Our editorial team’s predictions for 2025 included a cooling of the electric vehicle (EV) market (check), new-car price cuts (check), and the rise of hybrids (check).
This time last year, we also tipped cheaper EVs (hello BYD Atto 1 for $23,990 plus on-roads – check) and said Toyota would confirm new sports cars (checkmate) … although we predicted it would lock in both a Celicaandan MR2 (close).
Looking back, we’re pretty chuffed.
What we didn’t predict was Full Self-Driving (supervised) arriving in Australia in 2025, nor did we expect to be seduced by a luxury Chinese people-mover and a Japanese electric supercar.
Here’s what raised eyebrows – for better or worse – for the CarExpert crew in 2025.
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Sean Lander: Mazda CX-60 G25’s pointless petrol power
I had a diesel Mazda CX-60 for a few months as a long-term vehicle and hopped straight out of that into the G25.
Why Mazda put a naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine into such a large SUV is beyond me.
Compared to the six-cylinder diesel, the fuel economy is poor, the engine feels gutless and the NVH is atrocious. The CX-60 is a great car, it just needs the right engine.
Marton Pettendy: Surprised at Kia’s surprise
The fact Kia appears surprised by slow Tasman sales is surprising in itself.
The Korean brand defended the Weird Harold-like front-end design of its first ute by describing it as deliberately different when the Tasman reveal in late 2024 was met with a collective gasp from the public and the wider automotive industry. Subsequently, it has said it won’t rush out an early facelift.
Kia has a long history of producing handsome models, dating back almost two decades to when it recruited Audi TT designer Peter Schreyer to lead its design team, and it knows design is the number-one automotive purchase consideration.
After all the customer design clinics, product planning meetings, local development focus and expensive pre-launch hype, it should also have known Aussie ute buyers want vehicles that look tough and capable, not like a science experiment.
So don’t be surprised if there is indeed an early facelift for the Tasman, which is otherwise a strong ute that ticks plenty of boxes including interior design, packaging, functionality and quality, as well as performance, refinement and technology.
William Stopford: Tesla’s Full Self-Driving and the Deepal E07
My two biggest surprises involve electric vehicles.
I was sceptical when Tesla said it would ditch radar and sensors in favour of its camera-only Tesla Vision setup. I was even more dubious of its so-called Full Self-Driving.
I still have some serious reservations about Tesla, but you can’t deny the company has plenty of talented engineers. After more than a week driving Teslas equipped with Full Self-Driving, I came away thoroughly impressed.
After all, like Autopilot, it’s still technically just a Level 2 autonomous driving system, so its name – even with the ‘Supervised’ suffix – seemed a bit over-egged.
Full Self-Driving isn’t perfect. It crossed an unbroken white line once, sometimes changed lanes too late, and on one occasion tried to send me up an off-ramp even though the navigation was set to have me continue along the motorway.
Nevertheless, those were a tiny handful of red crosses in a week of thousands of green ticks. The system adeptly handled everything from heavy traffic and roundabouts to tight streets.
It’s entirely possible that as this technology becomes more commonplace, people will become slavishly dependent on it and incapable of driving without it – like a student who just gets ChatGPT to write all their essays.
But at the very least, if the tech continues to advance, those of us who actually enjoy driving won’t be stuck behind hopelessly slow-moving, dithering self-driving cars.
Speaking of a different electric vehicle, I was delighted when Deepal confirmed earlier this year it would bring the Changan Nevo E07 to Australia.
There has been a relentless surge of new Chinese brands arriving in Australia over the past 18 months, and they all seem to offer some variation of a mid-size SUV – often electric – or a body-on-frame ute. Yawn.
So when I saw the E07 revealed in China, I figured Deepal wouldn’t be bold enough to bring this genre-busting EV to Australia. Well, they did, and it’s pretty wild.
The interior is generic mid-2020s Chinese minimalist and the driving dynamics don’t thrill, but the configurability and ease with which you can turn it from a quasi-ute into a sleek coupe-style SUV are impressive. No, it’ll never replace a conventional ute, but there are likely plenty of buyers with a genuine use case for it.
