Australian Motorcycle Market keeps the negative trend. Q1 2025 sales have been 18.613 (-9.3%) following the previous year 6.5% lost. Yamaha (-8%) is market leader, while the EV specialist VMoto reported a 66% sales lost.
Economic Outlook
Economic activity in Australia picked up in the final quarter of the year, with GDP growing by 0.6%, surpassing market expectations and marking the strongest performance since December 2022. There remain concerns around the tightness of the labour market, geopolitical risks and trade barriers; meaning the RBA will remain cautious on further easing of the cash rate.
Private demand contributed to GDP growth, through both household consumption (+0.2 ppt) and private investment (+0.1 ppt). This contrasts with the September quarter, where both channels were weak and did not contribute.
Looking ahead, global and domestic economies face challenges, particularly from new US tariffs and retaliatory actions.
Motorcycles Industry Trend and Perspectives
The Australian motorcycles industry is relatively small, with sales stable in the last decades around the 100.000 units and with moderate annual oscillations.
Recently the market (not including the powersport, but only 2-wheelers) hit a peak in the 2021 with 107.231 sales, but 2024 market was reported in a low tone with sales at 90.405 (-6.6%).
The start of 2025 was not much better and the downshift continued. Q1 sales have been 18.613 (-9.3%). In April the downshift continued and sales declined again (-12.1%) to end the first four months with cumulative sales at 24.733 (-9.5%) and dark perspectives.
Sales in the electric segment declined sharply (-60%) showing as there is a wide gap between customer demand and manufacturers offers in terms of power, technology, reliability.
Market Leaders and Performance
Looking at the single manufacturer, the leader is again Yamaha, although sales declined 4.9% from the correspondent period in the previous year.
This gave the opportunity to the first follower, Honda, to reduce the gap thanks to a mere 2.3% decline.
In third place the other Jap, Kawasaki, is up 3.5%, while the Austrian KTM surprisingly reported a positive +2.5% performance, while the 4th, Harley-Davidson, have lost moderately (-4.8%).
The local EV specialis, VMoto Soco dominates the scooter segment, although sales are sharply down (-66.5%).
