Power up! Fifth of 2020 car sales were electric or hybrid
ONE in five new cars sold last year was an electric or hybrid, new figures show.
In fact, electric cars were the only ones that saw an increase in sales in the past 12 months.
Overall, new registrations were down by 25% – a drop of almost 29,000 to 88,324.
The slump in new sales was described yesterday as being at ‘recession levels’ by Brian Cooke, the director general of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).
The hatchback remains Ireland’s top- selling car type, while grey is the most popular colour – a ranking it has held for the past five years.
There were 4,013 new electric cars registered last year compared with 3,444 in 2019.
Diesel is still the most popular engine type at 43% of new cars, while petrol made up 37%, hybrid 12%, electriconly 4.5%, and plug-in hybrid less than 3%.
Hybrid, electric and plug-in hybrids all gained market share in 2020.
Manuals – at 60% – continue to be more popular despite a decline in market share, while automatic gearboxes, at 40%, continue to gain popularity.
Volkswagen’s latest electric ID model was the best-selling individual car in September and October last year.
The slump i n sales was blamed on the coronavirus lockdowns; many dealers have switched to ‘click-and-collect’ for new cars since the pandemic hit, with some taking freshly cleaned models to people’s homes for test drives.
Mr Cooke said: ‘Like many other sectors, 2020 proved to be a very difficult year for the Irish motor industry. New car sales, already hampered in recent years due to Brexit, were down a further 25% due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and are now at recession levels.’
He added: ‘ Looking to January, the key month for new car sales, the dramatic deterioration in the public health situation over the last few weeks and the implementation of Level 5 restrictions will make it another difficult period for the sector.
‘Dealerships remain open for service, repair and testing, which are essential services, and the industry will continue to play an important role in assisting emergency and essential services.
‘Car sales will operate on a click-and-collect service with retailers increasing investment in their digital platforms to facilitate customers. In the current challenged business environment, it is vital that the current restrictions succeed in driving down the incidence of Covid so business and society can return to some level of normality.’
The increased shared of electric and hybrid cars was welcomed by Green Party transport spokesman Patrick Costello, although he said the best thing for the environment was public transport.
‘It’s good but the proportion could be higher. Ideally we’d have a lower number of cars overall but more of them would be electric,’ he said,
Mr Costello also said that one of the problems was the ‘explosion in the size of cars on the road’.
‘Electric only deals with part of the pollution of a car; it doesn’ t deal with the embedded carbon, it doesn’t deal with some of the particulates, it also doesn’t deal with the political question of the allocation of urban space,’ said the Dublin SouthCentral TD.
Deputy Costello added: ‘The space to move 40 people will be a lot bigger than if you just had one bus.
‘We’re moving in the right direction but there’s a much bigger picture that needs to be looked at.
‘It’s not as simple as no cars and banning cars; I get that.’
‘The proportion could be higher’