Opinion

Price used to be the biggest hurdle to electric car adoption, but not anymore.Research conducted by the Electric Vehicle Council in 2022 suggested half of new car buyers were considering switching to electric, but the number one concern was the upfront cost.One of the best value offerings at the time was the Tesla Model 3, which started from a whopping $64,300. Consumers were expected to pay $15,000 to $20,000 more for an EV compared to an equivalent petrol model.A lot has changed.The electric car market has expanded significantly and costs, both from existing players and those new-to-market, have come down significantly.The upgraded Tesla Model 3, which now features more driving range and features, starts from $54,900, and you can hop into a fully electric car from as low as $29,990 (for the BYD Dolphin Essential).Not only have costs come down, but the amount of choice has exploded. The just-launched Leapmotor C10 is a mid-size family SUV, which starts from $45,888 before on-roads (or just $47,500 as part of an initial drive-away offer). It’s a price-tag equivalent to a mid-spec Toyota RAV4 — Australia’s most in-demand hybrid SUV — and soon it will have to compete with not only the Xpeng G6 but the Geely EX5.We may have expected electric car price parity to arrive with some fanfare, but it has almost arrived with barely a whimper.Top-selling models, including the Tesla Model Y, still seem to be a price-step above combustion options. There’s a vibrant price-war amongst the increasing number of Chinese automakers available and in an increasing number of segments, but it seems like electric cars have lost their lustre a bit amongst new car buyers.As a result, the latest data from the industry has those considering purchasing an EV dropping significantly.It’s not all over for electric cars as some doom and gloom headlines proclaim, often citing softening (but still growing) sales in Australia. There are also much more dire figures out of Europe causing some of the biggest manufacturers to issue embarrassing about-faces on once-bold all-electric commitments, as customers reject new products in droves.So why is this happening? Do Australian new car buyers even want an EV anymore, and are we set to follow in the footsteps of other places that have seen an EV sales slow-down?The issue has several factors, all of them economic rather than ideological, despite what the comments section would have you believe.Consumer confidence in the new car market has declined significantly with high interest rates. The January 2025 sales data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) showed a continued decline in EV sales following a soft second half of 2024, but also a rapid increase in registrations at the lowest end of the market. Significant winners so far this year include the Kia Picanto, Chery Tiggo 4, MG3, and outgoing Mitsubishi ASX, all budget petrol-powered offerings, and a far cry from the usual mid- or high-spec SUVs which have dominated sales charts for some time.Another significant factor is the removal of EV incentives from most states.The amount of competition in the Australian market has had a knock-on effect of slaughtering the resale value of existing EVs. Imagine having bought a pre-upgrade Model 3 in 2022, only to have its value halve in three years because the new one is not only better, but it’s nearly $10,000 more affordable, too.Then there’s the consideration of why buy a two- or three-year-old, relatively high kilometre Tesla, when you could have a brand-new BYD Seal with a box-fresh warranty from $46,990. Buyers have begun to question whether now is the right time for a purely electric vehicle, when they could simply wait for prices to stabilise, buying or holding on to a combustion car in the meantime.Fuel prices are hovering around $2 a litre and Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standards (NVES) will begin to have a significant impact on the model mix available. Hybrids appear to be the biggest beneficiaries. Sales are up a whopping 76 per cent year-on-year, driven by the return of the supply of popular Toyota models after a long period of parts shortages, and an explosion of new options available from Hyundai, Kia, GWM, Honda, and Nissan.This slowdown in EV consideration is a natural part of the process and what has to happen to bring the technology to the mainstream as automakers scramble to have the best, most affordable vehicles available.It’s the most keen early-adopters of electric vehicles who will feel the brunt of this. Their vehicles have been hit by the biggest declines in value, and they’ve had to put up with an immature charging network and even some additional expenses, like higher insurance costs.Still, the Australian market continues to evolve. While consumers seem to have turned more to hybrids, EV sales still grew in Australia, up 4.7 per cent over the course of 2024. They accounted for 91,292 units or 7.4 per cent the market and more options particularly at the same price of popular hybrids should continue to convert buyers.Australia has plenty of growth in the EV sector to go. Australia has the highest uptake of household solar in the world, which would, in turn, mean that Australian households with the ability to charge in their garage will have some of the lowest per-km cost to recharge their electric vehicles.The biggest factor in the long-run though will be the NVES. Finally catapulting Australia into the world of 21st century emissions policy, this policy will really start to bite in the second half of the decade. Almost every mainstream automaker who has spoken to CarsGuide on the topic has earmarked serious changes to their line-up, with a high percentage of pure electric vehicles necessary for them to avoid hefty fines from the government.It’s also worth noting that at 7.4 per cent adoption, while Australia has been a little slow on the uptake, it’s hardly hit the saturation point which many European jurisdictions and some Chinese cities have reached, which is a big source of their respective market slow-downs.What’s the take-away? While price-parity EVs have quietly arrived in Australia with minimal fanfare, the path for growth here seems more sustainable than the great swings and misses we’ve seen overseas.Periods of explosive growth and unsustainable subsidies are behind us, and a slowly-but-surely set of policies in place here seems to be adding incrementally to Australia’s electric fleets rather than moving from huge sales to gutting losses for automakers, and in the long term, this should add confidence for EV buyers rather than doubt.

