Road
Chapter 6
This chapter provides the following information on Australian roads: road distances, road length in kilometres, licence registration transactions over different vehicle types, electric vehicles attributes and registration transactions.
A variety of sources are used for this data, including data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), VFACTS, BITRE estimates and State and Territory Governments.
- Australia’s total estimated paved road length was 427,000 kilometres in 2022.
- An estimated 254 billion vehicle kilometres were travelled on Australia's roads in 2022-23.
- In 2022-23, Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) comprised 55% of new motor vehicle sales (excluding motor cycles) compared with only 28% 10 years earlier.
- In 2022, there were 33 000 electric vehicle sales in Australia, up from 17 000 the previous year.
Figure 1 Map of national road network
Figure 1 shows Australia’s national road network. The lines and dots shown here are the roads and town points that were open for traffic at December 2021.
Figure 2 Sales of electric vehicles
Figure 2 shows the sale of registered battery electric vehicles and Plug-in Hybrids over time. Fully battery electric vehicles sales increased by 93 per cent between 2021 and 2022.