Polestar leads EV sales in July as market awaits Tesla’s invasion starting this week

EV deliveries in Australia all but came to a standstill in July, with just over 600 EVs entering the hands of customers during the month as a myriad of global forces reduced supply to a minimum.

Tesla only delivered four electric vehicles in July (yes, only four). But that’s about to change, and in a big way: Thousands of Tesla Model Ys and a long waiting list of Model 3 orders are expected to roll out to customers by the end of this week.

Deliveries of Tesla’s Model 3, as well as expected new electric vehicles from Chinese automakers MG and BYD, have all been delayed due to Covid-19 shutdowns and other global challenges.

We’ll get to what will happen once the Tesla Model Y, BYD Atto 3, and refreshed MG ZS EV hit our shores later, but the upshot is that, according to the latest Vfacts numbers and data gathered independently from automakers automobiles by The Driven, the Polestar 2 won the title of “bestseller” in July.

It really depends on when the vehicles can be delivered. And it is not without noting that the Polestar 2 – like the Model 3, the Atto 3 and the ZS EV – is manufactured in China, in the Geely and Volvo factory in Luqiao.

The Geely-owned sister Volvo delivered just under 100 cars to customers in July, well ahead of Volvo’s 17 Pure Recharged XC40s as the Swedish brand prepares for next year’s model which will enter in October.

Despite the reported popularity of the hard-to-get and towing award-winning Ioniq 5, it was Hyundai’s Kona EV and Ioniq Electric that drove the South Korean brand’s electric vehicle sales in July.

In fact, at the brand level, Hyundai came out on top. While Tesla – still the market leader for the year – only delivered 4 cars in July, Hyundai delivered 83 Kona electric vehicles, 69 Ioniq electric fastbacks and 25 Ioniq 5s to customers – making a total of 177.

Kia has delivered 52 of its equally hard-to-get EV6s, waiting for the refreshed e-Niro to hit the roads in the coming months.

Porsche continues to deliver reasonable quantities of its premium electric sports car, and Mercedes-Benz said it sold 22 EQAs and EQCs while there were only 8 large EQC SUVs. BMW only sold 8 of its i4s and iXs.

Although there are still a few figures to come from the automakers (Vfacts does not separately report the transmissions of the models of the same name), but we can also add 3 Jaguar I-Paces and 14 Audi e-Trons to the list.

Second-half electric vehicle sales are poised to take off

While just over 10,000 electric vehicles were delivered to customers in the first seven months of 2022, about as many as in 2021, the second half of the year will be very, very different.

Tesla is thought to have taken some 15,000 orders for the Model Y, not all of which will be delivered by the end of the year.

But many of them will be, along with at least 3,000 BYD Atto 3s according to communications from the Chinese auto giants.

MG has confirmed that its ZS EV, which was expected in July, will start flowing in September.

With at least 300 ZS EV orders taken, a spokesperson for the SAIC-owned brand said in a note that “production is improving with deliveries to customers who have already ordered arriving in September and staggered intervals throughout throughout the fourth quarter”.

MG is also said to have several units that have not yet been purchased by customers, which it says are “available for immediate delivery.”

Electric 4x4s can’t come fast enough

The elephant in the room is of course the gaping hole in the electric 4×4 market. As electric vehicle researcher Jake Whitehead, who is in the United States, noted on Monday, models like the Ford F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T utility vehicles will “sell like hotcakes.”

Australia just needs the right policy signals, namely fuel emissions standards in line with those overseas so that automakers put the nascent market on equal footing with overseas interests.

Bridie Schmidt is associate editor of The Driven, sister site to Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018 and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emission transport must play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is a co-organizer of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model 3 and offers it for hire on evee.com.au.