As cars get bigger, autobeasity will be a taxing problem
Our resident Stats Guy considers what keeps Australia’s urban planners up at night.
The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) publishes a sort of census of the road vehicles registered in Australia.
Let’s find out what we are driving.
It’s no surprise to see Tasmania has the most vehicles registered per head of population. There is no rail-based public transport in Tasmania anymore. Busses and cars rule supreme.
Per capita, Tasmanians own 17 per cent more cars than the national average. At the other extreme we see people in the NT and ACT drive fewer vehicles – albeit for different reasons. Low incomes in the remote regions of the NT rule out excessive car ownership.
The total number of cars far up north might be a bit higher due to unregistered rust buckets or paddock bashers. In the ACT, young workers can get around without a car due to a well-established public transport network.
The age of the average vehicle varies widely across states. The public service class in Canberra drives cars that are on average only 10.4 years old, while Tasmanian cars are aged 13.5 years. Victoria is perfectly average in both rankings – should “the average state” be on licence plates soon?
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the most sold vehicle was always a Ford Falcon or a Holden Commodore. These, of course, were Australian-made vehicles. Since the range of cars produced in Australia was relatively small (when compared to the ever-increasing competition from low-cost Asian car manufacturers) the most sold cars recorded insanely high sales numbers.
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In 1998 Holden sold over 103,000 Commodores. This one model made up a massive 12.8 per cent of all car sales that year. Today the best-selling model only makes up around 5 per cent of all sales.
Despite having lost Australian-made cars, we have more choice than ever when we pick our ride.
The type of car that Australians choose to drive has changed dramatically over the past few decades. The sedans of yesteryear have made room for SUVs and trucks. What led to this change?
The Australian ute (a Ford or Holden sedan where the back half of the car could be turned into a bed) was perfect for a number of uses. It was the perfect tradie car. It was cheaper than a truck, fun to drive and had a decent-sized bed to carry equipment.
Since the ute was a uniquely Australian phenomenon, as local car manufacturing closed down, we lost the ute. If you want a bed to throw stuff in, you now need to buy a truck. We see this reflected in nationwide sales figures.
Since 2017 (just when we had lost our Holden and Ford factories) big trucks like the Toyota HiLux or the Ford Ranger became our most sold cars.
The loss of the ute isn’t enough of an explanation for this change in buying behaviour. I suspect a bit of an arms race has taken place. We first turned our backs on sedans and purchased SUVs.
This made people in smaller cars feel less safe on the road. They purchased bigger cars to feel safer. Also, as Australia ages, some older people stated they preferred to sit higher up to improve their view. This eventually escalated to people who are not tradies, who don’t tow trailers, who only transport stuff in their vehicle that would easily fit into a sedan, buying a HiLux or a Ranger.
This obsession with bigger cars is often referred to as ‘autobeasity’.
Indeed, increasing the number of large cars on our roads leads to problems. These cars are not only longer but also wider, heavier, and higher.
Since wide cars drive on the same narrow roads, cyclists can often not be overtaken with the adequate safety distance. In a collision with a pedestrian, the victim can’t roll over the hood of the car anymore and gets run over instead. Small kids close to the hood can’t be seen at all. Bigger cars might be safer for the driver but are less safe for people outside the car.
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As always, regulation will follow innovation, and we will eventually see pedestrian safety taken into account when allowing certain cars on the road or when setting insurance premiums.
How should councils deal with big cars that don’t fit into regular parking spots? While a sedan like a VW Passat has a width of up to 1850mm, a Ford Ranger can be as wide as 2038mm. A car that was purchased in a perfectly legal way can’t be classified as parking illegally in a standard parking spot, can it? A car parked onto a bike path always must be considered as parked illegally. Schrödinger’s car!
However a council decides to handle this situation, somebody will be sour. Whether you like or dislike big cars, as long as they are legal the owner has all the right to use this vehicle.
In Europe, where admittedly cities tend to have narrower roads than in Australia, councils have already reacted to bigger cars by factoring weight, size, and vehicle type into their parking fees. The easiest way to discourage big cars will be higher taxes and higher insurance premiums – both developments I would consider as likely in the future.
Looking at the most common brands on the road, it’s clear that Toyota remains the king of the road. We will soon have the whole top 10 dominated by Asian brands as legacy Australian-made Holden and Ford models are taken off the road and these brands slide down the rankings. Other Asian brands competing on price like MG will climb up the ladder.
The electric vehicle segment has doubled two years in a row. Tesla is the undisputed EV champion – for now. BYD’s entry into the Australian market is faster than the rise of Tesla was. In a few years BYD might be able to overtake Tesla.
Councils like that more vehicles are electric. Cars without exhausts make for higher air quality. However, urban planners around the world are not fantasising about EVs but a scenario where all cars are self-driving and not individually owned.
Sure, some tradies would still have their own vehicles to avoid having to load and unload tools daily, but most vehicles would essentially be self-driving Ubers. Just a quick trip? A smaller and cheaper car will do. Big trip to Bunnings to grab dozens of sandbags? A huge truck will come.
The reason urban planners love this idea is that currently even on the busiest of days during rush hour no more than 10 per cent of all cars would be in motion. Currently, your car is parked for around 95 per cent of the year. If we did away with individual ownership, we could move everyone around and could easily get away with less than 30 per cent of the current vehicle fleet.
Urban planners love imagining what could be done with all these newly available parking spaces.
Will this future ever emerge? I have my doubts. Why would the automotive industry want to reduce its output by such a high percentage?
A transport platform like Uber would like it though, as they would be paid handsomely to manage the network while the annoying part of owning the fleet could be played by local actors.
For now, urban planners certainly face the opposite problem: How do we tackle more and bigger cars on the road?
Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His podcast, Demographics Decoded, explores the world through the demographic lens. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook, LinkedIn for daily data insights in short format.
