Drop in private cars licensed January 2019

In January 2019, 22,279 new private cars were licensed, a drop of 13.7% compared with January 2018, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office

The number of used (imported) private cars licensed in January 2019 was 8,131, an increase of 1.3% when compared with January 2018.

The licensing figures also show that:

- Hyundai (2,818) was the most popular make of new private car licensed followed by Ford (2,301), Toyota (2,270), Volkswagen (2,135) and Nissan (2,033).

Together these five makes represent 51.9% of all new private cars licensed in January 2019.

-In January 2019, 48.5% of all new private cars licensed were diesel while 92.7% of new private cars licensed in the same period were in the A/B CO2 emissions bands. See table 2.

-There was a decrease of 11.3% in the number of new goods vehicles licensed in January 2019 bringing the total to 2,690.

The total number of new vehicles licensed during January 2019 was 26,374 compared with 30,111 during the same month in 2018, a decrease of 12.4%.

- On a seasonally adjusted basis, new private cars licensed decreased by 14.3% in January 2019 compared with December 2018.

- The number of seasonally adjusted used (imported) private cars licensed increased by 0.2% over the same period.

- In January 2019, 15.3% of imported private cars licensed were less than three years old (vehicles previously registered abroad since 2017) while 525 (6.5%) were ten years or older.