CHINESE car-makers are turning attention to Australia’s fleet sector, with Chinese brands now poised to boost their visibility to corporates and governments.

Turning to the fleet business is not simply about winning sales. The majority of products from the Chinese makers are battery electric vehicles (BEVs) that attract positive credits for the new vehicle efficiency standards (NVES); directly benefit BEV buyers using novated leasing by negating FBT (with conditions).

It also dovetails with the low or zero-emission transport drive of Australian businesses.Going electric for zero transport emissions is a big flag waving exercise for corporations and one reflected in today’s supportive community.

Electric vehicles – BEVs, hybrids and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) – represented about 13 per cent of new-vehicle sales in 2025, meaning Australian motorists bought about 157,000 electrified vehicles in that year.

In January, the combined business, government and rental buyers represented 48 per cent of the total monthly vehicle (passenger, SUV and light commercial) sales, with private buyers taking up the remaining 52 per cent.

In the 12 months of 2025, the three divisions – business, government and rental – bought just under 564,000 vehicles, representing 48 per cent of the 1.165 million non-heavy vehicles sold.

The CEO of the National Automotive Leasing and Salary Packaging Association (NALSPA), Rohan Martin, said more than half of all EV sales are through novated leasing.

Rohan Martin

“This channel has proven highly effective in converting lifetime running and maintenance savings into immediate cash-flow relief for working households, particularly in outer-metro communities where households generally travel more kms,” he said in a statement.

“The policy is also good for the hip pocket during huge cost of living pressures, bringing down the cost to own and operate a car.” 

He said that NALSPA analysis showed EVs deployed through the electric-car discount, which gave FBT benefits to buyers of BEVs, were responsible for reducing emissions by about 160,000–200,000 tonnes of CO2-e each year.

“The growth in EV adoption is now flowing through to measurable emissions outcomes in the transport sector,” he said.“That benefit compounds each year as fleet turnover continues.”

But he said that despite all the air-quality promise of EVs, Australia still needed to accelerate EV uptake to meet its 2030 and 2035 targets.

“International experience shows that withdrawing demand-side support too early leads to sharp falls in sales,” he said.

“If we are serious about transport decarbonisation — and about cost-of-living relief for working Australians — holding steady settings that are demonstrably working is the only course.”

A spokesman for BYD, as reported by the Australian Financial Review (AFR), said the opportunity in the fleet market was “significant and largely unfulfilled”. 

BYD has about 10 per cent of its sales to fleets but aims to double that in 2026. It recently signed a fleet purchase for its PHEV ute model with construction company – and Chinese owned – John Holland.

“We are still in start-up mode operationally,” the BYD spokesman said in the AFR interview.

“That’s why it has taken until recently to establish a dedicated fleet operations team within our local headquarters that’s proactive in the market, supported by a growing number of BYD dealers who are also thinking about fleet opportunities.”

The AFR also said Chery has announced that the NSW Police would buy two of its SUVs as patrol cars.

Roy Munoz

Chery’s sub-brand Omoda Jaecoo now has a 10 per cent national fleet discount and an eight-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty. By comparison, Toyota has a five-year, 160,000 kilometre warranty.

“Fleets are certainly something that we want to play in our mix, which are still under 10 per cent of our overall deliveries,” said Omoda Jaecoo’s local chief commercial officer, Roy Munoz in the AFR interview.

Mr Munoz said the company now aims to grow fleets to 15 to 20 per cent of its total sales volume in Australia.

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries reports that Chery sold 75 per cent of its 34,889 units sales in 2025 to private buyers. The figure for BYD was 83 per cent.

Ford’s percentage to private buyers was only 29 per cent with the remainder being to fleets, while Toyota sold 44 per cent to private buyers.

Cox Automotive Australia and New Zealand corporate affairs manager and analyst Mike Costello said that to maintain their sales growth, Chinese manufacturers would have to grow their share of fleet sales and would likely use the same methods to fleets as they have done in  the private market – cheaper vehicles.

Mike Costello

“Whether it’s big delivery fleets, government organisations, rental organisations or corporates, all of these organisations are going to start to find that the Chinese brands will be chasing their business,” Mr Costello told AFR.

He said prospective fleet customers would have questions around the residual values and reliability of these Chinese brands, which he said remained relatively untested on the market over the long term.

There is another snag: Government agencies and departments are likely to prove the most challenging market to crack, given persistent surveillance concerns about Chinese vehicles.

“It is very much a challenge for them to break into that space,” Mr Costello said.

“If a government organisation decides to go down that path, there will certainly be some people asking questions about what the ramifications are.”