They don’t have enough range. They take too long to charge. There isn’t enough charging infrastructure. I’d kept hearing the same complaints over and over again, from both friends, random strangers on the internet and even car industry executives, for years now. So I decided to find out for myself what the reality of living with an electric vehicle (EV) in 2025 is actually like. 

What’s going on at Ford right now? Has the iconic motor company, the first in the world to bring cars to the masses, lost its way? Is it drowning in an incoming tide of Chinese electric vehicles it can’t compete against? Or does it know exactly what it’s doing and letting us live out our combustion engine dreams for now and giving us the car the electric brands can’t?In the past five years Ford has axed almost its entire line-up of vehicles in Australia. Those include the Puma and EcoSport small SUVs, the Escape mid-sized SUV, Focus and Fiesta hatches, Endura large SUV and Mondeo sedan. Today Ford’s range in Australia is tiny compared to most of its mainstream rivals such as Toyota and Kia. There’s the Ranger ute and its Everest SUV twin, the F-150 full-sized pick up truck, Mustang sportscar, electric Mustang Mach-E SUV and the Transit van and people movers.It was clear something was up at Ford about 10 years ago. In 2016 myself and several other motoring journalists were invited to Ford Australia’s head office in Broadmeadows Victoria for what was described as an informal chat. This meant leaving our phones in a plastic bucket at the door so we weren’t tempted to take photos of what was in the next room we were about to be led into. There was actually nothing in that next room apart some pastries, a coffee urn and waiting senior executives from the company, some of them from the United States. Actually there were more Ford people than journalists. They were very enthusiastic to tell us that there were lots of new Ford vehicles coming — especially SUVs."The days of having one SUV that is relevant to a whole bunch of people is over. It takes a proliferation of SUVs,” Ford Australia’s then Marketing Director Lew Echlin told me in that room.“The math is simple – the more SUVs that you have, the more customers that you have the opportunity to connect with… What we're attempting to get right now is shelf space. Edge we think will span several different consumer segments.”Edge was a large SUV about the same size as a Ford Territory and it was renamed the Endura for Australia. I went to the Endura’s launch in 2019, then the following year I covered it being axed from Australia. It was actually a really good SUV. But then so were many of the cars Ford axed — the Focus, the Fiesta, the Escape, the Mondeo, the Puma… but not the Ecosport.Ford would argue the reason was low sales and while that’s true it was because many of those models also being discontinued globally. Ford’s footprint was shrinking fast worldwide.The company’s global boss Jim Farley seemed to have a plan, actually he seemed to have many plans that he announced like New Year’s resolutions, only more frequently than just annually. “We aim to become the second biggest EV producer within the next couple of years,” Farley said on social media in 2021“... our ambition is for Ford to become the biggest EV maker in the world,” he continued.The tune had changed by 2024 when Farley told the Wall Street Journal that Chinese electric cars represented “an existential threat” and according to the same publication after he and Ford’s CFO John Lawler drove an electric vehicle in China, Lawler said “Jim this is nothing like before… these guys are ahead of us.” The latest Farley resolution came at the start of this year at the Detroit Motor show where he told industry website Automotive News that Ford was going to follow their own more exciting road.“Rule No.1 at Ford: no boring products,” Farley told Automotive News. “ We do not make shampoo.”It’s a bold statement, like they all were, but had Farley realised that Chinese EVs were too far ahead to catch right now and in the meantime the company would play to its strengths and make what it was good at like trucks and sportscars - the ones people actually bought?The Chinese aren’t making and selling V8 muscle cars or hardcore hi-performance off-road utes, and they weren't building anything that could threaten the F-Truck range.There would have been resistance from those high at Ford — the shelf-space executives — pointing out market share and losing a foothold. Ford lost A$2 billion in the first two months of 2024 trying to develop EVs through its electric Model E division without much success. Continuing down that road could just be an exercise in burning money.Ford’s presence in China is small. At the start of this year Farley announced the company earned A$958m in China 2024. This included exported vehicles.We’re also seeing Ford retract from the UK and European markets where strict emissions laws are putting pressure on the carmaker, which doesn’t have many vehicles that meet the tightening regulations.It appears then that Ford, while not completely walking away from EV development is putting most of its energy into models like the Mustang, Ranger and Everest, which last year accounted 90,552 sales between them in Australia. Just those three models puts Ford into the top 3 best selling brands in locally. There doesn’t seem to be a need for a Ford Focus or Mondeo, or even an electric car, not with numbers like this, not right now anyway.The same strategy appears to be used in the US where the line-up also includes the Bronco and Bronco Sport SUVs, along with the entire F-truck series, which has its high-performance models such as the F-150 Raptor R. The Mustang GTD is a racecar for-the-road version of the Mustang. The rest of the range is rounded out with the Explorer SUV and Edge with sporty ST variants. No sedans, not hatches and only three electric vehicles: the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit van.Farley’s Ford appears to be doubling down on no-boring combustion cars and it could well work in Australia’s favour where given our love of Rangers, Ranger Raptors and Mustangs might lead to more of the kind of cars we want.If we’re going down this road what else could Ford do? Another new Ford GT to take on Chevrolet’s Corvette? A modern Thunderbird? A Ranger Raptor with a V8? A hardcore off-road SUV Toyota LandCruiser or Land Rover Defender rival?Speaking of off-road that reminds me. Farley also made another bold claim this year at the Detroit motor show to Automotive News.“Ford wants to be the No. 1 undisputed off-road brand in the world,” he told Automotive News. “We want to be the Porsche of off-road.”

