The numbers at a glance
Analysis based on AutoFlip marketplace data for January to August in each year from 2022 to 2026. The figures describe vehicles represented within AutoFlip's dataset and should not be read as the fuel mix of the Australian used-car market as a whole. 2026 figures are year to date through August.
How AutoFlip’s fuel mix has changed
Share of AutoFlip vehicles from January to August each year.
Source/methodology: AutoFlip first-party marketplace data. Fuel-type shares are calculated using the total number of vehicles recorded as petrol, diesel, hybrid and EV between January and August of each year from 2022 to 2026. The number of vehicles in each fuel category is divided by the total number of vehicles recorded during the corresponding period to calculate its share. This chart reflects activity on the AutoFlip marketplace and is not representative of the Australian used-car market as a whole.
Has diesel lost some of its old territory?
Diesel has not disappeared from AutoFlip, but compared with four years ago, it’s taking up noticeably less room.
Across January to August 2022, diesel made up around 31.7% of vehicles in our marketplace data. By the same period in 2026, that figure had slipped to 22.9%, a fall of roughly 8.8 percentage points.
The direction has been fairly clear:
- 2022: 31.7%
- 2023: 27.8%
- 2024: 27.4%
- 2025: 23.5%
- 2026: 22.9%
For us, that longer view is more revealing than any single-year swing. The marketplace is still seeing plenty of diesel vehicles, but they’re now competing for space in a fuel mix that is becoming broader.
Diesel’s share of AutoFlip vehicles
January–August comparison, 2022 to 2026
Source/methodology: AutoFlip first-party marketplace data. Diesel share is calculated from vehicles recorded between January and August of each year from 2022 to 2026. This chart reflects activity on the AutoFlip marketplace and is not representative of the Australian used-car market as a whole.
Electrified cars are no longer background noise
For years, hybrids and EVs barely registered in our inventory. In 2026, they finally started making some serious waves.
Across January to August 2022, hybrid and electric vehicles together accounted for roughly 1.7% of vehicles in our marketplace data. That share rose and fell over the next few years, reaching 2.76% in 2023, 2.39% in 2024 and 4.9% in 2025.
Then came 2026.
The combined hybrid and EV share jumped to 6.27%, roughly three times the share seen in 2022. Of course, six per cent is not a changing of the guard. But compared with where our marketplace started four years ago, it’s no longer a rounding error either.
What stands out to us is the speed of the latest move. Electrified vehicles spent several years hovering around a small share of our listings before breaking noticeably higher this year.
The electrified share of AutoFlip vehicles
January–August comparison, 2022 to 2026
Source/methodology: AutoFlip first-party marketplace data. Combined hybrid + EV share is calculated from vehicles recorded between January and August of each year from 2022 to 2026. This chart reflects activity on the AutoFlip marketplace and is not representative of the Australian used-car market as a whole.
Hybrids are doing the quiet heavy lifting
The rise in electrified vehicles on AutoFlip is not being split evenly.
YTD, hybrids accounted for 3.97% of vehicles in our data, compared with 2.3% for pure EVs. Put another way, based on those shares, roughly 7 in every 10 electric vehicles appearing in the AutoFlip mix were hybrids.
| Fuel type | Share of AutoFlip vehicles, Jan-Aug 2026 |
|---|---|
| Hybrid | 3.97% |
| EV | 2.3% |
| Combined | 6.27% |
We believe this is because hybrids solve one of the biggest behavioural hurdles attached to electrification: they ask drivers to change less.
- No charging routine required. Conventional hybrids recharge through the vehicle itself, allowing drivers to reduce fuel use without relying on home or public charging.
- Used-market demand is already visible. AADA and AutoGrab recorded 28,395 used hybrid sales between January and April 2026 among 2021-25 model-year vehicles. Hybrid supply tightened over the period, while later AADA analysis identified hybrids as the most pricing-resilient fuel type in the first half of 2026.
- More hybrids are entering the future used-car pipeline. Australians purchased 199,133 new hybrids in 2025, up 15.3% year on year. Those vehicles will filter into the second-hand market over time, increasing the pool available to future buyers.
So electrification within the market is accelerating, but the used market appears to be moving through the middle before it moves all the way across.
EVs have barely had time to get old
One of the easiest mistakes in used-car analysis is treating every fuel type as though it represents the same kind of vehicle.
But put an average EV beside an average petrol or diesel vehicle in our used car sales data and you’re not really comparing like with like. They’re different generations of used cars.
| Fuel type | Average model year | Average odometer |
|---|---|---|
| EV | 2022 | ~41,800 km |
| Hybrid | 2018 | ~61,100 km |
| Diesel | 2016 | ~152,200 km |
| Petrol | 2015 | ~139,200 km |
The average EV in our dataset is roughly seven model years newer than petrol and six years newer than diesel. It has also travelled around 110,000 fewer kilometres than the average diesel. Those gaps are too large to treat as trivia.
Fuel type is only part of the comparison
Used EVs are often put head-to-head with petrol and diesel vehicles when discussing demand, resale values or depreciation. However, we want to highlight an important complication: the vehicles themselves are at very different stages of their lives.
- Newer cars generally enter the market with different price expectations. Age, kilometres, condition and remaining warranty can all influence what buyers are willing to pay alongside the badge on the boot.
- Lower EV kilometres don’t necessarily mean EV owners drive less. The EVs in our dataset simply haven’t had as many years to accumulate distance.
- There is far less genuinely old EV stock to compare. Australia has decades of ageing petrol and diesel vehicles circulating through the second-hand market. EVs have not yet built the same long tail.
