How much bigger will the EV market grow in 2024?

I’m pretty good at this forecasting game. At the start of 2023, I predicted the Collingwood AFL team would finish on top of the ladder and win the flag. I even put a small wager on each, which netted me an eight-fold return. 

To be honest, I do that every year, so this year’s windfall barely recouped past losses. But that’s not my point. You’re only as good as your last game, and right now my game is gooood. 

Now it’s time to predict how many new electric vehicles Australians will buy in 2024. To help you make an informed bet, let’s look back on how EV sales fared in 2023.

Industry sales analysts VFACTS recorded 80,446 EV sales in the first 11 months of 2023 (at the time of writing that’s the best available). That’s just over 7300 per month which means 2023 should finish around 87,700 once December is taken into account.

An annual total of 87,700 is 2.6 times more than the 33,410 EVs sold in 2022, which in turn was six times more than the 5149 units sold in 2021. 

It’s unfair to suggest that the rate of growth is slowing because 2.6 times growth is a lot less than six-fold, because the base was tiny, as you’ll see in the table below.

Here’s another way to interpret the numbers: EV sales grew by more than 28K in 2022 and 54K in 2023. Near enough to double year on year. 

How much will it grow in 2024? My crystal ball says the growth will double again (108K) driven by recent and imminent new entrants at the affordable end of the market, which would put 2024’s total EV sales at 195K.

If I’m right then EVs would be just under one-sixth of the entire new vehicle market (assuming a 1.2 million market in 2024, which is what 2023 is on track to achieve). 

For me, 2023 goes down in history as the year Electric Vehicles hit the big-time in Australia. This year, EVs went from lifestyle-compromising niche curiosity to mainstream auto mover, and the number of options went up as quickly as the price of entry came down. 

Big names like Kia, Hyundai, BMW, Mercedes and Lexus arrived on the scene or doubled down on tentative first bets.

Newer brands - almost entirely from China - also dived into the EV pool: BYD, MG, GWM and Cupra going all-in with affordable compact EVs for the masses.

In 2022, Aussie buyers with a $50K budget had a choice of two EVs: the BYD Atto 3 and the MG ZS EV. By the end of 2023 they had a choice of five, and 2024 promises substantially more activity at this end of the market.

Equally, the top end of town got busy with the arrival of BMW’s iX range, Merc’s EQE and EQS quads, and Audi’s etron family. 

In between the affordable and the insane there was plenty of action for many different buyer types. But a few major market segments are still barely getting started.

Our five biggest market segments are, in order: Medium SUVs, 4X4 Pickups, Small SUVs, Large SUVs and Small Passenger Cars. With the recent arrival of the Kia EV9 Large SUV, all five of those now have pure EV options. 

Really, though, the 4X4 Pickup class needs the main players to join the sole EV option from LDV if EV sales are going to maintain their rapid growth. 

What will 2024 bring? Will the arrival of the much-heralded VW ID family power EVs to even greater growth, or will they just steal sales from existing players? If Tesla could build cars faster would Tesla sell more cars, or is supply already close to demand?

Place your 2024 prediction in the comments below. Whoever gets the closest when 2024 draws to a close will win a prize courtesy of Drive. Not sure what yet, but we’ll come up with something suitably desirable that recognises and rewards your astute predictive skills.

One prediction per person. We’ll take a snapshot of the comments on January 31 to freeze all estimates for fairness. 

* Source VFACTS 2019-2023
** 2023’s numbers are a 12-month estimate based on average sales for the first 11 months.