ARTSA-Institute has been analysing Australia’s heavy vehicles for the past decade.
This project is called ARTSA-i Data. The information is derived from the National Exchange of Vehicles and Driver Information System database. This is the principal government database for road vehicles, registered or not.
There are four ‘government’ databases relevant to the Australian vehicle fleet. As shown in Figure 1, the Federal system generates three databases, which are: the Model Approvals list; the Register of Automotive Vehicles (RAV) and the Import Approvals list.
The fourth vehicle database is focused on actual or potential road registrations. AustRoads, which is a service provider to the state and territory road agencies, is the ‘gate keeper’ and manages the Registration List called NEVDIS.
The Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is the common data between these vehicle lists. Except for very special cases, a road vehicle cannot be registered in Australia unless its VIN and make/model details are in NEVDIS.
A wheeled vehicle cannot be imported into Australia unless its VIN is in the Import Approvals list and sometimes vehicles get into NEVDIS via the Import Approvals list even though they are unlikely to be road-registered (for example, tractors and harvesters).
The VIN is allocated by the full-volume manufacturer, by road agency, or by accredited agent or low-volume manufacturer.
Once the VIN has been allocated and the vehicle manufactured, the manufacturer or agent will transmit the vehicle information to AustRoads to request it be put into NEVDIS. The manufacturer must have a valid Model Approval to be able to submit new vehicle details.
Road Agencies and the Federal regulator can also request that AustRoads enter a vehicle-details including the VIN. The Import Approvals List and NEVDIS are not publicly searchable, whereas the Model Approvals list and the RAV are.
ARTSA-i purchases a redacted NEVDIS registration list for heavy vehicles and analyses the data. The VIN format for a particular vehicle make and model is shown on the relevant Model Approval.
This is so ARTSA-i can link the information in its NEVDIS extract to the model approval details. Figure 2 shows the history of new heavy vehicle registrations for the past nine years.
The 2025 data is estimated based upon the available data for the first three quarters. This year’s sales are comparable to 2022. ARTSA-i also identifies vehicle retirements.
Figure 3 shows both new sales and retirements of prime movers over the past 11 years, per quarter year. As a guide, retirements are one third to one half of the new registrations, so the change in fleet size is less than implied by new vehicle sales.
The uptake of new safety technologies such as Antilock Brakes or Vehicle Stability Control can be estimated based upon manufacturer’s offerings and the date that the technologies were mandated in the ADRs.
ARTSA-i can also study the retro-respective improvement in road safety that is traceable to particular technologies by estimating the fleet uptake and considering which technologies should reduce the incidence of specific crash classifications in the NTARC accident report for heavy vehicles.
ARTSA-i Data can accurately determine the age profile of the fleet by registration category and state of registration. ARTSA-i Data also allows the country of origin of vehicles sold into the Australian market to be identified.
This can be done by decoding the VIN.
The first character identifies the country of origin. Some vehicles get imported into Australia with an Australian VIN even though they were manufactured overseas. This can be corrected because the Model Approval document identifies the country of origin despite the VIN allocation.
So ARTSA-i Data can be used to determine the level of heavy vehicle manufacture that occurs in Australia. Figure 4 shows the breakdown of the prime mover fleet by country of origin. The analysis can be done for each year of manufacture.
The data shows a significant increase over the past decade in heavy motor vehicles that were manufactured in Europe at the expense of motor vehicles manufactured in North America.
Rob Perkins has been running the ARTSA-Data project for the last decade and is responsible for getting it into great shape. Rob will be handing the baton onto Anthony Germnanchev in early 2026.
Anthony will continue to develop our Tableaux dashboards that allow subscribers to interrogate the data about vehicle makes, models, configurations, axles and ratings with a registered address in any of Australia’s 566 Local Government Areas, and of course in each state.
ARTSA-i plans to further develop the database offerings in 2026 and will add body type and capability level as search features. We will also work on a break-down of the fleet according to vocation and ‘industry sector’.
ARTSA-i has allowed the Australian community to obtain insights from NEVDIS that can help industry and regulators to understand the character, capacity and features of the Australian heavy vehicle fleet.
With Anthony’s help, ARTSA-i intends to use the data to generate some ARTSA-i white papers that report important characteristics of the Australian fleet, such as technology and capacity updates.
The ARTSA-I database can also be used for sponsored investigations.
Peter Hart,
ARTSA-I Chair
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