That last point matters because some of the commentary around used EVs can get ahead of itself. Sweeping claims about the used-EV market are simply premature.
We already know activity is increasing. AADA reported used EV sales rising 54.6% year on year in the first half of 2026, even while overall used-vehicle sales declined.
But higher sales do not mean the category has reached maturity.
The harder EV test is still coming
Today, much of the EV stock reaching AutoFlip is relatively young and low-kilometre. Over the coming years, we predict that more of the EVs sold during Australia’s recent adoption surge will begin entering their second and third ownership cycles.
That’s when the market gets more interesting.
What happens when EV buyers are choosing between vehicles with 100,000-plus kilometres, ageing batteries and eight or ten years behind them, rather than the relatively fresh examples common today?
That next wave should give the industry a clearer view of how EVs perform as genuinely older used cars.
For now, our data points to a simpler conclusion:
The used-EV market is growing, but it has barely reached middle age. Until it does, direct comparisons with Australia’s much older petrol and diesel stock need to be made with a little more care.
Same used market, very different vehicles
Average model year and average kilometres by fuel type in AutoFlip data
Average model year
Average kilometres travelled
Is Australia’s used car market cooling?
Australia recorded 1.3 million used-vehicle sales in the first half of 2026, down 6.6% from the same period in 2025. Supply was building, selling times were stretching and discounting became more common. By June, more than half of 1 to 5-year-old vehicles sold had been reduced from their asking price.
That certainly qualifies as a cooler market. But cooler does not mean comatose.
What happened next?
- July: National used-car sales jumped 11.8% month on month to 240,311 vehicles.
- August: Sales rose another 1.3% to 243,514, marking a second consecutive monthly increase.
- Used EVs: August sales climbed 19.4% month on month.
July produced a particularly revealing contradiction. Listings rose faster than sales and average time to sell reached 52.1 days, the highest point of 2026 at that stage, even while transaction volumes surged. The market could be busy and slow at the same time.
Perhaps the market is not weak. Perhaps it is pickier.
More stock gives buyers room to compare. More choice gives them room to negotiate. And with pricing guides, reviews and market data now only a few taps away, buyers can research alternatives without ever contacting a seller. That easier access to information makes the market more transparent and buyers more selective.
Vehicles that once sold on the strength of simply being available now have to compete harder for attention. The Australian used-car market trends in 2026 therefore look less like one big slowdown and more like a market becoming increasingly selective about what it wants to buy.
One used-car market, several very different buyer pools
A diesel ute, a three-year-old EV and a hybrid SUV might all be “used cars”. From a selling perspective, that description is becoming less useful by the year.
As the fuel mix broadens, who wants the vehicle starts to matter almost as much as what the vehicle is. While hybrids are the standout electrified performer in the used market, that does not mean every electrified car has suddenly become hot property.
And it certainly does not mean diesel has become unwanted just because its share in the data has fallen.
Fuel type alone tells you very little about what a car will fetch
Used-car pricing has never been that simple. Two vehicles running on the same fuel can have very different buyer pools once you account for:
- Model and body style
- Age and kilometres
- Condition and specification
- Location
- Available supply
- How urgently different dealers need that stock
That last factor is easy to overlook.
A dealer who already has three similar diesel dual-cabs on the lot may value another one very differently from a buyer actively trying to fill that gap. The same applies to hybrids and EVs, where experience, local customer demand and appetite for newer powertrains can vary between dealers.
What the changing mix means on each side of the transaction
| For sellers | For dealers |
|---|---|
| A changing fuel mix means relying on yesterday’s assumptions about value is increasingly risky. |
Sourcing is becoming a multi-powertrain exercise rather than simply a petrol-versus-diesel decision. |
| A smaller category is not automatically a weaker one. The right buyer may value the vehicle highly. |
Age, kilometres and fuel type need to be read together. Our EV cohort, for example, looks very different from our diesel stock. |
| Exposure to multiple professional buyers can matter more as buyer appetite fragments. |
Emerging hybrid and EV stock creates opportunities, but only where it matches local demand and inventory strategy. |
This is one reason we think competition between buyers becomes more useful as the market becomes less uniform.
About the data
This analysis uses AutoFlip’s first-party marketplace data to examine how the fuel mix of vehicles represented on our platform has changed over time. It’s a window into what we are seeing at AutoFlip, not a census of every used vehicle changing hands in Australia.
For the fuel-share trends, we have compared January to August in each year from 2022 to 2026. That gives 2026 a like-for-like comparison period rather than putting eight months of activity beside complete calendar years.
There are plenty of sweeping predictions about what Australians will drive next. We would rather show what’s actually moving through our marketplace and let the numbers earn the headline.
Your car only needs one buyer. Having 1,250+ looking helps.
If there’s one lesson running through the data, it’s that the Australian used-car market isn’t cooling, but becoming less uniform.
A diesel ute can attract a very different crowd from a low-kilometre EV. A hybrid SUV may be exactly what one dealer is trying to source while another has enough of them already. So when it comes time to sell, one opinion on your car’s value is still just that: one opinion.
At AutoFlip, we put vehicles in front of a nationwide network of more than 1,250 licensed wholesale buyers, creating competition rather than leaving sellers to rely on the offer of a single dealer.
And we take care of much of the part people generally don’t enjoy:
- No fielding endless private-sale enquiries
- No parade of strangers organising inspections and test drives
- No haggling with every interested buyer
- Support from real people throughout the process
- Free vehicle collection once sold
- No consumer success fee unless the vehicle sells
Sell your car with AutoFlip and see what competing professional buyers are prepared to offer.
