Australia isn’t ready for EVs, says Suzuki boss

Many Australians – particularly those in regional areas – simply aren’t ready for electric vehicles (EVs), argues the boss of Suzuki Auto Co, the Japanese brand’s distributor in Queensland and northern New South Wales.

“I just don’t think the Australian market wants them [EVs],” Suzuki Queensland general manager Paul Dillon told CarExpert.

“Whilst the government wants everybody to have them, does everybody want to have one?”

He argued EVs and emissions in general are “not a big concern for people in Australia, otherwise the number one selling car in Australia wouldn’t be a three-ton 4×4 pickup”.

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Despite this, Suzuki is introducing an EV to Australia – the eVitara, which is due to arrive in the first quarter of 2026.

Suzuki Queensland expects to offer it too, even if it cites a lack of enthusiasm from dealers in the Sunshine State.

“[It] certainly is the intention [to offer the eVitara]. We’re still waiting on final numbers from Japan,” he said.

“At the very least we’ve got pilot vehicles coming, and it’s certainly our intention assuming the numbers from Japan stack up.”

Suzuki dealers will have charging facilities, but that’s because generally Suzuki dealers are part of a multi-franchise operation. Therefore, Suzuki vehicles are typically sold alongside vehicles from other brands that do offer EVs.

Mr Dillon doesn’t expect strong demand in regional areas within the Sunshine State because of the long distances many vehicle owners drive.

“I don’t know if you’ve been to North Queensland, but if you get up there nobody too much is interested at all [in EVs],” said Mr Dillon.

“If your kids play sports and you live in Cairns, at any sort of level, they might be playing a team in Townsville or Charters Towers, somewhere like that.

“For their Saturday sport, you’ve got to think Friday night ‘Have I got enough charge to get to Townsville?’ It’s three hundred and something kilometres – and then get back.

“’Do I need to book to drive to Townsville, book accommodation, stay overnight, drive back the next day?’ So your Saturday sport then becomes a weekend.”

When asked whether this specific regional example applies to customers in cities like Brisbane, Mr Dillon said: “There’s still a lot of people down here, like a lot of our dealers that we talk to, that won’t trade an electric car.”

And he says Suzuki buyers “aren’t really early-adopter kind of [buyers]”.

“We haven’t done direct surveys [about EV enthusiasm] or anything like that, but I think you’ll find Suzuki customers generally speaking aren’t cutting-edge,” he said.

He argued that EVs make more sense as urban runabouts.

“If you’re going to have an electric car, is a city car a better option rather than trying to hope that it’s going to be somebody’s everyday car,” he said.

“If you take away the goal of trying to achieve 1000km, if you’re only going to use this car in the city, you’d only need to have a range of, whatever the number is, 200km or something.

“If you can make that more affordable for that purpose, to me that probably is a more sensible discussion on electric cars than trying to think everybody’s going to have an electric car for every use.”

Nevertheless, Suzuki Queensland is likely to offer an EV soon, though a full hybrid isn’t on the table as the distributor has ruled out offering the Vitara Hybrid that will be released in other states in the first quarter of 2026.

“We’re certainly not at the leading edge of [hybrid] technology either,” he said.

Suzuki launched its first mild-hybrid model in Australia in 2024 with the Swift, but it has never offered a full hybrid in this country despite such a powertrain being available for a few years now in markets such as Europe.

Still, Suzuki has been slower to embrace electrification than many rivals.

“Suzuki is that kind of brand that they will test and test and test until they know people aren’t going to have problems with their vehicles. They’re super conservative in that,” said Mr Dillon.

“They want to make sure customers have a good experience when they buy a Suzuki product. They don’t want to bring a product to market that’s maybe got some question marks about reliability.

“Suzuki’s more inclined to go, ‘How can we make this car as efficient as possible?’ And weight is… if you follow Formula 1, saving an ounce here might mean a kilometre an hour down the straight or something like that. The less weight you’ve got, the less mass you’ve got to push, the less energy you need to use to push that mass.”

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