Non-video story: https://thedriven.io/2026/09/16/australias-cheapest-new-car-...
TL;DR: AUD 19,900 driveway (means taxes, registration etc included), or about US$14k. The main limitation is the 220 km (135 mi) range, which is fine for a city runabout but not great for road tripping.
That's an insane price and the range is fine for the daily needs of the large majority of people.
€12k in France (where i am) can't get you any new car, even the cheapest ICE Dacia is more expensive than that now.
The BYD is sold in Europe but there is higher VAT and a special EU Chinese car import tax - so these cars are about 20k euro.
There is also the Renault Twingo which is in the same class.
I checked the Twingo and it is starting at €16k and an Opel Corsa (without any options) is more than €19k
The tax is only on electric cars, vehicles with a combustion engine are excempt - that's why you see all those ads for BYD Hybrids now.
Elsewhere in the thread you claim there are no BYD cars in the EU, yet here you're an expert on the taxes BYD pays in the EU.
Australia doesn’t tariff Chinese car imports, on account of no longer having any car industry of our own to defend.
That said we do still have a hefty “luxury car tax” for anything over $80k, which is a hangover from when there was an industry here. The government aren’t going to lift that any time soon.
Its current function is to select for expensive trucks over expensive sedans, because trucks are “commercial” and exempt, making our roads less safe overall. Thanks government.
So you are saying that there's a widespread problem with people looking to buy a car for $100k but realizing there's a $6k tax they go, "I can't afford that" and instead buy a unsafe truck?
Taxes change purchase behaviour. The luxury car tax is a tax on personal vehicles so they're saying its pushing people towards buying via business
Seems like the luxury tax is 33%..
It certainly forms part of the picture.
Another part of the picture is that you can more often get away with buying a truck “for business” if you’re a small business-person, regardless of whether it actually ends up being used for that.
And by ‘unsafe’ I mean for pedestrians and they contribute to the vehicle-size arms race on the roads, they’re generally very safe for the occupants.
$80k AUD isn’t far off from the American average car price, so I can see it being a reverse incentive for people at the boundary if the tax isn't graduated in.
200k in JPY is like minivan and entry level hybrid prices. Something must be broken about the Western economy.
Range isn't a big issue in recent generation BYD vehicles that support FLASH Charging in areas that have 1.5MW chargers.
I doubt a $15k econobox ev is going to support 1.5MW charging.
Also, I think you are underestimating the sheer size and desolate spreaded-outness of Australia.
For now, flash charging is in China, Europe, UK, and Malaysia (soon). The chargers actually have battery packs in them because the charging current is almost always too much to be supplied by the grid directly.
It’s pretty tiny too, so not a road trip car IMHO.
That said, coupled with home solar to power it, this is a very cheap way to get on the road and I will likely go this direction in future - one of these for the city and something a bit bigger/more rugged to go bush once in a while.
$20k for the car plus $5k for roof top solar, plus $500,000 for the house to put it on.
Or: a $2000 Corolla and the rental home you’re already in.
500k doesn't get you much house in Australia these days, try double that.
$500,000? That's just the price for the garage.
That's great if you already have a clean, high mileage Corolla or Accord, but good luck finding one for 2k
You’re worried I missed the target price for the car by a couple of grand.
But not that I was off on the price of a houses by a factor of three.
You can get a run down two bedroom weatherboard round the corner from my two bedroom rental unit for around the $1.2 million mark.
BARGAIN!
I’m not in a rental home, and wouldn’t be anyway.
I want solar and a battery (don’t have it yet, it’s on the list) to cut my energy bills and guard against power cuts anyway.
So neither of these things is an ‘extra’ expense for me getting a small EV.
There are a total of 5 corollas available in Australia for $2k or less. Each one is ratty, beat up and 19+ years old, I wouldn’t want to chance taking any of them on the freeway, and you’d still have to fuel them.
No one cares about you.
You’re good mate, you’re rich.
Choose a different car for under $5000 then.
It’ll still be cheaper than having to buy a new car, plus house, plus solar & battery.
Also won’t work for anyone living in a unit / flat / appartment, whether they rent or own.
> No one cares about you.
Then why respond to a post in which I say what I'm thinking about doing? You don't care.
> You’re good mate, you’re rich.
I'm not rich, I'm just a homeowner, 66% of the Australian public live in houses they own, so your cost-of-owning-a-house discussion points are irrelevant to most people.
> It’ll still be cheaper than having to buy a new car, plus house, plus solar & battery.
Which most people won't have to do, as they live in houses they have already bought, solar is subsidised, and is useful far beyond EV charging so a lot of people already have it. Plus maybe they can take advantage of the free electricity period tariffs on offer in a lot of states now. Makes this car very cheap for a huge number of people. And that's before we get into the possibilities of novated leasing with zero FBT on EVs.
> Choose a different car for under $5000 then.
No thanks, they're still all shitboxes at that price and they still need to be fuelled. Given that's probably in the range of $2-3k per year on average mileage and current fuel prices, and that I wouldn't expect a $5k car to last all that long, it'll be pretty quick to make up that price difference.
> Also won’t work for anyone living in a unit / flat / appartment, whether they rent or own.
Charging at public points, in car parks etc is still cheaper than petrol mate.
Seriously, why so weirdly bitter about this?
> Charging at public points, in car parks etc
No.
You can pry my turbo diesel work van from my cold dead hands.
That you need to fill up at Public points called "gas station".
Stop fetishizing a way to transfer energy to kinetic energy.
> a bit bigger/more rugged to go bush once in a while.
Depends whether you're taking the Birdsville track or the Bibbulmun track really.
The shorter one can be done a on a red postie bike, the longer one won't even need that :-)
Been thinking more along the lines of the Munda-biddy actually :)
But I haven’t got on my bike for a few years now because at the moment all my spare energy goes on managing our plot. There’s always something needs moving, sawing, building, repairing, digging… So I’ve gone from having a (pudgy) cyclist’s physique with very strong calves to more of a farmer’s build with bigger arm and shoulder muscles than I’ve ever had before and a big ‘ol belly.
But in all seriousness I also like to go remote once in a while and access national parks. I’m not going to be hooning it round destroying dunes, but getting to beautiful places like Cape Peron is tough without a the right vehicle.
I've been through the Bungles on a push bike - so that's a thing, but yeah, Cape Peron would be a hard slog without a boat or vehicle that can push across deep sand - water would be a tough carry.
> without the right vehicle
A loong time ago (late 1970s) I got to traverse the horizontal falls a couple of time in a home made sea kayak after being dropped off "nearby" (and later picked up again) by an old pearling lugger .. pretty low carbon effort that one, just a lot of paddling (and fishing, and digging for fresh water, and dodging the odd shark and salty croc).
Nice, I have great respect but also a level of “WTF” when encountering cyclists in the deep wilds, especially in the heat!
Passed an old guy on a pushbike with a trailer on the nullabor in 2010 and just thought “wow, that’s commitment”
I'd love a city run around car inclusive of all taxes for $15k or less.
I bought a 4 year old leaf with 25k on the clock in May for £7k ($10k). Get about 150 miles on a full charge. I’d rather a little more as I tend to do 90 a day, so if it doesn’t charge offpeak overnight for some reason I’m left with a manual recharge during the day. But I do a lot of miles (25k a year)
The main downside on long trips is the DC is chamedo, not standard ccs, so there are fewer locations and they are sometimes broken or full.