Motoring: Kildare leads the way in electric vehicles sales
GOING GREEN: Volkswagen was the top pick for Irish EV purchasers last year
A total of 451 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in Kildare in 2021, the latest figures reveal.
Kildare saw an above-average number of people opt for the sustainable transport options.
A total of 8,646 EVs were sold across the 26 counties in 2021 — more than double the number sold in 2020.
2021 sales are also up 151% on the 3,444 recorded in 2019.
The top selling EV was the Volkswagen ID.4 which was bought by 159 drivers.
The next most popular makes were the Kia, Nissan, Tesla, Hyundai, Audi, Renault, Peugeot, MG and Skoda.
Brian Cooke director general of Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) said: "The sale of Electric Vehicles (EVs) more than doubled in 2021, and with the sale of EVs being underpinned by SEAI grants, we can expect to see an increasing number of new EVs on Irish roads in 2022."
SIMI’s official vehicle registrations statistics for 2021 showed that total new car registrations for 2021 finished at 104,932 which is up 19% on 2020 but down 10.4% on 2019.
Other stats of note show a changing market place in 2021. Diesel accounted for 33.44%, petrol 32.16%, hybrid 16.22%, electric 8.24%, and plug-in hybrid 7.26%.
Diesel remains the most popular engine type despite a decline in its market share last year (9.85%) while hybrid, electric and plug-in hybrid continue to gain market share in 2021.
Manual transmissions account for (50.95%) in market share, while automatic transmissions (48.93%) continue to increase their popularity again this year.
The hatchback remains Ireland’s top selling car body type of 2021.
While grey is the top selling colour going back for the past six years.