EVs Outsold Petrol Cars Again, So Why Isn't Petrol Getting Cheaper?

For the second month running, Australians drove more new battery electric cars out of showrooms than petrol ones. If you filled up in Sydney this week, where the NRMA had unleaded averaging 236.6 cents a litre on Monday, you could be forgiven for asking the obvious question. If fewer of us need petrol, why does it still cost this much?

Here's what's really going on, and why the answer matters more for your next car than your next tank.

A photo finish, decided by 269 cars

The September new vehicle sales figures, released on Tuesday by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and the Electric Vehicle Council, recorded 108,778 new vehicles sold. Of those, 26,287 were battery electric, or 24.2 per cent of the market. Petrol models came in at 26,018 and diesel at 25,173.

That's a margin of 269 cars. Close, sure, but it follows August, when EVs took a record 24.9 per cent share and also beat petrol.

The year on year swings are what stand out. According to CarExpert's breakdown, battery electric sales were up 117.7 per cent on September 2025, while petrol sales fell 36.2 per cent and diesel dropped 18.4 per cent. Plug in hybrids more than doubled to 10,072. The Tesla Model Y was the third best selling vehicle in the country with 4,476 sales, behind only the Ford Ranger (5,062) and the Toyota RAV4 (4,624).

A week earlier, the Electric Vehicle Council's State of EVs 2026 report found 157,957 EVs, counting battery and plug in hybrid models, were sold in the first half of the year. That's one every 100 seconds. The council put the national EV fleet at 612,000 in June, up from 500,000 in March.

Read the fine print on "outsold"

Before anyone writes the bowser's obituary, let's put this in perspective.

The "petrol" category in those figures only counts cars that run purely on petrol. Hybrids (17,843 last month) and plug in hybrids still have a fuel tank, and so does every diesel ute. Add them up and roughly three in four new vehicles sold in September will still need a servo.

Then there's the much bigger number. The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics counted more than 22.3 million registered road vehicles in January 2025. Against that, 612,000 EVs is under 3 per cent of what's actually on the road. With the average Australian vehicle around 10 years old, the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR) has pointed out that cars bought today will still be running in 2035.

Norway shows just how slowly a fleet turns over. EVs took 95.9 per cent of Norwegian new car sales in 2025. Yet at the end of June 2026, the country's road traffic information council, OFV, put electric cars at 34.31 per cent of the passenger fleet. That's after more than a decade of world leading sales.

Australia has watched buying habits shift after a price shock before. Oil hit a record in mid 2008, and buyers drifted toward smaller, thriftier cars. In 2011 the Mazda3 ended the Holden Commodore's 15 year run as the country's best seller, by just 812 units. The fleet didn't change overnight then either.

So why isn't petrol cheaper?

The short answer: Australia doesn't set its own petrol price.

We import about 80 per cent of our fuel, and the wholesale price at Australian terminals tracks refined petrol prices in Asia, mostly the Singapore benchmark, plus shipping, excise, GST and margins. Australian demand is a small slice of that Asian market. Buy less petrol here and Singapore barely notices.

What it does notice is crude. Brent was at US$138 a barrel in the week ending 30 September, up 89 per cent since before the Middle East conflict began in late February, according to the National Fuel Security Plan's fuel statistics. Add the end of the temporary excise relief on 3 August and you've got most of today's bowser price explained. The ACCC's latest weekly monitoring update, published on Friday, found average petrol prices rose slightly over the week while diesel eased slightly.

There's also the question of how much a household can cut back in a hurry. Not much, it turns out. NIEIR analysis in April found a 20.9 per cent rise in fuel prices trimmed petrol consumption by just 2.4 per cent. People still have to get to work and school.

Diesel is a different story again. Its demand is driven by freight, which NIEIR says has been growing at 2.2 per cent a year, and the EV Council's report says electric trucks and vans are still under 1 per cent of their markets. Your neighbour's new Model Y does nothing for the diesel prices a tradie or a truck operator pays.

What it means for you at the bowser

If you're sticking with petrol for now, relief will come from crude and the Singapore market, not from the EV in the next driveway. In the meantime, the local price cycle is still your best lever. Check unleaded petrol prices near you and our guide to the best time to fill up before you top up.

If you're weighing up a switch, run your own numbers rather than following the headlines. As a rough illustration, a car that covers 12,000 km a year at 8 litres per 100 km burns about 960 litres. At 237 cents, that's roughly $2,275 a year. The EV Council says its ownership survey found most EV drivers cut their annual fuel bills by more than 60 per cent, though your result will depend on how and where you charge. The savings calculator can help with the petrol side of that sum.

The savings are already adding up. The National Automotive Leasing and Salary Packaging Association estimates that people who bought an EV through the Electric Car Discount between mid 2022 and mid 2026 have collectively saved about $609 million on fuel. Uptake has been highest in the outer suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, often the places with the longest commutes.

One more thing worth keeping in mind. Every litre not sold is excise not collected. Treasury has been examining distance based road user charges for EVs, but the May budget stopped short of introducing one. Even the EV Council now asks for a federal road user charge, provided it doesn't deter people from switching. Whatever shape it takes, it will eventually land on the drivers who've made the move.

The bigger picture

The real story of 2026 may be fuel security as much as price. Australia has two refineries left, down from eight in 2000, and imports most of what it burns. Every car that doesn't need petrol makes the country's fuel stocks stretch a little further when a shipping lane closes.

How quickly that happens depends partly on policy. The EV Council wants the National Vehicle Efficiency Standard extended beyond 2029. Its scorecard gave the federal government, the ACT and NSW 7 out of 10, while Western Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory all failed. Victoria scraped a pass.

The takeaways

The fuel industry rarely makes headlines until prices spike, and this year it hasn't left them. The switch away from petrol is real. It's just a lot slower than September's headline makes it look.