ROVER Approvals

The Department of Infrastructure publishes every road vehicle type approval on ROVER, the Road Vehicle Regulator's portal. It is complete and authoritative, but it is also ten records to a page with no way to sort, filter or watch it. This page keeps a copy that is checked daily, so a new approval turns up here without anyone paging through the register.

Passenger and light commercial are separate. ROVER gives each approval a single ADR category code and groups nothing, so the split here is ours. The first letter is the real division: M carries people — cars, SUVs, people movers — and N carries goods — utes, vans and light trucks. The page opens on passenger vehicles, because goods vehicles outnumber them here roughly three to two and most of that is NB1 — GVM upgrades and body conversions of the same few utes, which bury the new models. Turn Light commercial on to see them, or Every category for trailers, buses, trucks and motorcycles as well.

There are photographs, too. Every approval has a Road Vehicle Descriptor listing each variant — body style, masses, dimensions, engine — and each variant carries the front and rear photographs the manufacturer lodged with its application. For a model that has not launched here yet, those are usually the first public pictures of the car, and they are real photographs rather than press renders. Open any approval below to see them. We show the lead variant's front and rear; the Variants & photos link has every variant, along with masses, dimensions and engines.

Safety ratings, where they exist. ROVER says nothing about crash safety, so approvals are matched by make and model against ANCAP's published ratings. The star count only appears when a single ANCAP rating covers the approval's build period. Often several apply — a Landcruiser was rated five stars for VX and Sahara but four for GX and GXL over the same years — and in that case the badge links to ANCAP without claiming a number, because there isn't one.

Where the electrified label comes from. ROVER never states how a vehicle is powered, but each approval lists which Australian Design Rules it had to meet, and two of those only apply to particular drivetrains: ADR 109 covers electric power train safety and ADR 110 covers hydrogen. An approval that complies with ADR 109 has an electric power train; one assessed against it and found not to need it does not. That is our inference from public data, not an official classification — open any approval to see the rules it is drawn from.

Two honest limits. Electrified is not the same as electric: a Tesla Model Y and a RAV4 Hybrid comply with exactly the same rules, so battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid all carry the one label. And approvals granted before ADR 109 existed were never assessed against it, so they are marked not stated rather than guessed at — which is why the older Tesla Model S approval carries no label at all.