ONLINE MARKETPLACE DONE Deal has reported a significant spike in searches for electric and hybrid vehicles, up 244% on 30 months ago.

The details come in Done Deal’s latest Motor Industry Review which examined car sales for the first six months of the year.

In a further demonstration of the increased speed of adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, their sales for the first half of this year has already outstripped all of last year.

Overall, their 12% market share is still behind sales of new diesel cars at 47% and petrol cars at 41%. However, that 12% represents a huge jump since 2015 when sales of electric and hybrid cars made up just 1.5% of the market.

Those sales translate to an average of 1,600 new hybrid and fully electric vehicles coming out of Irish showrooms every month.

The best-selling new fully electric vehicles so far this year are: the Hyundai Kona, the Nissan Leaf, the Volkswagen E Golf, the Renault Zoe and the BMW I3.

Four of the five best-selling new hybrid vehicles are manufactured by Toyota with only the Kia Niro making that particular list.

The Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) last week revealed that new car sales were down by 7.4% in the first six month of this year compared to last.

SIMI described the figures as “disappointing” and blamed it in part on “the uncertain trading environment arising from Brexit”.

The registration of new car sales were down across each of the 26 counties but Louth and Dublin observed the smallest declines at 2.27% and 2.29%.

Used cars

With the sales of new cars in decline, there’s been an uptick in demand for used cars and Leinster recorded the largest increase (6%) of used car imports in the year to date.

In the first six months of the year, 29,775 used cars were imported and registered in Leinster with 11,814 in Munster, and 11,531 in the Connacht/Ulster region.

In terms of car makers, there is a similar pattern in both new and used cars with four of five of the car makers the same in both categories.

Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford and Nissan each occupy the first four places in both categories with Skoda making the top five in the new car category and Audi in the used car category.

Done Deal Done Deal

Done Deal also looked at some of the most searched for cars in the first half of this year and compared their current asking prices to their new sale value in 2016 to examine depreciation.

In that measurement, the Skoda Oktavia depreciated  by the smallest amount at about a third over the three years. 

Note: Journal Media Ltd has shareholders in common with Done Deal Ltd.