Ireland's EV share reached 18.9% in 2025. Here is what changed

Battery-electric cars took 18.89% of Irish new passenger-car registrations in 2025, on 23,601 cars, up 35.1% on 2024 (SIMI, 2 January 2026). That compares with 14.41% in 2024 and 14.90% in 2022. Including hybrids and plug-in hybrids, electrified powertrains took more than 56% of the market in 2025, on SIMI's figures.

Powertrain share, Ireland 2022 to 2025

Year	Petrol	Diesel	Hybrid	PHEV	BEV
2022	30.16%	26.77%	19.29%	6.76%	14.90%
2023	30.07%	22.16%	18.54%	8.28%	18.70%
2024	30.31%	22.80%	20.92%	10.02%	14.41%
2025	25.11%	17.09%	22.48%	14.82%	18.89%

Year-end shares as published by SIMI for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. For longer context, diesel held about 70% of the Irish market in 2016.

What changed in 2025

2025 was a recovery year rather than a first breakthrough. Electric registrations had fallen 23.6% in 2024, from 22,852 to 17,459, before climbing to a record 23,601 in 2025, passing the previous record year of 2023. BEV share rose by about 4.5 percentage points in the year. In its monthly releases SIMI credits Government incentives for the recovery, naming the SEAI grant, VRT relief and the 0% benefit-in-kind threshold as the supports it wants extended (SIMI, 1 September 2026). Plug-in hybrids grew too, from 10.02% to 14.82% of the market, while petrol and diesel both lost share.

What happened next

The 2025 recovery carried into 2026. From January to September 2026 Ireland registered 35,192 battery-electric cars, up 57.3%, and electric became the largest single powertrain at 27.4% of the year to date (SIMI Motorstats, data to 30 September 2026; RTE, 1 October 2026). The clearest warning from elsewhere is Germany, where battery-electric registrations fell 27.4% in 2024 after its federal grant ended abruptly in December 2023 (see our Germany BEV deep-dive).

Source & methodology

Powertrain shares are SIMI's published year-end new-car registration shares, calculated on national passenger-car totals. Electrified categories follow SIMI's classification: hybrid (HEV) excludes plug-in hybrids; BEV is battery-electric only. SIMI Motorstats monthly data, which the dashboard uses, is revised after the year-end release and can differ slightly. Live charts and county-level breakdowns are available on the Ireland dashboard.