The police will need to prove that you were the person who used the vehicle. If all the police have is very bad CCTV in the far corner of a service station where all that can be seen is a person in a red shirt was seen in the car, it will be very different than if the police catch you after a protracted police chase with you in the drivers seat.

That you "used" the vehicle. The term 'uses' is very board and captures passengers who should have known the car was stolen when they accepted the lift.

Very often police will charge a person with unlawful use of a motor vehicle when the person was a passenger. When this happens, the lawyers will advise the court about all the surrounding circumstances to mitigate your responsibility at sentence.

The law creates the types of transport that are captured by these offences such as cars, busses, motor bikes and so on. We have yet to see someone charged with riding a horse as a 'motor vehicle', but stranger things have happened.

Say the police have established it was you, in a car, driving to the shops but now they need to prove you did it without the consent of the person who lawfully owns the vehicle.

If the person who gave you consent to use the car, was not the lawful owner then you would not have consent. However, if the owner did consent then this element will fail.

Consent can have limits. For example, the owner might have allowed you to go to 7/11 down the road but not to drive from Brisbane to Sydney and back.

Another example is a renal car. If you don't return the car when you are supposed to, you are driving outside the period of the consent.