New car registrations up almost 13% in Mayo last year

The Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) has today reported total new car registrations for 2021 were up 19% on 2020 but down 10.4% on 2019.

In Mayo, new car registrations were up 12.94% last year, with the county's 1,850 units accounting for 1.76% of the overall market share.

SIMI's statistics show that total new car registrations for 2021 finished at 104,932 compared to 88,325 in 2020 and 117,109 in 2019.

New light commercial vehicle (LCV) registrations in 2021 saw an increase of 32.3% (28,741) compared to 2020 (21,732) and 13.4% on 2019 (25,336), while new heavy commercial vehicle registrations (HGV) saw an increase of 31.5% (2,716) in comparison to 2020 (2,066) and 2.1% on 2019 (2,659).

Imported used cars saw 63,617 registrations, a decrease of 20.4% on 2020 (79,969) and 44.2% on 2019 (113,926).

A total of 8,646 new electric cars were registered in 2021, an increase on the 4,013 registrations in 2020 and 3,444 in 2019, indicative of a changing market place. Last year, diesel accounted for 33.44%, petrol 32.16%, hybrid 16.22%, electric 8.24%, and plug-in hybrid 7.26%. While it remains the most popular engine type, diesel's market share declined 9.85% last year while hybrid, electric and plug-in hybrid continue to gain market share.

Manual transmissions account for 50.95% in market share, while automatic transmissions, now at 48.93%, continue to increase their popularity.

The hatchback remains Ireland’s top selling car body type, while grey is the top selling colour and has continued to keep that title for the past six years.

Commenting on the figures, SIMI director general Brian Cooke said: “The difficulties arising from both Covid-19 and Brexit impacted on the supply and demand for cars, which made 2021 another challenging year for the Irish motor industry.

“While new car sales show a 19% increase on 2020, they remain behind 2019 levels. On a positive note, the sale of electric vehicles (EVs) more than doubled in 2021, and with sales being underpinned by SEAI grants we can expect to see an increasing number of new EVs on Irish roads in 2022.

“Commercial vehicles sales also saw a significant improvement in 2021, with light commercial vehicles up over 30% on 2020, reflecting the increase in business confidence as the year progressed.”

Mr. Cooke added that the industry is hopeful that 2022 will see further improvements in business levels.

“Pre-orders do indicate a strong appetite for new and used cars, providing a positive outlook for our industry, with a return to pre-pandemic 2019 new car sales levels expected.

“However, even these anticipated sales will not be sufficient to reduce Ireland’s ageing car fleet. We need to see significant growth in the years ahead if we want to optimise the benefits of reduced emissions from new cars.

“We will see annual increases in EV sales, but the extent of their penetration into the fleet will not only be determined by the increased choice of EVs being supplied, but also by the continuation of government supports.”

The top five selling car brands in 2021 were Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Skoda and Ford. The top five selling models were Hyundai Tucson, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Yaris, Volkswagen Tiguan and Toyota C-HR. The top selling EV in 2021 was Volkswagen ID4.