Technical | Feature
Noi Kotev noi_kotev@hotmail.com Evan Favos evan.favos@outlookcom
Society of Automotive Engineers Australasia
Zero Emissions Vehicle Project VFACTS SUMMARY ANALYSIS The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (will be referred to as FCAI from here on) releases a highly regarded document containing a wide range of data on new vehicle sales in Australia every year known as VFACS. As per the scope of this ZEV market study, analysis on new ZEV vehicle purchases within the government sector of Australia has been done using VFACTS of the years 2015 to 2021. Relevant information pertaining to the study has then been collated and tabulated for an all-inclusive perspective of current market behaviour over the last six years. The following is an exploration of total vehicle sales throughout Australia, followed by an analysis of these sales based on individual vehicle body-weight categories, then a deep dive into the distribution of those vehicle body-weight categories procured by government bodies; and lastly, the proportion of various ZEVs based on fuel types purchased. Firstly, by collecting all the data from ‘New Vehicle Sales’ in VFACTS from the years of 2015 to 2021 a separate data table was created (shown in Appendix 1). This was turned into a line graph (Figure 1) for a visual representation of Australian state’s vehicle purchasing habits over these years. It is noticed that New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland hold the majority the country’s new vehicle purchases and so these will be the ones to focus on. It can be seen that New South Wales purchases the highest amount of vehicles overall than any other state, with their yearly maximum over the this time range at 397,273 vehicles purchased in 2017. The state with the next highest number of new vehicles purchased in a single year is Victoria with 399,643 vehicles, also in the year of 2017. The next state to purchase the greatest number of vehicles over this range is Queensland, with a maximum yearly vehicle purchase of 235,674 in the year 2015. Furthermore, this chart also shows the general trend of the new vehicle market in Australia. With all three of the top purchasing states showing a negative trendline signifying fewer new vehicle purchases over those years; with New South Wales and Victoria showing a 20% decrease and Queensland showing a 9.5% decrease. It is important to note that 2020 and 2021 sales are significantly decreased as these years signify www.saea.com.au
Figure 1
the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this general negative trendline is noticed even by observing solely the 2015 to 2019 yearly sales; with New South Wales showing a 11%, Victoria showing a 3.5%, and Queensland a 9.5% drop in sales (when disregarding the pandemic years). The next section of VFACTS that has been analysed in depth is how market sales were distributed across various vehicles bodyweight sizes and if that affected their yearly sales. The FCAI has broken up the vehicle market by Passenger vehicles, SUVs, Light Commercial vehicles (comprising mostly of Utes and vans) and Heavy Commercial vehicles. For the sake of this analysis, Heavy Commercial vehicles will be disregarded as per the scope. On first inspection it is clear that passenger vehicles sales have been steadily decreasing over the years of 2015 to 2021 while both
SUVs and Light Commercial vehicles have been increasing. Passenger sized vehicles dropped from 515,683 vehicles purchased per year in 2015 to 207,060 vehicles per year in 2021, showing a decrease of 60% in annual sales; meanwhile SUVs increased from 408,471 to 491,351 annual new vehicles sales showing a 20% increase and Light Commercial Vehicles increasing from 199,070 to 233,338 in annual new vehicles sales showing a 17% increase. Additionally, all three vehicle weight categories show a significant dip in sales in 2020, which again could be due to the pandemic. However, unlike passenger vehicles which continues its negative trendline during those pandemic years, SUVs and Light commercial vehicles overcome this and return to their positive trendline sales in the year of 2021 even during the pandemic. VFACTS divides annual new vehicle sales by body-weight class as well as by which VTE | 27
