Toyota Ireland’s chief executive Steve Tormey has mixed predictions for 2018

TOYOTA Ireland’s chief executive Steve Tormey has outlined his power train mix predictions for 2018, and all told the future picture for diesel is very negative, while it’s very positive for Hybrid.

Based upon sales patterns in 2017 and pre-sales indicators for 2018, Mr. Tormey predicts that diesel will account for only 45 per cent of the overall market, down from 65 per cent in 2017, while preference for petrol hybrid power trains will double from 3.4 per cent in 2017 to 7 per cent in 2018.

Looking further ahead, Mr Tormey believes that by 2020 diesel is likely to be down close to 20 per cent of the overall market, with hybrid at roughly 25 per cent of the market.

This trend is similar across Europe. In Germany the diesel share accounts for 38.8 per cent of sales, down from 45.9 per cent a year ago, while diesel sales in the UK fell by a third towards the end of 2017.

Consistently in Ireland’s top two selling car brands over the past decade, Toyota’s sales serve as a trend barometer to predict where the Irish market is going proportionally.

mR Tormey said in our planning for 2018, we’d predicted our Hybrid mix of total passenger car sales to grow from 30 per cent to 45 per cent.

However the demand coming into 2018 is more like 55 per cent Hybrid.

‘Our Diesel demand coming into 2018 is down from a 38 per cent mix to 18 per cent, which we had predicted, as Irish consumers look to protect their future resale value and the environment from a health point view.’