New electric car sales declined by 24 per cent last year, new statistics from the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) show.
A total of 17,459 new electric cars were registered in 2024, down from 22,852 registrations seen in 2023. The costs involved with running an electric car, along with other factors such as resale value and low-mileage have contributed to the continued spiral in sales.
Director of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI), Brian Cooke, said that the decline in electric vehicle sales was “the key feature” of the 2024 new car market.
“There has however been some tentative signs of a turnaround in EV sales towards the end of 2024, and the Industry is anticipating an increase in EV sales in 2025,” Mr Cooke said.
“The start of the new registration period, 251, this week, is an optimistic time for the Irish Motor Industry. With the variety of incentives and offers from retailers and manufacturers it is a good time for customers to shop for a new or used car.”
Overall, there were 121,195 new car registrations in 2024, a decrease of 1 per cent in 2023. New Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) registrations in 2024 saw an increase of 7 per cent (30,786) compared to 2023 (28,854) while new Heavy Commercial Vehicle registrations (HGV) increased by 8 per cent (2,865) in comparison to 2023 (2,655).
Imported Used Cars saw a 21.4 per cent increase, with 61,583 registrations in 2024. Petrol remained the most popular engine type last year, while Electric, Hybrid, and Plug-In Hybrid accounted for over 45 per cent of the market. Automatic transmissions make up over 66 per cent of the market share, with manual transmissions declining to 33.8 per cent.
Meanwhile, the hatchback continues to remain Ireland’s top-selling car body type of 2024, with grey retaining the top-selling colour title for the ninth year running.
In November, the freefall in electric car sales was raised during the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications debate. Former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said it was “correct” to say that there had been a slowdown in electric car sales.
“That has been right across Europe but less so worldwide as in China and elsewhere, they are really taking off. In Europe, in particular however, there was a reduction in the demand in the past year compared with the previous year,” Mr Ryan said.
The Green politician said that there were a “variety of reasons” for the decline, but said the issue remained “complicated.”
“The primary reason was changes in the second-hand value of the EV market, which made people uncertain, particularly if one had a three-year leasing model where one might have to purchase the full vehicle back at the end of the year or, indeed, in selling it on. If one is uncertain at what the second-hand value is, that hinders the confidence in the purchase of new EVs,” Ryan said.
“There are separate issues. The issue of range anxiety was an issue in the public mind but in my sense, particularly in Ireland, this is one we can address for a variety of reasons.
“First, we actually have a widespread network of EV charging infrastructure compared with other countries. We had one of the first roll-outs of EV charging infrastructure but there is a certain concern around the ability to get access to vehicles, particularly if one does not have one on one’s driveway but also on having more destination charging points in other areas.”
He also said that the “strategic” reduction in the EV grant in the budget was also an issue. In July 2023, the government reduced the grant for new BEVs from €5,000 to €3,500 in order to prioritise public charging infrastructure.
“Some people argued that perhaps that should not have happened. I do not think that was the primary reason because in truth, the actual price of new electrical vehicles continued to fall and fell quite significantly,” Mr Ryan continued.
“The reason we made that decision was not necessarily to disadvantage EVs, obviously, but was because we faced the choice of making an investment decision in the charging infrastructure and we wanted to prioritise that to overcome those range anxiety concerns.
“We allocated a €100 million budget to that, which is very much starting to kick in. We will start to see in the summer of next year the roll-out of the high-speed motorway charging infrastructure. We will see the roll-out to 200 sports clubs of EV infrastructure supported by the State. We are also advancing the local authority plans.”
It comes as Tesla’s annual electric car sales fell for the first time in more than decade. Elon Musk’s Tesla sold 1.79 million electric cars in 2024, a decline on 2023 sales.
Bloomberg reports: “The results are a sobering reminder of the real challenges for electric car manufacturers, even as the hype around self-driving cars and Musk’s closeness to Trump have sent Tesla shares soaring in recent months.”
Elsewhere, China has seen a boom in hybrid cars, which were more popular than battery-only ones last year as consumers moved away from gas-only cars.