It’s now time to see if 2017 was a good year for EV sales in Ireland,

New EV sales (excluding PHEVs) went from 392 units in 2016 to 622 units in 2017. That’s a very good increase of 58% year on year (considering the overall market dipped 10% during the same period) but the overall market share is still low, 0.47%, which means that less than one car in 200 sold is an EV :(

2018 Tesla Model S

But there is a way to see it more positively.

It is indeed the best year ever for new EV sales but most of all used imports have increased even more. 486 used EV were imported in 2017, which is almost 3 times as much as last year (143)!

Now if you add new sales and used imports, you get a total of 1108 extra EVs on the Irish roads compared to a year earlier, which brings the total of EV registered from 1643 a bit over 2751 cars. Not too bad.

But wait, there is more !

Following the same trend, PHEV sales have gone up as well, from 298 to 319. Not as impressive as for EVs but let’s keep in mind that these cars are generally quite expensive premium models. Again, used imports make the difference, going from 35 units in 2016 to 224 in 2017 ! During the last year the fleet of Irish PHEVs more than doubled, raising from 470 to 1013!

Total cumulative registrations of cars with a plug went from 2113 to 3764 during the past 12 months … if you are an EV driver, you have noticed the increased queues at chargers, and these numbers show why.

And 2018 ?

We can expect further growth in 2018 :

• The new Leaf -Ireland’s favorite EV- is coming in Spring. 10000 orders have been made in Europe (without test drives), for the launch edition which shows a very strong interest so far. Late spring, it will be launched with the regular trims.
• Government incentives could accelerate that growth. If free M50 toll is brought, it will generate an important demand (new, used and imports)
• Cars like the Zoé and Ioniq are very popular in Europe and orders are backed up as the offer can’t meet the demand. If they production bottlenecks are addressed, sales could increase quickly.

2018 Nissan Leaf