Electric car sales in Ireland up nearly 65 pct in H1

DUBLIN, July 10 (Xinhua) -- A total of 13,701 new electric cars were sold in Ireland in the first half of this year, up 64.89 percent compared with the same period last year, the country's Central Statistics Office (CSO) said Monday.

The number of electric cars sold in the first six months of this year accounted for nearly 19 percent of all the new cars sold in the country, said the CSO, adding that this represented an increase of more than five percentage points when compared with a year ago.

A total of 73,166 new cars were sold in Ireland in the first half of this year, up 17.5 percent year-on-year.

The number and percentage of new electric cars sold in Ireland have witnessed a consistent rise over the past few years, said the CSO.

In 2017, not a single new electric car was sold in the country, it said, adding that in 2022 the number of new electric cars sold jumped to more than 15,000 units.

In contrast, the percentage of diesel cars in all the new cars sold in the country has been on a consistent decline, down from 65 percent in 2017 to 27 percent in 2022.

The Irish government said in Climate Action Plan 2021 that the number of electric cars running on the road will be increased to 845,000 by 2030, indicating a huge potential for the growth of such cars in the country in the next few years.

The total number of electric vehicles in Ireland as of the end of 2021 was only around 45,000, according to data released by the Irish government.