Bright future for car sales

MEANWHILE, another survey reveals that Irish consumers still intend to make some key purchases they had planned before the virus hit.

The survey by research company iReach, revealed that 28% of Irish people are planning to buy a car in the next 12 to 18 months, with 14% intending to purchase a new car, 13% intending to buy second-hand and 1% planning on buying an imported vehicle. 23% say they will likely choose hybrid for their next car choice.

The nationally representative survey of 1,000 people was carried out in Ireland in May and specifically examined consumers’ intentions to purchase a car, as well as car brand and powertrain preferences.

When presented with a list of the top 20 mass market car brands and asked which brand they would most likely choose for their next car purchase almost a quarter of respondents (23%) chose Toyota, with the second choice coming in at almost half of that with 12% of the vote.

When it came to intended powertrain choice, hybrid accounted for 23% in the May survey, which is very much in line with the 23% opting for Toyota given the brand sells almost exclusively self-charging hybrid models.

Toyota has been at the forefront of progression towards a more eco-friendly motoring environment for more than 20 years since the first Prius hybrid was introduced. Since that time, it has made significant technological advancements to the point where their affordable, new generation self-charging hybrid cars now drive in zero emissions mode more than 50% of the time.

As such, the brand, which ceased diesel production in 2018 is in high-demand with environmentally conscious motorists for both city and long distance driving conditions as evidenced by the fact that Ireland’s best-selling car in 2019 and 2020 is the Toyota Corolla hybrid . In terms of other powertrains, 12% of survey respondents said they would choose full-electric, 25% said they’d opt for petrol, 33% said diesel, while 6% indicated they would most likely purchase a plug-in hybrid.