News & Views

As we move into the second half of the year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is starting to release more detail from its 2019 Motor Vehicle Census, letting us dig into the Australian car parc at a national, and state level.

As we move into the second half of 2019, it's a good point to reflect on YTD new car sales, assessing the overall health of the market, as well as seeing how recent trends are continuing to evolve.

Holden has been a key part of the Australian automotive industry since it launched the first all-Australian motor vehicle in the late 1940’s. The FX Holden was unveiled by Prime Minister Ben Chifley on the 29^th of November 1948, with 18,000 people paying a deposit without even having seen one in person.

With End Of Financial Year sales under way, many small business owners are considering bringing forward purchases to take advantage of instant asset write-offs. Given this increased level of activity, we thought now would be a good time to take a look at sales trends within the commercial van market.

41,426 new trucks were sold in 2018, finally breaking a long-standing record, and setting the industry on its way to deliver to the growing Australian freight task. This result was largely driven by the Heavy Duty segment, with the 14,326 trucks sold making up a third of the total volume, and putting HD up 21% on 2017.

The launch of Uber in 2012 was a disruptive shift in the Australian transport market, and signalled a serious threat to the traditional taxi. Since Uber’s entry, other ride hailing companies have followed suit, and there are now a wide range of options available to the Australian consumer (Ola, Shofer, Shebah and DiDi to name a few).

Welcome to our first 2019 blog post, which I'm using to reflect back on the changing nature of the Australian car parc. As we well know, 2018 was the first full year since the closure of the final local new car manufacturing plant by Holden, but how is that reflected in the car sales data.

The release of the November 2018 VFACTS new vehicle sales data has all but confirmed what many industry commentators have been quietly predicting, with Heavy Commercial Vehicles sales on track to break the 40,000 vehicle barrier for the first time. The closest to this previously was 2007, where 38,131 sales were recorded, but sales fell off sharply by 2009, with the global financial crisis seeing the market drop to 28,654 units.

While we spend a lot of time talking about electric vehicles, it can be difficult to define the extent to which they've penetrated the Australian car parc. Luckily, we have the ABS to help out, with the release of more data from the January 2018 Motor Vehicle Census allowing us to delve into this topic in a lot more detail.

The insurance industry is going through a period of technologically-driven change, with the advent of wearables and telematics taking us from a self-reported world towards a future in which decisions are based on captured (and shared) behavioural data. From an automotive perspective, this will allow for the delivery of more personalised products, with providers already looking at how customer driving behaviour can be leveraged to deliver tailored premiums. These innovations mostly however remain in development, meaning that insurance companies still need to rely on self-reported information, particularly when it comes to distances travelled.