The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
SOME 2,115 new cars were registered in Clare in 2021, an increase of almost 7% on the same figure for 2020.
The figure represents 2.02% of new car registrations nationwide last year when 104,932 new vehicles were bought an increase of 19.1% on 2020’s figure of 88,325.
While this represented good business for the motoring industry, figures were down 10.4% on 2019 registrations when the economy was still functioning normally.
One area where 2021 comprehensively outstripped both 2020 and 2019 was the sale of electric car.
The surge in sales of electric vehicles continued with 8,646 registered in 2021 compared to 4,013 on the same period 2020 (+115.4%) and 3,444 in 2019 (+151.0%).
Moving in the opposite direction however was registrations of imported used cars, of which there were 63,617, a decrease of 20.4% on 2020 (79,969) and a decrease of 44.2% on 2019 (113,926).
New Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) registrations in 2021 saw an increase of 32.3% (28,741) compared to 2020 (21,732) and +13.4% 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).
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 and has continued to keep that title for the past six years.
Brian Cooke, SIMI Director General commenting, “The difficulties arising from both COVID 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 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.”
“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.
“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 and 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 Electric Vehicle sales, but the extent of their penetration into the fleet will not only be determined by the increased choice of EVs been supplied but also by the continuation of Government supports.”
