Tesla electric car outperforms Australia’s most popular SUVs

An all-electric Tesla has surpassed every SUV in Australia and is now a top 10 brand for the first time ever.

The Tesla Model 3 took third place on the January sales charts, beating only the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s car company has made it into Australia’s top 10 list of popular brands for the first time ever, with Tesla coming in ninth on the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries’ monthly list.

In the first month of 2023, 2,927 Tesla Model 3 sedans left the showroom, despite having an expensive starting price of $63,900.

The Tesla Model 3 (pictured in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula) took third place in the January sales chart, beating only the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux

Manufactured in the Chinese city of Shanghai, the electric vehicle accounted for 88 percent of the 3,313 Teslas sold in Australia last month.

Tesla accounted for 68 percent of the 4,852 battery electric cars sold in Australia in January, with electric vehicles having a small but growing 5.71 percent market share.

The American EV-only brand also accounted for 31.8 per cent of the 10,426 cars sold in Australia in January that were either battery-electric, a plug-in hybrid or a petrol-electric hybrid.

The Tesla Model 3 and MG ZS, available as electric vehicles, were the only Chinese-made cars in the January top 10, with MG taking seventh place among the top 10 brands.

The new Ford Ranger ute was number 1 for the second straight month with 4,749 units sold, a 46.3 percent increase from the 3,245 orders in January 2022 when the previous, decades-old form was still on showrooms.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s car company has been included in Australia’s top 10 list of most popular brands for the first time ever, with Tesla ranked ninth in the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries’ monthly list (pictured a charging station in Sydney in The Star casino).

The Toyota HiLux was second with 4,131 units sold, a 15 percent increase from the 3,591 units that left the showroom in January 2022.

SUVs, or all-wheel drives, had six spots in the top 10, including the small Mazda CX-3 (2,417 sales), mid-size Mazda CX-5 (2,189 sales), Toyota RAV4 (1,958 sales), Mitsubishi Outlander (1,674 sales) and Toyota LandCruiser (1,631 sales).

The Isuzu D-Max was one of three Thai-built paraphernalia in the top 10 with 1,843 sales.

Despite a series of rate hikes, 84,873 vehicles were sold in January, the best January result since 2018.

Federal Chamber of Automobile Industry President Tony Weber said the computer chip shortage and Covid production restrictions would be resolved.

“The industry continues to recover after years of supply chain disruption and delay,” he said.

The Tesla Model 3 was Australia’s ninth best selling car in December but 10,877 were sold in 2022 compared to 9,538 for the Toyota Camry.

This ended the Camry’s three-decade run as Australia’s undisputed best-selling mid-size sedan and became the first mid-size sedan to outperform the Toyota since the Australian-made Mitsubishi Magna did so in the early 1990s.

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk