“Diesel’s dead,” proclaimed a Lexus advertising poster from a few years ago, trying to convince Irish car buyers to shift from their diesel saloons into a frugal, low-pollution hybrid. Objectively the campaign worked – hybrid cars are catching diesel cars up fast in the sales charts, with only three percentage points separating them.
So Irish car buyers, when confronted with an avalanche of bad publicity about diesel, and when equally presented with a replacement technology that they seem to trust, can be persuaded to change their habits.
What about electric cars, though?
That, from the perspective of today, seems a tougher nut to crack. Perhaps we will look back in a decade, benefiting from hindsight, at the current contraction in electric car sales and see it as a blip, a minor inconvenience on the road to full EV acceptance. Without that luxury of hindsight, though, it’s hard to see the current electric car sales trajectory in Ireland as anything other than a disaster, especially at a time when we really need to be making some inroads into our CO2 emissions.
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So what’s going to happen? Are EVs really going to take over entirely? Is there still room for petrol and diesel power? And how will the Irish car market look in the next five years?
Well, petrol and diesel cars will remain on sale, of course – the EU has confirmed that it’s still moving ahead with a ban on internal combustion engine (ICE) sales by 2035, but that is a full decade away and so there may well be policy changes between now and then. Already the original plan for a 2025 ban has been altered to allow for the sale of combustion engines which can only run on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, but how that will actually be policed is anyone’s guess.
As far as the Irish market is concerned, Fergal McDonnell, a director of EY Ireland, and an adviser on government and infrastructure issues, told The Irish Times: “CSO figures show that 14 per cent of new vehicles licensed this year were EVs, down from 18 per cent in the same period last year.
“Consumers appear to be turning to hybrid vehicles instead, with licenses up by a third to 22 per cent of all vehicle licenses in the first seven months of the year. Longer term, we’d expect that the maturing of the market and a continuation of the trends being seen in the market, such as falling purchase costs, longer vehicle ranges and the provision of more charging infrastructure, will bring with it a larger second-hand market offering lower prices, which will make EVs more affordable and accessible in the short to medium term.
“As plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEV) share some of the benefits of EVs, I’d expect the ownership cost of these should be somewhere in the middle of owning an EV and a full ICE vehicle. As we’ve seen from the EY Mobility Index, there’s still strong and recently growing demand for these PHEVs given some of the concerns potential buyers have around EVs and the resilience and faster refuelling times available when using a PHEV. Given this, we’d expect PHEVs to have a reasonably prominent role from a sales perspective well into the remainder of this decade and potentially beyond.”
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Phil Barnes, Ireland business development manager at telematics company Geotab, is rather more forthright on the matter of how badly electric car sales are going at the moment, telling The Irish Times: “While there’s a challenge across the board internationally in terms of EV adoption, Ireland is dragging its heels compared to its European peers.
“There is clearly an issue when battery electric vehicle sales declined by 29.5 per cent in August, when they rose by 10.8 per cent in the UK that same month; 2024 is essentially a write-off for sales of zero emission vehicles in Ireland, but the real concern will be whether we will have hit bottom by January 2025 and at least see a levelling off or some class of a rebound next year.
“It’s vital that we stem the decline, and a range of industry stakeholders have flagged that the primary way to address that is to boost incentives. Car manufacturers are complaining that they are missing crucial conditions to reach the necessary boost in production and adoption of zero-emission vehicles, flagging dwindling public interest and concerns about charging infrastructure are primary factors holding the market back.”
However, while that’s a relatively bleak assessment of the now, the future is most definitely all-EV, reckons Barnes: “While Ireland might be lagging behind on EV adoption, the reality is that EVs are the future. So it’s a case of when, not if, the transition will happen. We might be late to the party but we will get there in the end, purely because that’s where manufacturing will ultimately shift.
“So, while traditional ICE vehicles will remain on sale for the foreseeable future and people may also choose to hold on to their existing vehicles for longer, the traffic is headed one way, it’s simply a question about the pace of change ahead of us.”
So combustion is dead, then? Well, perhaps not quite. Even Barnes accepts that: “Where the [2035] bill proposes that all new vehicles sold in the EU should have a 100 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions, there is a consensus that EVs cannot be the only solution and that renewable fuels should be considered as another option if we’re to close the gap and achieve these ambitious targets.”
Kevin McPartlan of Fuels For Ireland (FFI), the body that represents the Irish fuel importers and retailers at Government level, reckons that synthetic and biofuels will still have a big role to play in Ireland’s motoring future.
“Advanced synthetic and biofuels are what we need to do, as well as all of the stuff we’re doing on EVs,” McPartlan, an electric car owner himself, told The Irish Times. “We’re not hitting emissions targets, we’re not hitting EV uptake targets, and the Government just seems to bury its head in the sand. Every time we miss a target, they just set a new one. That’s crazy.”
One car maker with a foot in both camps is Skoda, which is seeing strong sales – even in the falling EV market – of its all-electric Enyaq model and is about to introduce a second all-electric car in the shape of the new Elroq, yet which has equally gone about selling diesel-engine models modified to use HVO (hydro-treated vegetable oil), a renewable biofuel theoretically made from treated used cooking oil, and imported into Ireland by the likes of Certa and Maxol.
John Donegan is Skoda Ireland’s brand director, and in spite of the success of Skoda’s HVO-compatible models, he sees that there’s only one direction right now, and it’s electric.
“The first diesel cars appeared on Irish roads in 1981, and it took 25 years to reach 30 per cent market penetration. Last year, electric vehicles represented nearly 20 per cent of the market. Despite what the public may read or hear, much has been achieved in a relatively short period of time,” said Donegan.
“The long-term reality is that Irish motorists will not have a choice between burning fossil fuels and zero-emission driving. The European Union has been very clear about its climate objectives, and beyond 2035 very few brands sold in Europe will be powered by combustion engines. While it may not be a popular message, the decision will ultimately be taken out of the customers’ hands entirely.
“The Skoda Octavia, Karoq, Kamiq, and Kodiaq are some of our bestselling internal combustion engine models. However, they will be joined by – and eventually replaced by – similarly sized fully electric models. By 2030, we expect 50-70 per cent of our fleet to be fully electric. Unless something drastic changes, only battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and highly efficient plug-in hybrids will be feasible after 2030.”
Donegan added: “A lot of unwarranted negativity and misinformation continues to circulate on social media. However, I am confident that next year we will see a rebound in EV sales. Within the Skoda brand, we’re seeing more consumers than ever browsing and searching for electric vehicles, based on our web data. So I am very optimistic about a rebound in sales next year.”
According to BMW, decarbonising cars is about more than just filling them with batteries rather than petrol. Helen Westby, managing director of BMW Group Ireland, said: “Next year, we will bring the BMW brand into a new, consistently all-electric era with the ‘Neue Klasse.’ By the early 2030s, we will also see our Mini and Rolls-Royce brands transition to an exclusively all-electric product portfolio.
“This strategy is part of our vision to ensure that over 50 per cent of BMW Group’s global sales come from all-electric vehicles by 2030, though this will depend on key factors like the development of a comprehensive charging infrastructure. A key factor in the rapid adoption of electric mobility is an expanded, customer-friendly charging infrastructure. Data from the EU supports this, showing the importance of charging infrastructure both at member-state levels and across regions.”
One thing is clear, and that’s that car makers are currently being careful about making big promises. The early part of this decade saw lots of big talk from several brands about becoming electric-only by 2030, or even sooner, but now a lot of that has been walked back, and there is more ground opening up for continuing hybrid and plug-in hybrid sales.
According to Emma Toner, marketing director for Opel Ireland, this means Opel is steadily phasing out its petrol or diesel offerings and will soon be an electric and hybrid-only brand.
“In the case of Opel, the brand has clearly and consistently outlined its plan to only introduce new all-electric passenger car models by 2028 in Europe to meet crucial EU emissions targets, and that target remains today, recently reinforced by CEO, Florian Huettl,” said Toner.
“Indeed, our new Grandland will be introduced in petrol hybrid, plug-in petrol hybrid and electric only, with Frontera coming in petrol hybrid and electric only; petrol or diesel combustion derivatives will simply not be available to order in Ireland on these models. Other Stellantis Group [the vast conglomerate that owns Opel alongside Citroen, Peugeot, Fiat and many others – Ed] brands have all made similar declarations.
