ENERGY EFFICIENT VEHICLES

I’m encouraged by the latest figures which show a sharp increase in the number of hybrid and electric vehicles on our roads.
Latest figures from the Department of Transport show that there were 32,083 fuel type and electric vehicles on the roads in 2018, up 51.9% on 2017, while the number of fully electric vehicles went up 65% year on year to 4,825 vehicles.
Another 2,789 vehicles were petrol/plug-in hybrid electric models, more than double the previous year.
The roll out of energy efficient vehicles is inevitable and I would urge everybody to consider acquiring them as soon as is feasibly possible.
There are incentives to buy that people can avail of and the network of public charging points is getting bigger. You can also get grants towards putting charging points at your own home.
We have a long way to go in terms of the national fleet of cars but the momentum is there and it will only increase.
The figures show the total number of taxed vehicles on the road on December 31 2018 was 2,717,722, an increase of 41,843 on the previous year.
A total of 1,386,208 passenger cars are now taxed based on their CO2 emissions rating, a 15.99% increase on the previous year. CO2-based vehicles now represent 65.8% of the overall national fleet.
The number of new vehicles taxed was 157,865, a decrease of 3,975 on the previous year.
For fuel consumption, 36% of vehicles ran on petrol, while 62% ran on diesel.
In all, there were 2.9 million current driving licences as of December 31 2018, of which 240,064 were provisional licences.