june 2023 new vehicle sales – tax time winners

June is always a strong month for new vehicles sales, with businesses looking to spend before the closure of the financial year and OEMs running promotions to incentivise consumer buyers to sign on the dotted line. June 2023 is no different, with new vehicle sales coming in at a whopping 124,926 units! This is the largest single month result since June 2018, which saw 130,300 sales.

Top takeaways

• Massive YoY increase – Almost 125,000 vehicles in a single month for a 25% increase on June 2022
• Tesla tops Ford – The Model Y (5,560 units) leapfrogged the Ranger (5,334 units) to take outright second for the month, less than 600 units behind the Toyota Hilux in top spot (6,142 units sold)
• Electric cracks 10k – 11,042 EVs were sold this month, beating the previous record of 8,124 (set in May). Apart from Tesla, MG and BYD were key to this outcome, with both brands also bringing affordably priced models to market in the second half of this year
• SUV market remains strong – 69,059 SUV sales in June, making up 55% of the total market. While we have some consistently strong performers, we’re also seeing strong growth from Volkswagen, reaching 8th in YTD sales following a 123% increase in YTD sales vs. 2022 (14, 542 vs 6,523)
• Hybrid bouncing back – 9,020 units in June, up 54% on the average monthly sales so far this year (Avg Jan-May 5,858). Toyota is a big part of this results, with RAV4 regaining some of its lost ground, and the Kluger more than doubling sales compared to May 2023 (1,554 vs 671)

business vehicles boom

June is always the biggest month for fleet sales as businesses look to lock in spending ahead of tax time. This is particularly relevant in 2023, with monthly sales of business vehicles reaching 46,038 units (up 19% month on month and 33% higher than June 2022). One important reason for this is a change to the Instant Asset Write Off Scheme, with the amount that can be written off in a single financial year reducing from $65,000 back down to $20,000 for any vehicles not delivered before June 30.

Not surprisingly, the largest increase was in light commercial, encompassing tool of trade vehicles like vans and utes. Tradies were definitely looking to add to their fleets before the deadline, with 18,475 light commercial vehicles acquired in June, up 22% on May

Mitsubishi biggest winner

Zooming in on the Light Commercial sector, we can see which marques have been the biggest winners from trade spending (based on 64% of vehicles in this category being sold to business buyers).

While the top marques have all recorded steady increases over the last 3 months, Mitsubishi stands out as based on its performance through the last few months of FY23. Comparing April to June, it increased monthly sales by 139%, ahead of Mazda (92% increase off the back of growing BT50 sales) and LDV (80% increase thanks to strong demand for the T60).

What’s next?

It will be interesting to see how business activity responds to the reduced Instant Asset Write-Off Scheme, and the impact this has on fleet sales through the second half of the calendar year. We’re also facing further economic hardship, meaning orders will most likely become harder to lock in for dealers. On the flipside, Toyota appears to have fixed some of its supply issues, which should underpin deliveries to an extent through the rest of this year.

Sit tight for the next update!

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