New electric car registrations show significant recovery in 2025

To reach the Government's climate goal of 845,000 private electric cars on the road by 2030, 650,000 electric cars will have to be registered in the next five years

Electric car registrations accounted for 19% of the market in 2025. File photo

Following a significant slump in 2024, electric car sales in Ireland rebounded last year with 23,398 new registrations recorded, representing a 36% increase, according to new data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

However, the total number of electric car registrations during 2025 was just marginally ahead of the number recorded during 2023. In 2024, there were 17,191 new electric cars registered in total, this was down from 22,493 recorded in 2023.

During 2025, there were 120,797 new private cars registered for the first time with 838 of those occurring in December which is usually a quiet month for car registrations as many consumers hold off on purchases until the new year. 

This is up from 116,683 registered in 2024 and 117,424 in 2023. This means electric car registrations accounted for 19% of the market in 2025.

In October, transport minister Darragh O’Brien announced that the State had reached its initial climate goal of having 195,000 electric cars on the road by the end of 2025. However, it is still well off its longer term goal as the Government had previously committed to reaching 845,000 private electric cars on the road by 2030.

This means that 650,000 additional electric cars will have to be registered in five years or, on average, 130,000 a year.

In addition to the electric car sales, there were 19,316 hybrid vehicles registered during the year and 18,226 plug-in electric cars. Annually, there was a 65% increase in the number of plug-in electric cars licensed for the first time.

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This means that the petrol and diesel share of new car registrations fell from 54% in 2024 to 43% last year.

There were 31,221 new petrol cars licensed compared with 36,433 in 2024, a fall of 14%. The number of new diesel cars licensed decreased by 23%, from 26,728 to 20,562 over the same period.

The data shows that Tesla was the most popular make of car during December with 175 new cars registered followed by Volkswagen at 101, and Toyota at 60.

Toyota was the most popular brand of new private cars licensed in 2025 with 16,172 registrations followed by Volkswagen at 14,172 and Skoda at 11,429. The most popular brand of new electric car licensed in 2025 was the Volkswagen ID.4.

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