Updated October 2026 with data up to January 2026.
Data source: BITRE data of registered road vehicles (collected at the end of January each year)
Note: I’ve used EV as shorthand for battery electric and fuel cell vehicles (the vast majority will be battery), and hybrid EV describes vehicles with battery and another energy source (usually petrol or diesel).
Share of registered fleet
Here’s the motive power share of registered vehicles by vehicle type across Australia over the last six years:
Note: Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is a new classifications introduced to the dataset in 2026.
If you look carefully you’ll see growing slithers of EV (dark green) within passenger vehicles, motorcycles, and heavy buses, plus an increasing share of hybrid EVs in the passenger vehicle segment. Apart from motorcycles, diesel is the increasingly dominant motive power for most other vehicle types. Hybrid EVs are only starting to show on the chart for light rigid trucks.
You might be wondering about “Non-freight carrying vehicles” – these are special vehicles like ambulances, fire trucks, tow trucks, hearses, concrete pumpers etc.
Here’s a closer look the national electric vehicle share by vehicle type:
EVs are making inroads into passenger vehicles, heavy buses, motorcycles, and more recently light rigid trucks. Uptake is still tiny in other vehicle categories. Here’s a breakdown of those vehicle types by state/territory:
The ACT has blown out the Y-axis on this chart in 2026 with a surge in electric buses. The ACT is ahead in all four vehicle types on the chart (I’ve excluded vehicle types with negligible take up).
So electric vehicles are still a tiny share of the total fleet, but do they make up more of the growth in the fleet?
Share of the net change in registered vehicles
Here I’m looking at the difference in registered vehicles between Januarys of consecutive years. Note that this analysis is different to analysing new vehicle sales as it effectively accounts for deregistered vehicles as well as new vehicles.
The following chart shows the motive power share of net new registered vehicles of each vehicle type. Each column adds to 100%, but the chart will extend below 0% and above 100% when one motive power has a net reduction in registered vehicles, offset by gains in other motive powers (it’s a bit confusing, but I hope you get the idea).
Note: there are missing columns in the chart where BITRE have significantly revised historical numbers, but have not republished revised detailed data, so it is not possible to compare detailed figures year-on-year (for example, many heavy buses have been reclassified as campervans).
The mix of net new passenger vehicles (mostly cars) is quickly skewing to Hybrids and EVs (I’m expecting big changes once the January 2027 data comes out), with hybrids taking a much larger share than pure EVs.
It looks like there has been a sudden increase in sales of electric motorbikes in the 12 months to January 2026.
Diesel is continuing to replace petrol for light commercial vehicles, heavy rigid trucks, campervans, and light buses.
Many vehicles remain registered for 20+ years, so it takes a long time before the trends in new vehicles influence the overall fleet mix.
Passenger vehicles
The passenger vehicle story is even more interesting if you drill down to state/territory level:
(sorry I’ve had to exclude the NT because it blows the Y-axis out too much).
EVs and hybrids now account for the majority of the net increase in passenger vehicles in all states. WA is arguably a laggard with the highest remaining petrol and diesel share of net new vehicles.
Petrol passenger vehicles were in net decline in all states except WA (between Jan 2025 and Jan 2026), and diesel passenger vehicles are also in decline in the ACT. That’s not to say that there weren’t new petrol and diesel passenger vehicles in these states, they were just outnumbered by de-registered petrol and diesel vehicles.
Buses
Here’s the volume change in registered heavy buses by state/territory up to January 2025:
In the 12 months to January 2025, Queensland added the largest number of heavy buses, with most of them diesel. New South Wales had the biggest increase in electric buses (138), together with a net decline in diesel and petrol heavy buses.
I cannot include 2026 in the above chart because almost 1700 buses have been reclassified as campervans, but here is a chart of total electric vehicles registered in each state:
NSW has led the adoption of electric buses, with Queensland in second place. South Australia and Tasmania have very few electric buses, while there are none registered in the Northern Territory.
The Victorian government stopped procuring new diesel buses as of July 2025, so I’d expect to see big increases there next year. The current Queensland government seems less keen on electric buses, so numbers in Queensland might slow down soon.
For further (but less recent) analysis see, How fast is Australia moving towards electric vehicles?