“As such, with the demise of combustion-only options, we anticipate strong growth in petrol hybrid and plug-in hybrid power trains for Opel but we equally expect to see sustained growth in electric versions too in 2025 and beyond. Hybrid power trains are the perfect introduction for customers to all-electric in the interim. Financial and tax incentives remain key to maintaining the segment.”
That overarching Government approach will be critical, and the balance of the market between electric and hybrid cars and a handful of combustion-only models in the next five-to-10 years will be predicated on what kind of environment the Irish Government creates.
“In the next five to 10 years, I like to think that we’ll see EVs start making a much larger percentage of new vehicle sales, especially as charging infrastructure improves and the technology becomes more affordable. That said, hybrids will likely still have a significant place, especially for drivers who aren’t ready to fully switch over to electric or need that flexibility for longer trips,” said Mark Barrett, managing director of group franchises at Harris Group.
“As for traditional internal combustion engine vehicles, their share will shrink steadily, especially with stricter emissions regulations. But ultimately, how much their market share decreases between now and 2030 will come down to the incentives that drivers will have that will encourage greener motoring.”
According to Jeremy Warnock, group product supply and distribution manager at Renault Ireland: “Renault is committed to electric vehicles, and having recently launched the Megane and Scenic E-Tech models, and with the Renault 5 and Renault 4 launching early next year, we will have EV options available in all the major segments.
“But it’s important to be able to meet the needs of customers who are not ready yet to make the move to electric, and to have cars suited to the infrastructure in all the markets in which Renault cars are sold – many European markets have a far less developed charging infrastructure than Ireland. In addition, uptake of EVs is influenced to a significant degree by incentives on both the purchase and ownership of EVs, so EU and individual government policies are key drivers in the power-train mix.”
Clear as mud? Not quite, perhaps. The salient fact is that sales of electric cars will have to grow, simply because that’s what the legislation calls for. We can debate endlessly the efficacy of that decision, and whether legislators might have been better off giving car manufacturers a zero-emissions target but then being agnostic about how that was achieved. It’s all moot – EVs are where we’re going; the speed at which we get there is realistically now down to what the Irish Government does next.
These words are being written on the eve of Budget 2025, at which point the game may change somewhat, but according to James Nix, vehicles policy manager at ecological think-tank Transport & Environment, we should still see electric cars push past a 50 per cent market share within the next three years: “We expect that full EVs will exceed half of all new car sales in Ireland during the second half of the 2020s. Whether that’s 2026/7 or the very end of the decade depends very much on coming budgets,” said Nix.
In Ireland’s case, he believes, certain reforms could help increase EV sales – for example, a “targeted EV leasing programme for lower-income homes that have few real alternatives to car travel”.
“France’s social leasing programme for EVs was heavily over-subscribed again this year and it’s important that Ireland adopts measures to better spread the benefits of vehicle electrification geographically and socially, and sooner rather than later,” Nix told The Irish Times.
“Then reform company car tax. Around 21 per cent of private buyers purchased a full EV in 2023. The comparable figure for company car sales was 13 per cent. Company cars make up nearly a third of overall sales, and there are simple solutions here. In Belgium company car depreciation allowances for cars with an engine will be completely gone by January 1st, 2026. With this reform taking hold, sales of full EVs in Belgium are currently touching 25 per cent.”
Next up, suggests Nix, is taking a long, hard look at the weights of vehicles in relation to tax: “Again, France is leading on this, with its VRT [vehicle registration tax] equivalent varied by weight since 2022. Estonia will vary its VRT by weight from January. In all countries that vary tax by weight, we expect it to dampen down the sales of ultra-large, ultra-heavy SUVs and pickup trucks.
“Acting against the increasing sales of ever-larger and heavier SUVs has benefits for air pollution, climate emissions, energy use, road safety, resource use, preserving space for other road users and social equity, as sales of ever-larger SUVs today increase purchase costs for second hand buyers tomorrow.
“Lighter, more aerodynamic cars use less energy, and so pushing back on SUV-isation also supports the ongoing shift to EVs by ensuring a more gradual growth path for the increased electricity demand from vehicles.”
Clearly, between now and the end of the decade, there will be a broad mix of electric, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid sales, with a dwindling number of non-hybrid combustion models. The balance of that mix will be down to decisions taken by car buyers and legislators, not the car makers themselves.
