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 registered, while 82.8% of all new hybrid private cars registered 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.

In light of these figures, the government is being encourage to further promote the use of electric and hybrid cars.

"The more that Government and others in the industry can do to make e-motoring an easy and attractive proposition, the better," said Jonathan Hehir, managing director of Insuremycars.ie.

"Getting motorists to even consider migrating over to something as ‘new’ as e-motoring involves communicating the benefits of these cars, not just to the environment but to people themselves. For most people, affordability is the primary consideration – they have to see a financial incentive."

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.