Electric and hybrid cars increase by 68.5% in first half of year

The number of new electric and hybrid cars being licensed has increased, despite overall car sales declining in the first six months of 2019.

Electric and hybrid cars increase by 68.5% in first half of year

The number of new electric and hybrid cars being licensed has increased, despite overall car sales declining in the first six months of 2019.

A total of 77,639 new private cars were licensed between January and June, a decrease of 6.5% compared with the same period last year.

Licensing of electric and hybrid new private cars increased by 68.5% to 9,150.

Electric and hybrid vehicles accounted for 11.8% of all new private cars licensed, up from 6.5% in the same period last year.

Hyundai, Nissan, Renault, Volkswagen and BMW represented 93.4% of new electric private cars, while 82.8% of all new hybrid private cars were made by Toyota.

Wicklow had the largest proportion of new private electric cars licensed in the first half of 2019 (4.7%). This was followed by Kildare and Leitrim. For hybrid vehicles, Longford had the highest proportion (14.6%), followed by Galway and Cavan.

Elsewhere Volkswagen was the most popular make of new private cars licensed in the first half of this year, followed by Toyota, Hyundai, Ford and Skoda. Together these five makes represent 46.9% of all new private cars licensed.

There were 37,002 new diesel private cars licensed, compared with 45,996 in the same period last year.