2026 Irish EV Sales

I would completely agree with this. In our case we were seriously considering an Alfa Giulia veloce 6 years ago but by pure chance took a test drive in a 330e and were instantly hooked. When the time came to change it 3 years on we were ready to go full ev. It's why I think now at this point - to paraphrase the late Seamus Mallon- that phevs are just bevs for slow learners.

everything you say is correct, however the point being argued was this line of “people not buying an EV in today’s wartime environment need their head examined”.

We have 3% national fleet penetration, which is positive of course, but the overwhelming majority of car-buying decisions happen in the 2nd hand market, where there are very few EVs on offer.

Just 4% of 86,000 DD cars are EVs (4000), but if you can only afford a car that’s 10+ years old, there are 29,000 cars on DD and just 74 EVs.

TLDR: we’re still a few years away from thinking that people are mad to not buy an EV, unless you’re someone that an EV would suit and who is shopping for a new car.

Does it really matter ? The number of cars which do negligible mileage is likely statistically insignificant.

We do low mileage and have second older car that does tiny mileage. Mostly only used at the weekend if the first car is busy and for learner drivers in the family. It's expensive to run, tax (especially) and maintain but it's offset by low fuel usage.

If someone starts using it more then it will get swapped for something cheaper to run. At the moment there no point in changing it.

you have to consider battery degradation too into the second hand buyers market - their daily mileage is the same as the person who buys a new EV, but now it’s 10 years old and does 85-90% of the range it did when new, whereas you old Focus is still knocking out 800km, but costs far more to fuel, and it becomes very hard to change it unless it dies.

I live in South Dublin and every second car seems to be an EV.

That's probably an exaggeration but you get the idea.

It's obviously a high income area though.

Anyway it doesn't matter.

By 2029 EVs will be cheaper than ICEs so the percentage of new cars EV will be over 50%.

New ICEs will be banned in 2035 also.

The true metric is the percentage of miles driven by EVs rather than percentage of total fleet.

I wonder if petrol stations are noticing a drop in revenue but maybe it's offset by a rising population.

France has a social leasing program for EVs which is a great idea. I emailed a Minister about it but they're not considering it.

Probably a bit late now but wouldn't it have been an idea to incentivise EV work and lease fleets far more? BIK exemptions or whatever. If they were very favourable you'd eventually have lots of 2nd hand vehicles hitting the market every year or so. I know there were reasonable BIK benefits but I think they changed and EVs were probably much dearer then as well.

So if you want an EV that's over 10yrs you've a choice of 74 cars. How many do need to pick just one.

You haven't proved theres none available you've proved they ARE available.

Newer EVs can do more range they will be driven more. As more of them enter the national fleet they will be driven more.

https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/at-least-one-in-twenty-car-miles-driven-is-now-zero-emission

Still a long way to go if this is anything to go by:

There are over 600k used cars purchased in Ireland annually. The idea that having 74 older EVs on available Donedeal at any point in time somehow proves that anyone wanting a used EV that suits their needs can have one is slightly farcial

I absolutely agree but just not today!

How many will be ex-taxi's ? Pretty much every urban taxi I have seen lately is a EV. They had incentives to scrap their diesel car for a new EV.

Plenty of choice no doubt but still a few years before there will be be sufficient used EVs on the market to match the total volume of annual used car purchases.

In reality there has been approx 100k new EVs sold in Ireland since 2014. Even if every single one of them hit the used car market in 2026, it would only cover a fraction of the used car market demand for the year. I have 3 of them, one is crocked and the other 2 won’t be available on the used car market for a few years yet!