It feels like a couple of months’ worth of water passing under the Jaguar re-brand bridge is enough to cool off the heat generated by the 30-second ‘Copy Nothing’ video released in mid-November last year and the unveiling of the Type 00 (zero zero) Concept at Miami Art Week in early December.Arguably, the thermo-nuclear mainstream and social media meltdown that followed those two events demonstrates the emotional attachment the broader populace has to the Jaguar brand and the length of the limb the company’s current management has edged out onto in launching such a conspicuously divisive strategy.The polarised response, with most people seemingly positioned firmly towards one pole, was reminiscent of the first showing of Tesla’s Cybertruck in 2019.It was a ‘meme vehicle’, ‘a scam’, ‘a child’s toy’, a ‘mass of angry polygons’. In short, a bad joke on four-wheels destined to bring Tesla crashing down.But despite a lengthy gestation period and comical launch (bulletproof windows fail, anyone?) the production version hit the road in late 2023 and, low and behold, Tesla remains alive and (largely) well.    Cybertruck owners seem to be as happy as my Uncle Ern opening the beer fridge door, but for others a sighting of this three tonne, stainless steel clad monster is like pointing a finger at a sideshow oddity. And maybe that’s the point.  Jaguar sales have been on a road to nowhere for some time because, despite what appears to be a residual groundswell of affection for the brand, people have been reluctant to enter its showrooms.There was a similar outcry here when Holden stopped local Commodore production back in 2017. Sure, the Federal Government turning off the ‘industry co-investment’ tap had something to do with it. But clearly, despite heart-felt love for the car, people weren’t buying Commodores because they didn’t suit the market.Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is profitable, but that’s courtesy of the LR side of the equation. Global Jaguar sales have been in freefall, with each car likely made and sold at a loss.And a decades-long struggle between heritage and innovation saw Jaguar enter a kind of design and development paralysis, where even its relatively early move into electrification with the I-Pace EV SUV missed the mark.I recall a meeting with Jag’s then head of design, Geoffrey Lawson at the company’s then Coventry HQ in the early '90s where he spoke about grappling with this conundrum.He was working on what would become the XK8, but also wrestling with the broader challenge of making Jaguars appealing to younger luxury car buyers.The XK8 remains a supremely well resolved GT coupe (Lawson led the XJ200 design program, after all) but other new models — the S-Type as a 5 Series/E-Class rival, and the X-Type as a 3 Series/C-Class competitor — didn’t fire.In fact, the X-Type in particular, just became a cheaper way for traditional Jaguar prospects (old blokes) to get behind the wheel.   The largely retro look and feel, including the leather, walnut and plush carpets wasn’t pushing the right buttons with the right people. And if you’ve ever had the dubious honour of sitting in the back of an X-Type you’ll know it didn’t break any ground in terms of packaging.The subsequent evolution of SUV offerings and even the beautiful F-Type haven’t done enough to keep that line on the sales chart moving up and to the right.And, of course, there’s the brand’s ethnic origins. Despite current ownership by India’s giant Tata Group, Jaguar remains British to its boot straps. Which, like it or not, infers a base level of conservative reserve.As an exhausted Archie Leach (John Cleese) says to the exuberant Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis) in A Fish Called Wanda, “Wanda, do you have any idea what it’s like being British?". So, when a Jaguar rebrand strategy leads with a theme of ‘Exuberant Modernism’ and a statement of intent that says it will focus on “Unexpected and original thinking, creating a brand character that will command attention through fearless creativity” it’s a seismically big deal, especially in the UK.‘Copy Nothing’, a phrase attributed to Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons, is one of the key headlines leading the launch video, cast with a diverse group of people, on the surface of what appears to be Mars, clad in an extreme multi-coloured wardrobe with hair and make-up to match.Aside from a distinctly anti-LGBTQ+ line of vitriol, the video attracted waves of criticism for ignoring Jaguar’s heritage and alienating its core customers with a ‘woke’ philosophy. But heritage and core customers clearly haven’t been working for the business for some time.In launching the rebrand, Jaguar CEO Adrian Mardell said, "The magic of Jaguar is close to my heart – an original British luxury brand unmatched in its heritage, artistry and emotional magnetism. “That’s the Jaguar we are recapturing and we will create the same sense of awe that surrounded iconic models like the E‑type.”And Jaguar Managing Director Rawdon Glover said, “To bring back such a globally renowned brand we had to be fearless”.The question of what a brand is is a whole other discussion but at the very least it’s history, personal experience, products and touchpoints wrapped up in a visual identity.So, many have asked how a brand can be ‘brought back’ if sizeable chunks of it have been lopped off and ‘disappeared’ East German Stasi-style.There’s a new JaGUar ‘Device Mark’, which has caused much gnashing of teeth because it mixes upper- and lower-case type and is seen as derivative, as well as ‘Maker’s Marks’ (the surviving Jaguar ‘leaper’ and a new monogram) the ‘Strikethrough’ (close parallel lines or strakes) and use of ‘exuberant