Best selling new cars of February 2025: Toyota RAV4 tops the charts

The numbers for the Australian new-car market in February 2025 are out and it’s not been a good start to the year for the industry. It reports a 9.6 percent drop in sales compared to the same month last year with 94,993 new vehicle sales recorded. That number does go up to 96,710 sales when you include sales figures for Tesla and Polestar from the Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) report, but it’s still 7.9 percent less than last year.

While the overall industry sales have shrunk, there is a big variation between models as some have shown an increase in demand while some have suffered big drops in deliveries. In the report published by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), there is a note about just 24 selling days in February 2025 compared to 25 in February 2024, which resulted in a decrease of around 243 vehicle sales per day. 

Top 10 best-selling models

Let’s take a look at the top performers of February 2025:

SUVs continue to rise

The Toyota RAV4, now a hybrid-only offering, saw a surge of more than 50 percent in its year-on-year demand. This trend is followed by other SUVs on this list with increased year-on-year sales for the Mazda CX-5, Kia Sportage and Hyundai Kona as well. Toyota’s other big gain of the month came with the soar of the Toyota Prado which is also the best-selling large SUV of February 2025. The only SUV that did not see big gains was the Mitsubishi Outlander.

The new ute in town

While utes continue to be among the top selling models of the month, it’s the newcomer that has caught people’s attention. The BYD Shark 6 is the first and only plug-in hybrid in Australia right now and it has already crossed the Isuzu D-Max with over 2,000 sales. While customer deliveries did start mid-January, this is the first full month of deliveries for the PHEV ute. But if you’re looking to buy one now, there will be more options available soon enough like the Ford Ranger PHEV and GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV.

Fall of EV demand continues

As per the February 2025 sales report from FCAI, the consumer demand for battery electric vehicles has fallen by 37 percent in 2025 compared to the first two months of 2024. This despite the increase in supply of EVs rising dramatically and the introduction of the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) since the start of the year.

“We knew the supply of EVs would increase and there are now 88 models supplied to the Australian market.  However, our grave concern has always been the rate of EV adoption and what assumptions the Government had made in its modeling around consumer demand for EVs in the NVES. This modelling remains secret. 

The easy part is to set aspirational targets but without consumers demanding EVs, the NVES will not succeed.  It is time for the Government to consider the realities faced by consumers,” said FCAI Chief Executive Tony Weber.

Looking into the sales figures from the EVC report, Tesla deliveries dropped for a second month in the row, down to 1592 vehicles last month. With the updated Tesla Model Y deliveries to start in May, the 55.4 percent decline in deliveries is perhaps not that surprising. However, the continued slump of the recently updated Model 3 sedan is surely stirring concern for the EV brand.