covid-19 lockdown.

According to Crawford, light commercial volume (which includes utes) has also roughly returned to pre-cleanup car discount levels, even though the program charges heavily for buyers of high-emissions vehicles.

Recordings in August also showed 2,530 sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and 627 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), meaning electric vehicles captured more than 20 percent of the total market — thanks in part to the That huge batch of shipment from Tesla, which also brought 581 Model Y SUVs (pictured above with the Model 3). BYD’s newcomer made a huge impact with 448 units of New Ato 3.

The best PHEVs were Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (198), Mitsubishi Outlander (191) and MG HS + EV (98).

Sales of gasoline (non-electric) hybrid cars reached 1,626 for the month of August, led by Toyota RAV4 (342), Kia Niro (166) and Toyota Highlander (154).

Toyota held the market leadership for August with an 18 percent share, followed by Mitsubishi (12 percent) and Ford (8 percent).

To date, the top three models are Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger and Mitsubishi Outlander.

New Zealand’s best-selling cars from year to date
Toyota Hilux (6634)
Ford Ranger (6408)
Mitsubishi Outlander (6272)
Mitsubishi Triton (4938)
Toyota RAV4 (3964)
Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (2442)
Suzuki Swift (2385)
Kia Sportage (2282)
Tesla Model 3 (2049)
MG ZS (1980)