Desire for electric and hybrid vehicles accelerates

Those are the findings from Roy Morgan, who found a 4.7% and 1.6% rise in the number of people intending to buy either a hybrid or electric vehicle respectively, compared to the same time last year.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said environmentally-friendly vehicles are growing in popularity at the expense of petrol guzzlers. 

"Although electric and hybrid vehicles are still in their infancy in Australia, both engine types are becoming more and more attractive to people intending to buy a new car in the future. This comes at the expense of petrol vehicles, which continue to decrease in popularity," Ms Levine said.

"A year ago, 148,000 Australians were intending to buy a hybrid vehicle, and 50,000 were intending to buy an electric vehicle. This has grown to 188,000 and 63,000 respectively and, given the increasing focus on environment issues, we can expect those numbers to keep rising."

Among Australians who intend on purchasing a new car in the next four years, 12.7% said they would go for a hybrid car while 4.2% said they intended on buying an electric vehicle. 

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Of the Australians who said they would buy an environmentally-friendly car, 37.5% said they would go for a Tesla, followed by a Hyundai (20.4%), Toyota (19.6%), Kia (12.5%) and BMW (12.3%). 

Ms Levine said it would be encouraging for car brands to see 'green' cars becoming more popular.

"The electric car market is still evolving, with many manufacturers yet to release a fully electric vehicle. This data is particularly encouraging for brands such as Toyota and Kia - for despite them not having yet released electric models in Australia, future car intenders are considering those brands for their next purchase," Ms Levine said.

"Kia may well consider bringing forward the introduction of their e-Niro and E-soul electric vehicles to the Australian market on the back of such results."