colours’.Interesting to note Autocar India got its hands on a leaked letter from Jaguar’s internal design team to their boss Gerry McGovern noting their “collaborative ethos and creative integrity” had been undermined by Jaguar’s decision to outsource creation of these visual elements to external consultants Accenture Interactive.And the team didn’t like the work, stating that instead of creating a unique visual identity, the logo leans toward a generic aesthetic, failing to embody the exuberance and distinctiveness they had envisioned.But despite that internal discontent, you get the feeling, especially when it comes to YouTube vids critiquing the campaign, the outsiders making negative comments are, like me, not ‘new’ Jaguar’s target market.Jaguar wants to appeal to “younger and wealthier more connected and more urban” and is aiming to sell fewer cars at higher prices (think up to Aston Martin and Bentley level).It’s opening ‘Jaguar houses’ in Paris, London and elsewhere, with the expectation that 80 per cent of customers will be new to the brand.It’s suspended production, except F-Pace at the Solihull plant and is investing £15B over five years to electrify a new Jaguar product line-up.For reference, Jaguar Australia told us that,”F-Pace production continues at our Solihull plant in 2025. There has not been a date set for the end of production, so it is business as usual.”Also worth noting an F-Pace 90th Anniversary edition will launch here this year (with P250 and P400e powertrains) with the hint of an F-Pace SVR in the wind.Which brings us to the Type 00 Concept developed by Gerry McGovern and his mildly disgruntled team. Unveiled at an art event (presumably because the CES is so mainstream and nerdy now) it’s been compared to an oversize Chrysler Crossfire. But there’s no doubting its proportions are imposing and its detailing intriguing.Riding on the brand’s new ‘JEA’ (Jaguar Electric Architecture) platform it previews the design direction for three new production cars, the first being a GT four-door, already in prototype development.To be revealed late this year and on sale towards the end of 2026, it will boast a close to 700km range, all-wheel drive (which presumably means twin motors) and rear-steer with pricing kicking off at around £120,000 ($240,000).Two cars were shown, one in ‘Satin Rhodon Rose’ (dubbed ‘Miami Pink’) and another in ‘Inception Silver Blue’ (aka ‘London Blue’).The interior is starkly minimalist, and without getting into the weeds on the treatment, all you need to know is “travertine stone functions as a plinth, supporting the floating seats”. Hardly production ready, then, but a clear statement of intent.And as the heat in the discussion surrounding this re-brand / re-launch / re-birth has dissipated it’s been fascinating to look back at the commentary it’s generated.No matter which side of the new Jaguar fence you’re sitting on Marina Hyde in The Guardian surely deserves an award for her story titled, ‘Hats off to Jaguar’s ‘inclusive’ new branding: now people of all backgrounds won’t buy its cars’.  As a writer, reading this piece is like being a club motorsport battler watching from the pits as Max Verstappen tears up the track; her key point being that the latest US election result makes the initiative even more of a “period piece” than she believed it was already destined to be.Rob Meyerson, in his story ‘The Jaguar rebrand was just the first misstep’ in How brands are built contends everything we’ve seen so far is just a “trailer” for a more complete re-brand; we should wait for the full-length feature film (not withstanding the fact that trailers typically contain all the movie’s best bits).Meyerson contends, “A killer final product can make even a bollocks-filled visual identity, launch video, and Design Vision Concept all but irrelevant”.Having said that he doesn’t hold back, adding, “It claims to ‘copy nothing’ (a line from Jaguar’s founder, Sir William Lyons) while copying just about everything. The banal, verb-adjective headlines are reminiscent of Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” (and every campaign that’s copied it since). “The typography is not exactly groundbreaking; it’s already been compared to the logos of Motorola, Dyson and others. “The symmetrical JR monogram copies — almost to the point of parody — a luxury fashion trope employed by Chanel, Gucci, Givenchy, Giorgio Armani, Tory Burch and Fendi,” he said.I can’t help but add that surely the ‘jr’ monogram will also ring a bell with anyone who witnessed the Bathurst 1000 through the ‘80s, proudly sponsored by that producer of non-asbestos laden products, James Hardie. Mark Ritson in MarketingWeek follows the popular ‘why throw the baby out with the bath water?’ line in his story ‘Jaguar has rebranded when it needed to revitalise’.While positioning the current line-up as a “garage full of often average cars” suffering from “poor reliability” he’s not alone in saying, “Jaguar’s bizarre new campaign marks a complete overhaul of its positioning, when instead it should have celebrated and updated what once made it great’.He adds, “The assorted auto journalists attending Jaguar’s media launch this week weren’t impressed. In one particularly bruising review, James Baggott from Car Dealer described the launch event as a “drunken dream”, “incredibly bizarre” and akin to being trapped inside a cult for the afternoon.”But on the other hand, Manfredi Ricca’s story ‘Why critics of Jaguar’s rebrand are missing the point’ in Raconteur says, “JLR wasn’t looking for an evolution of a thriving brand. It was looking to reinvent an ailing one. “The reality is that today there are more people celebrating Jaguar’s heritage than those who actually want Jaguar’s cars.”And James Morris writing for Forbes goes as far as to say ‘The Jaguar Rebrand Is Absolute Genius — Here’s Why’.He’s not the only one to note the sheer volume of coverage the program has generated, positive and negative (this story being a case in point). That everyone’s talking about Jaguar to the point where it’s become a global general news story.Sure enough he quotes Oscar Wilde famously saying, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”And it’s worth noting, at the time of writing the ‘Copy Nothing’ video on Jaguar’s YouTube channel alone had racked up 3.7M views with nearly 45,000 comments underneath it.Morris adds, “If a brand isn’t profitable, that by implication means its existing customer base doesn’t provide sufficient financial benefit.