The CEO of Eagers Automotive has revealed that electric vehicle ownership is a “one-way street” for drivers down under as hardly any of them switch back to internal combustion once they’ve had a taste of what EVs bring to the table.

Keith Thornton, the head of the nation’s biggest car dealership network, made the comments at the company’s results briefing last week, during which it was announced that plug-in EVs have accounted for 25 per cent of the group’s sales over the last six months.

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The spike can be at least partly put down to Aussies making the switch amid a sharp rise in petrol and diesel prices caused by the Iran war, and Thornton said the remarkable leap makes it difficult to predict future demand.

“It’s a little bit hard to use what happened over March and April and the fuel crisis period when the Iran conflict first occurred as any sort of extrapolated demand, because it was so extraordinary. We’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.

“The one thing we have observed, though, is that the transition from a fully combustion-engine car to a full electric vehicle – and that transition might include a hybrid vehicle, a plug-in hybrid vehicle, and ultimately, a full battery-electric vehicle – is a one-way street.

“Once you take a big step change, like [what] has occurred in 2026, along that path towards a more plugged-in or lower-emission powertrain, people have sort of started the journey and it will only be a small fraction that come back the other way.”

Thornton said Eagers is well placed to keep riding the EV uptake wave down under thanks to its efforts to form bonds with Chinese manufacturers. However, he did point out one facet of the rapidly growing market that could act as something of a handbrake.

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“One of the drags on the opportunity – not on our performance, but on the opportunity – is at the moment, NEV [new energy vehicles] still has had an overweight percentage of sales through the Novated channels, and the Novated channels are less conducive to allowing trade-ins to be captured,” he said.

VFACTS figures showed a total of 108,577 new vehicles were delivered during July (including FCAI and Electric Vehicle Council figures), edging past the previous July record of 104,244 set in 2025 and following an all-time monthly sales record in June. It also marked the second consecutive month in which battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) accounted for more than one in every five new vehicles sold.