New car registrations up by over 20% in 2021

The number of new car registrations in Westmeath rose by over 20 per cent last year, according to new statistics released by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).

A total of 1,566 new cars were registered in the county last year compared to 1,289 in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 21.49%. Nationally, there were 104,932 new cars registered in 2021 – 18.8% more than in 2020 when there were 88,325 new registrations but 10.4% less than in 2019 when the figure was 117,109.

The number of new electric cars registered has risen significantly. Over the course of 2021, 8,646 new electric cars were registered in in Ireland, 115.4% more than in 2020 (4,013) and 151% more than in 2019 (3,444).

Registrations of new light commercial vehicles (LCV) increased by 32.3% (28,741) compared to 2020 (21,732) and 13.4% when compared to 2019 (25,336). There were also a significant year on year increase in new heavy commercial vehicle (HGV) registrations. A total of 2,716 new HGVs were registered last year, a 31.5% rise compared to 2020 (2,066) and +2.1% on 2019 (2,659).

The were 79,969 imported used cars registered last year, a decrease of 20.4% on 2020 (79,969) and a decrease of 44.2% on 2019 (113,926).

Other stats of note show a changing market place. Diesel fuelled vehicles accounted for 33.44% of all registrations in 2021, 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 continued to gain market share in 2021.

Manual transmissions accounted for (50.95%) in market share, while automatic transmissions (48.93%) continued to increase their popularity again last year.

Commenting on the statistics, 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 showed a 19% increase on 2020, they remained 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 EV 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.”