“I’d be surprised if JLR hadn’t accumulated market intelligence pointing to a sufficiently large and young new audience with specific attitudinal and economic traits and identified an opportunity space matching the brand’s profile," he said.In other words, small group of Tesla Cybertruck owners – happy. Everyone else — bewildered.So, a couple of months on from campaign detonation at Jaguar ground point zero it appears to be a case of something… in fact, anything needed to be done to shake Jaguar out of what looked to be a terminal slump.Time will tell whether the direction it has taken is the right one. But for what it’s worth, a brand shouting about how out there it is, how creative and daring it’s going to be smacks of that bloke in the pub, right in your face telling you about how good a driver/lover/athlete he is. Me thinks old mate doth protest too much.But, when you seemingly have nothing to lose, taking a big swing is arguably the best, if not the only, option. It will be fascinating to watch Jaguar rise to new heights or (sadly) sink below the waves.What do you think? Is Jaguar’s re-brand campaign a potential corporate triumph or automotive tragedy in the making? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Speed kills. It’s the message that we’ve had driven home for decades by law enforcement and the government. But it’s time to have a serious discussion about speed limits in Australia without the hysterics and put some cold, hard facts into the debate.I was inspired to write this column thanks to a few recent events, namely a trip up the highway from Sydney to Brisbane and two recent stories I’ve written for this website on speed limits in Australia and around the world. What these stories and my road trip rammed home to me is that Australia is not only behind the rest of the world but we’re living in the past.Have you ever asked why the speed limit is 110km/h on most freeways? Why isn’t it an even 100km/h or why not 115km/h or 120km/h? Well, you can thank the metric system because when Australia switched from imperial to metric the speed limits were changed in 1974 and were rounded to the nearest 10km/h increment. So, 60mph became 100km/h and the freeway limit of 70mph became 110km/h.Makes perfect sense in the context of the time. But does it still make sense now in 2025? Think about how far not only vehicle safety has come in the past 51 years but also the quality of our roads. The idea that we haven’t progressed our speed limits in half a century seems like madness to me, or at the very least laziness.I own a 1982 Alfa Romeo Alfasud and doing 110km/h in it feels very fast, actually doing 60km/h feels fast in it sometimes with its complete lack of any active or passive safety (save the seatbelts). The doors are so thin compared to even a modern hatchback equivalent and overall my old car just feels, well… old.Given that my 40+ year old Alfa Romeo is an outlier, with the average age of the Australian fleet believed to be roughly 10 years, that means the vast majority of vehicles on our roads are much safer than they were in 1974. A modern car has a suite of passive safety features to protect the occupants in an accident that we didn’t have 50 years ago, but back in ‘74 even basic cruise control was a luxury. In many of today’s cars they have adaptive cruise control, often paired with lane keeping assistance, blind spot monitoring and other measures to reduce the chances of you having an accident in the first place.On top of all this, modern cars are more capable of driving at higher speeds than those from 51 years ago. So, in short, modern cars are much safer to drive at 110km/h and have no trouble going faster — as demonstrated by the higher speed limits in other countries.A 2021 report by the World Health Organisation saw Australia rank higher on the list of road fatalities per 100,000 head of population than Germany, a country which famously has thousands of kilometres of highways with no speed limits. According to the report Australia had 4.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, while Germany had just 3.7, which undercuts the ‘speed kills’ message the government has pushed for so long.When I was younger I assumed Germany’s autobahns were some sort of special road, like a big, wide, smooth racetrack that made the higher speeds safer. But when I travelled there and drove on them I realised they were almost identical to Australian highways. The key difference, as far as I can tell, is all the unrestricted stretches of autobahn have some sort of guardrail or fencing on both sides of the road, whereas there are still large sections of Australian highways where there are none.But overall the standard of Australian freeways have improved enormously over the past 51 years. When I was a kid the M1 passed through dozens of small towns and had long stretches of two-lane blacktop. Nowadays it’s almost entirely dual-carriageway from Melbourne to Brisbane with almost every