Articles by Tom White

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Mitsubishi's CEO, Shaun Westcott, explained the effect he thinks Australia’s tough new emissions laws will have on the new car market, and why Mitsubishi will continue to stick with its PHEV-heavy strategy.Westcott said there are still significant hurdles to overcome for electric cars despite the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) coming into effect.“Just penalising us is not going to deliver the outcomes we need. The original thinking was that if you penalised us, we’d bring more EVs to the market.”“There’s no shortage of choice, what we lack is positive initiatives. You can give us as many sticks as you like, we need some carrots.”“The bigger challenge with adoption is that we need to have a government which considers the peculiarities of the Australian market. We’re not Norway. We’re not a small country. We don’t have cities that are 40 kilometres apart.”He said even with advancements in battery technology, which may result in vehicles able to travel between Sydney and Melbourne on a single charge, having infrastructure sufficient for the cities was an ongoing issue.“As we sit here today, Adelaide has 52 public fast chargers. 52 for a city of one and a half million people!”Westcott added if Mitsubishi’s number crunching was reflective of the wider market, price hikes could be headed for most brands as they try to keep up with the regulations which have effectively moved Australia from the emissions environment of the 1980s to the strict nature of Euro 6 overnight.He said despite the abundance of options, even at lower price points, Australian consumers still preferred combustion engines overall, which will cause a problem for many manufacturers, and soon.“I think the reality we’re looking at today is a lot of brands have dialled back their EV ambitions because they’ve realised that just bringing the cars to the market, you can fill your showroom with EVs but if nobody buys them you’d have to discount those cars to a point where they will be below the cost of production and that’s happening already just to get people to take them," said Westcott.“OEMs realise that to stay alive you have to sell cars - if Australians aren’t buying the EVs then we have to bring combustion and all the other powertrains to market and that will continue to happen despite the penalties because if the demand isn’t there, you haven’t got a business. It’s simple economics.“Every brand has to cover the cost of those penalties to survive and if customers are only buying single digit (percentages) of EVs - everyone is going to be copping penalties,” he said.Westcott still backs PHEVs in the short term.“We believe this is the correct transition technology. Our customers use their car in pure EV mode 83 per cent of the time," said Westcott.“ our customers have reduced emissions by 83 per cent right here, right now, today, with zero investment in infrastructure.“And if I wanted to do a trip to Melbourne, or Sydney, or across the Nullabor to Perth. It doesn’t matter, the car can do it.”Westcott was also blunt about how he sees the choice to remove the fringe benefits tax exemption, which (along with the original EV exemption) caused a spike in interest for PHEV models, was a political error when it comes to emissions reduction.“Stopping the FBT exemption on PHEVs was a mistake - Look what it did! PHEV Outlander was 20 - 25 per cent of the mix, it worked. It comes back to the carrots and the sticks. If we had a few more carrots it works. Lets do it.”It’s worth noting Mitsubishi has everything to gain by such changes. It currently doesn’t field a fully electric vehicle, with plans to bring in the eK X electric city car shelved after a brief local evaluation program.Plus, some manufacturers with diverse offerings in their line-ups have spoken out in favour of the NVES, as models they currently import from Europe or China already comply with even more stringent regimes in their respective home markets.Chinese manufacturers, meanwhile, are squeezing Mitsubishi on its plug-in hybrid home turf with unprecedented price-tags attached to incoming versions of the Chery Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 PHEV competing on price with combustion Outlanders and undercutting Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV by a significant margin.Mitsubishi isn’t alone though. Japanese manufacturers seem to be in particular trouble, as they struggle to adjust to a regulatory environment much more hostile to their historically popular nameplates. Subaru, Isuzu, Mazda, and to some extent, even Toyota will have work to do in the coming years if they want to avoid painful fines under the new laws.

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The latest Australian new-car sales figures show one clear leader among Chinese brands. GWM could be the first one to crack the top five for year-to-date sales in Australia as it overtakes MG and Isuzu.Japanese and Korean brands along with Ford have dominated for the past decade with their range of utes and SUVs drawing in plenty of buyers.Now manufacturers from China are storming up the sales charts. The original success story was MG, which rapidly fought its way to the top 10 off the back of an appealing array of cars at price points now abandoned by rivals, and a steady supply of new vehicles during COVID-era shortages.MG has now been surpassed by one of the longest-serving Chinese automakers in Australia, GWM.GWM has sold 25,189 new vehicles in Australia through the first six months of this year, which places it just ahead of both MG (21,674) and Isuzu (21,883).This puts it in a solid seventh position in Australia, with something of a gap between it and Mitsubishi in sixth (33,379).Mitsubishi will be looking over its shoulder in the second half of this year with stock of its ASX, Eclipse Cross and Pajero Sport SUVs runs dry, as the Japanese brand awaits new generation vehicles.GWM itself is rapidly being chased down by BYD (23,335), with its rate of growth at 144.6 per cent year-on-year much higher than that of GWM, which is up what would normally be an impressive 17 per cent.The rise of both GWM and BYD is thanks to a rapidly expanded or updated model line-up, which includes in-demand vehicles not being fulfilled by big name players.Both GWM and BYD now offer a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) ute, as well as a range of sharply priced PHEV SUVs (BYD), hybrid SUVs and off-roaders (GWM), and affordable electric cars.MG has languished slightly off the loss of its bargain-basement previous-generation MG3 hatch, ZS small SUV, and HS mid-sizer, which have all been replaced by more expensive new-generation offerings.MG is no doubt hoping its Kluger-rivalling QS large SUV and incoming U9 ute will be major volume additions in the latter part of the year. They will also be joined by the Camry-rivalling MG7 sedan.The next-biggest Chinese challenger, Chery, is also leaping up the sales charts, up an unprecedented 228.8 per cent so far in 2025 thanks to its bargain Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 mid-size SUV pair, and the Tiggo 4 small SUV which seems to have replaced the MG ZS as the bargain entry-level SUV of choice. It is still several thousand units away from a top-10 entry, but will almost certainly be within striking distance in 2026 if its growth continues.The rise of MG, GWM, and BYD has seen Nissan join Subaru as top-10 has-beens.The biggest gap remains between Toyota and the rest, with the 'Big T' still having moved a steady 120,978 units in 2025.

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