A total of 105,253 new cars were registered in 2022, a marginal increase of 0.3 percent on 2021 but a 10.1 per cent drop on 2019 (117,109 ).
According to new SIMI figures that were recently released, 15,678 new electric cars were registered last year, an increase on the 8,646 registrations seen in 2021 and 3,444 in 2019.
Imported used cars saw 46,490 registrations in 2022, a decrease of 26.9 percent on 2021 (63,617 ) and a decrease of 59.2 percent on 2019 (113,926 ).
Automatic transmissions have taken over in popularity, now accounting for (56.99% ) of market share, while manual transmissions have declined (42.95% ).
The hatchback continues to remain Ireland’s top selling car body type of 2022. While grey is the top selling colour (4,831 units in 2022 ) and has continued to keep that title now for the past seven years. There were 2,798 black cars sold last year, followed by 2,482 blue.
The figures from SIMI reflect a changing marketplace in 2022. Petrol accounted for 30.16 percent, diesel 26.77 percent, hybrid 19.29 percent, electric 14.90 percent, and plug-in hybrid 6.76 percent.
Petrol remained the most popular engine type last year, despite a decline in its 2022 market share (32.16% ) while hybrid, electric and plug-in hybrid continued to gain market share in 2022 and now account for 41 percent of the market.
The Hyundai Tucson was the top selling car in 2022 with 6,432 units sold in Ireland. This was followed by the Toyota Corolla (4,179 ), Kia Sportage (3,532 ), Toyota C-HR (3,104 ), and VW’s ID.4 (2,983 ).
The latter by far led the way in EV sales for the year, with the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (1,165 ) the next best fully-electric seller. The Tesla Model 3 (1,044 ), Kia EV 6 (955 ), and Volkswagen ID.3 (924 ) followed.
Toyota remained Ireland’s most popular car brand in 2022, selling 16,051 units. Hyundai (12,709 ), Volkswagen (11,739 ), Kia (7,942 ), and Skoda (7,618 ) made up the top five.
Meanwhile, new light commercial vehicle sales in 2022 saw a decrease of 17.7 per cent (23,653 ) compared to 2021 (28,742 ) and a 6.6 per cent drop on 2019 (25,336 ).
HGV registrations were down 8.1 percent (2,494 ) in comparison to 2021 (2,715 ) and 6.2 percent on 2019 (2,659 ).