town except Albury and Coffs Harbour bypassed. The road is wider, smoother and safer than it has ever been and coupled with the safer cars, I believe it’s time to look at higher freeway speed limits, that would arguably make long distance travel in Australia safer.I’m not suggesting for a moment we follow Germany’s lead and go as fast as we want, I believe Germany has a unique cultural background that has allowed the unrestricted autobahns to survive and thrive. Namely, the Germans have excellent lane discipline, which is something we in Australia simply do not have — but that’s a column for another day.Instead, I believe Australian governments should seriously consider 130km/h freeway speed limits on sections they deem safe to do so. Frankly, between Sydney and Brisbane that’s the vast majority of the drive, but there are still some sections between Sydney and Melbourne that should probably stay 110km/h.A 130km/h would bring us into line with dozens of countries around the world. Much of Europe has a 130km/h cap on their freeways and France has the sensible idea of dropping the limit to 110km/h in the rain - which is an idea I'd 100 per cent support here.Increasing the limit to 130km/h gets you an extra 20km down the road each hour, so over the course of a trip between Sydney and Brisbane or Sydney and Melbourne you’d save over one hour of driving time. That may not sound like a lot, but cutting down these long drivers would help reduce driver fatigue and that would actually help make them safe.Of course, most road safety campaigners will say this is a dangerous suggestion and will lead to more deaths, but the statistics and my own experience of driving in other countries suggests that’s simply not the case. I don’t believe this is the work of a moment and there would need to be some robust public debate, but the time has come to accelerate out of our 1970s mindset and drive into a safer, faster future.

While Toyota in Australia is yet to spill much in the way of detail, credible and growing reports are pointing to a new HiLux arriving in the second half of this year, as the Japanese giant fights back against the waves of new dual-cab utes from other brands that have either just arrived or that are coming soon.

The Chinese car industry has already risen to become one of Australia’s leading sources of new vehicles. MG and GWM are inside the top 10 best-sellers, while others including BYD, LDV and Chery are rising fast. And yet none of them have unlocked the secret that could give them the boost they will need to unseat the likes of Toyota, Ford, Mazda and Kia at the top of the sales charts.I’m referring to a local ride and handling program, an engineering undertaking that focuses on tailoring the driving experience of a new model to the unique road conditions Australia has.This is why the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon were so popular for decades, because they were ideally suited to our road surfaces and driving preferences. But for evidence why one, some or all of the new Chinese brands need to invest in a local engineering program, look no further than the rise and rise of Kia and the reinvention of Hyundai.These two South Korean brands were known for selling ‘good value’ cars just over a decade ago, which was merely a polite way of saying they sold cheap cars. But then in 2010 Hyundai invested in doing an intensive ride and handling program on the cars it sold here, with Kia following shortly after.While Hyundai was already selling a lot of cars by that stage, just like MG, GWM and BYD already are, taking the resources and investing in what could be considered a ‘luxury’ like ride and handling proved to be a decisive factor in the brand’s image change.For Kia, the impact was even greater, as it meant critical acclaim for its cars, which suddenly became class-leading dynamically in many cases and that coincided with the start of its surge up the sales charts (although this was also significantly impacted by its seven-year warranty, to be fair).Personally, I’m surprised none of the Chinese brands have tried yet. Yes, it would be expensive, labour-intensive and add to production complexity, but none of these should be insurmountable obstacles for what are extremely large car companies (in many cases, state-owned).Spending the money fine-tuning chassis for Australia’s often inconsistent roads would be the icing on the cake for many of these brands, which already offer good value and well-designed models. As it currently stands, at least in my personal experience, too many Chinese cars are let down by the driving dynamics. To be clear, I’m not suggesting an MG ZS or GWM Tank 300 needs to handle like a Porsche and ride like a Rolls-Royce. No, I just believe they can be better when it comes to absorbing bumps, turning into corners and feeling confident when driven down a wide-open Australian country road.As I’m sure the management at Hyundai and Kia can attest, good value will only get you so far with Australia’s more discerning buyers, so investing in how the car drives and performs on the road is crucial. Even Toyota acknowledged this, and while it didn’t tune locally, it did make a concerted effort to ditch its reputation for sensible but boring cars and instead make ones that are enjoyable to drive.The brand that takes the initiative first should gain the advantage too, if one of these still-relative newcomers suddenly earns more critical praise than the rest for driving dynamics then that will likely leave an impression with buyers. And then the rest could be forced to play catch up, so personally I’ll be watching with great interest to see who takes the plunge first and commits to tailoring its cars to suit the Australian market.

