Sales of electric cars continues to increase.
For the month of September 1,858 new electric vehicles were registered compared to 770 in September 2021.
So far this year 14,513 new electric cars have been registered in comparison to 7,819 on the same period 2021 an increase of 85.6%.
The official 222 new vehicle registration figures for September reveals that 6, 340 new cars were sold in September up 42.5% when compared to September 2021.
Registrations year to date are up 0.7% (101,492) on the same period last year (100,745) and are 10.9% behind that of pre-Covid levels when almost 114,000 were sold in the first nine months of 2019.
In county Tipperary there was a marginal increase in new car sales for the first nine months of 2022 compared to 2021.
To the end of September 2,650 new cars were sold in Tipperary up from 2,598 in 2021.
Petrol engines retains the largest market share at 30.09% followed by Diesel 26.99%, Hybrid 19.67%, Electric 14.30%, Plug-In Electric Hybrid 6.79% Grants to aid the sale of Electric cars are being continued until at least June 30th next year.
As the number of cars being sold increases the cost to the exchequer is also rising.
Government Policy is to have 1M electric vehicles in Ireland by 2030. 845,000 of these should be electrically powered passenger cars, 95,000 vans and 1,500 electric buses as per the government strategy.
In 2019, as part of its Climate Action Bill, the government announced that it intends to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 in order to help Ireland meet its carbon emissions targets.