Damion Smy: Toyota HiLux
The new Toyota HiLux is a better truck, but many expected a more significant update – rightly or wrongly.
Perhaps we’re used to Ford being all-in on Ranger, given it’s the brand’s meal ticket, whereas Toyota has a much broader portfolio.
Ben Zachariah: Foton is actually on
The Foton Tunland ute isn’t without its flaws, but for the money it’s a mighty impressive package.
Interior design and build quality are excellent, the ride is decent – particularly in the V9 – and it offers plenty of space along with genuine off-road capability. For the money, buyers would be hard-pressed to do better.
James Wong: Legal latency
Despite the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) coming into effect and increasing pressure from new competition out of China, it feels like a number of legacy brands are asleep at the wheel.
New vehicles are still being launched with Euro V-certified drivetrains, lacking fuel- and emissions-saving technologies offered in other parts of the world, and it’s been quite something to watch.
More perplexing is the fact a number of new and updated models from legacy brands have been brought to market barely meeting this year’s NVES emissions caps, despite even stricter limits coming into effect next year.
Perhaps more significant change will come in 2026, but given these regulatory measures have been a long time coming, it’s disappointing some of the automotive world’s biggest names haven’t done more to reduce fuel use and emissions this year.
Alborz Fallah: Ferrari 296 Speciale
I was expecting this to be another negative slide down the electrification and away from the purity of modern supercars, and I was pleasantly surprised.
What an absolutely terrific car, the best application of hybrid technology while still maintaining all the emotions that make a Ferrari what it should be.
Josh Nevett: Zeekr’s Zeppelin
I never thought I’d be raving about an electric people mover come Christmas time, but here we are.
Quite simply, every VIP chauffeur should drive a Zeekr 009. The silence of electric power enables weary clients to settle in for a snooze, made even easier by the fitment of plush captain’s chairs in the second row. That quiet ambience also makes for stress-free driving.
The passenger area houses a large entertainment screen supported by a 30-speaker Yamaha sound system, as well as a fridge. In other words, all bases are covered. And despite its size and intended purpose, the 009 packs a serious punch.
I drove the dual-motor version producing 450kW and 693Nm, and it puts the power down surprisingly well. That made for some hilarious on-ramp drag races – all of which I won.
At the same time, the 009 will happily drive itself using a suite of sophisticated driver assistance systems, once again perfect for professional drivers who regularly rack up long stints behind the wheel.
There’s no denying Zeekr’s local flagship commands serious money, but it largely justifies the hefty price tag through unbridled excess. It also compares favourably with more conventional alternatives such as the Lexus LM and Mercedes-Benz V-Class.
China setting the benchmark for outright luxury – who would’ve thought?
Max Davies: Lexus LFA Concept
I was close to listing this car among my biggest disappointments of 2024, and it still isn’t entirely clear-cut.
For a start, it’s impossible to ignore Lexus has now applied the LFA name to an electric concept. The original 2010 LFA is synonymous with a phenomenal-sounding V10 engine, so knowing its likely replacement won’t have an engine at all is a little deflating.
But everything else about it piqued my interest. It’s one of, if not the best-looking, concept cars revealed in 2025, and nothing about an electric powertrain detracts from its genuinely stunning design.
It looks production-ready aside from some clearly dysfunctional side mirrors and a sci-fi interior, which shows clear intent on Lexus’s part to rekindle at least some of the magic of the V10 LFA halo car of yesteryear.
That’s the other thing to consider. The original LFA was nothing if not a display of Toyota’s engineering might – the pinnacle of what the Japanese brand’s engineers could achieve when given the desire and necessary resources.
Who’s to say those engineers can’t work similar magic with an electric car instead? If it does enter production, it’s not unreasonable to expect something quite special.
Besides, Toyota is already putting a twin-turbo hybrid V8 into a halo sports car, which is probably a smart move given the poor value retention of high-end electric cars.