Christmas is a fading memory, the New Year’s hangovers have cleared and we’re still getting used to writing ‘2025’ so you know what that means?Hot takes time.Yes, it’s January and with a whole year of new cars ahead of us, I’m going to try and predict the future. But while these might meet the clickbait definition of a ‘hot take’ these aren’t just random thoughts, but rather these are five scenarios that I believe could play out in 2025 based on previous trends and the other available evidence.To be fair, I’m basing this at least in part to Toyota Australia boss Sean Hanley’s own prediction that he believes the RAV4 can leapfrog the Ford Ranger into first place. I agree with him that the Ranger will need to work hard to stay at the top of the charts, with its gap to the RAV4 less than 4000 sales in 2024.The Ranger will be entering its fourth year on sale, which means it no longer feels ‘new’ but is also too early for a mid-life upgrade, so it will need to rely on new additions like the Super Duty and plug-in hybrid to keep its interest high.The latter is really the key for Ford, with the Ranger PHEV having to face a direct rival in the form of the BYD Shark 6 - which wasn’t on the horizon when Ford announced its plug-in back in 2023.Meanwhile, the RAV4 remains beloved by SUV buyers, despite its many rivals, and Toyota is (reportedly) carrying over a healthy order bank that should maintain its steady sales pace.Whatever happens, it should be a close finish in the sales race.It’s safe to say Kia has copped some flak for the styling of its Tasman ute, which has raised concerns over its sales potential. But, personally, I think it will be a success story for Kia even if it doesn’t achieve the headline-grabbing sales figures the brand is hoping for.Kia’s goal to sell more than 20,000 Tasmans per year is an ambitious target, even if the styling had been universally praised, given the strength of the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux. But the truth is looks are subjective and the Tasman’s ultimate sales potential will come down to pricing and specifications. If Kia can give ute buyers a good value proposition, then undoubtedly many will jump aboard, regardless of what anyone says about the styling.Fleet operators who don’t care about subjective elements like style will likely be wooed by the expected five-star ANCAP rating and Kia’s reputation for reliability.Bottom line, even if Kia sells half of its expected numbers, adding 10,000 Tasmans to Kia’s tally is all incremental growth for a brand that has never previously offered a ute - and that will make it a big success.One of the key takeaways from the 2024 sales was the huge growth of hybrids (HEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) compared to the stalled sales of electric vehicles (EVs). Sales of pure electric models were only up 4.7 per cent after growing more than 160 per cent in 2023.That’s an enormous change of fortunes for EVs, which have always largely been underpinned by Tesla, which had a down year in 2024. Whether Tesla can rebound is one major question, with its sales down by more than 16,000 sales, but other brands will need to start selling more of their EVs if the market is to accelerate its growth again.It appears as though the market for EVs has largely been catered to, with a huge variety of makes and models across the spectrum of size and price, so there’s no longer any major barriers for EVs apart from consumer demand.Australians seem unconvinced by EVs in the broad sense, preferring dual-cab utes and mid-size SUVs with hybrid engines, and it seems unlikely to change in the short-term so I wouldn’t be betting on a big turnaround for electric sales in 2025.NVES, or the New Vehicle Efficiency Standards, grabbed plenty of headlines in 2024 as the car industry pushed back on long-overdue emissions regulations like kids not wanting to eat their vegetables. But despite the kicking and screaming from certain members of industry, NVES officially began on January 1 and the world hasn’t stopped turning.Inevitably there will be change thanks to NVES, with car brands needing to introduce more fuel-efficient vehicles or face financial penalties, however the government has effectively given the industry three years to sort itself out. Any brand above the limit in 2025 has until the end of 2027 to generate (or buy from a rival brand) ‘credits’ to offset their less-efficient models.In other words, expect ‘situation normal’ in 2025 with all the usual models you find in dealerships, albeit with a ramp up of more hybrids and PHEVs like we’ve begun to see in the last 18 months.Normally you’d expect the arrival of two big name models, which nearly double the options for buyers, to result in a sales boom for a particular market. And yet, despite the introduction of the Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra, sales of ‘$100k plus utes’ (otherwise known as the US-style pick-ups) were up just a marginal 2.4 per cent in 2024.The segment still sold more than 10,000 units in 2024, which is an impressive number when you consider these are expensive and niche vehicles, but the arrival of the Ford and Toyota should have been a boost. They certainly helped offset the sales decline of the Ram 1500, which dropped as the current V8-powered model entered run-out, but it speaks to the limitations of the market.With the arrival of the new six-cylinder Ram 1500 to go along with the F-150 and Tundra, it’s hard to see the total volume of $100k plus utes getting much higher than 10,000 per year.

This year, South Australia activated its mobile phone detection cameras. In a three-month grace period before fines kicked off, 68,000 drivers had been snapped using their phones while on the move.Other states where these cameras already exist have resulted in tens of thousands of fines sent out for the same thing — which is disappointing. Using mobile phones behind the wheel is distracting, and we should really know better.But what about the other (increasingly) giant distractions in new cars: multimedia touchscreens? The limitation on using a mobile phone while driving is justified, but why do automotive multimedia systems get a pass? Just because they’re part of the car?Right now, the restrictions on phone use while driving are increasing, inverse to the increasing encouragement to interact with giant touchscreen devices attached to car dashes.It seems counterintuitive, given the proliferation of multimedia systems, that new drivers are starting to be able to afford cars with increasingly complex menus and functions accessible via a screen.Those learning to drive or those on provisional licences aren’t able to touch their phone (or even use via voice control function) at all in most cases while driving, but a 12.0-inch touchscreen mounted to the dash that runs everything in the car is fine?Again, this isn’t a suggestion we should be using our phones while driving — quite the opposite — but consider how familiar you are with your phone. If you’re anything like me (admittedly a millennial working in media), you might have your phone in your hand at least once every half hour, every day, and it probably doesn’t take you a lot of brain power to navigate its menus or apps.But can you say the same about the multimedia system in your car? Car reviewers (hello) drive plenty of different cars with different systems, and while we might not get the chance to become fluent in each and every multimedia system’s layout, we can certainly see that not all of them are as intuitive as an iPhone or Android phone.So why is it okay for drivers, especially new drivers, to have full access to these while navigating a rural back-road at 80km/h or in peak-hour traffic with cars unexpectedly braking regularly?Worse is that many brands are increasingly making those screens a necessity for functions like climate control and driving settings.But not every manufacturer has fallen into this bad habit.Some of the most popular brands in Australia — Toyota, Mazda, Kia and Hyundai — are keeping buttons alive with some even going a step further.Get into pretty much any new Hyundai or Kia and you’ll find there are still buttons galore, particularly physical climate controls.And while phone mirroring goes some way to simplifying multimedia operations, Toyota and Mazda apply limitations (as some other brands do) while a car is moving.Toyota’s menu options are limited unless the vehicle is in park, encouraging drivers to pull over to do anything particularly complex. Connecting a phone, for example often requires one to pull over.Mazda, on the other hand, completely deactivates the touchscreen unless the car is parked, requiring drivers to use the physical wheel or knob (the Commander control) in the centre console.It means there’s no leaning over and needing to be accurate with finger taps on a screen, rather the system can be navigated quite easily. It was once also a BMW staple, but no longer.Some brands are holding onto the convenience of buttons as others lean on screens, regulations may soon force a return to the physical controls that were once ubiquitous.Earlier in 2024, Euro NCAP announced it will require manufacturers to have physical controls for the horn, indicators, windscreen wipers, hazard lights and a call button for SOS.ANCAP here in Australia will follow on, with CEO Carla Hoorweg previously telling CarsGuide, the shifting of functions to touchscreens increases the risk of vehicle crashes on the road."We know driver distraction is a growing factor in road crashes, so it is important that certain in-vehicle controls are easily accessible by the driver and don't complicate the driving task or contribute to in-car distraction or inattention," she said."Physical buttons or stalks to operate these key vehicle controls will be encouraged through scoring, with manufacturers awarded points for the prioritisation of physical controls."The increase in screen functionality has been seen as a ‘premium’ design style, it’s not an opinion shared by every top-end manufacturer.In early 2024, Aston Martin Director of Design Miles Nurnberger told CarsGuide the need to create an actually functional interior overrides the desire to create a ‘clean’ look.He emphasised the balance between style and function when it comes to premium products, and seems to see screen functions as somewhat of an easy ‘trap’ to fall into for designers.“I might be able to make something seemingly more efficient by burying everything in a screen, but it doesn't talk to the real user experience,” he said, referring to the button-laden interior of the new Vantage.“You look at the best experience, the best user solution. It might be physical, it's tactile. I can do that with my thumb. I don't take my eyes off the road. I'm a better driver for it. You know that that's the mentality that led us to where we are.”Not everyone is aiming to be ‘a better driver’ to the extent that some behind the wheel of a Vantage might be, it certainly can’t hurt for everyone on the road to have a more intuitive and safer experience behind the wheel.Hopefully the distractions of car touchscreens doesn’t become a great enough problem to require similar rules to mobile phone use.

Cars have come a long way in the last few years. Many features once considered high-tech or luxury in the not-so-distant past (take autonomous emergency braking for example) are now standard, offering improved convenience, functionality and, most importantly, safety.