Surge in registration of electric vehicles in Cork

New electric car registrations in Cork saw a significant surge in January 2026, with a 92.46% increase compared to January 2025.

A total of 868 such cars were registered in Cork last month, according to figures released by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI), focusing on new 26-1 vehicle registration statistics for the first month of the year.

This is a substantial increase on the Cork figure for January 2025, when there was a total of 451 electric cars registered.

Cork has 11.86% of the new electric car registrations nationally for January 2026, the second-highest county, after Dublin.

HIGHEST NUMBER TO DATE

Nationally, a total of 7,319 new electric cars were registered in January, up 48.7% on the 4,923 registrations in January 2025. This is the highest number of electric car registrations to date.

In Dublin, a total of 2,720 electric cars were registered last month.

Kildare was the third-highest county in Ireland for new electric vehicle registrations, at 440, followed by Meath at 335, Wicklow at 289 and Wexford at 248.

In the new car market share by engine type, hybrid (petrol electric) has taken the lead for the first time, at 28.28% of engine types, followed by electric at 21.15%, petrol at 20.94%, plug-in hybrid at 14.56%, and diesel at 12.48%.

Brian Cooke, director general of SIMI, said that the momentum in battery electric vehicle (BEVs) sales from last year has carried over into January 2026.

Overall, there were 4,527 new car registrations in Cork in January 2026, which is an increase of 8.87% on the previous year’s Cork figure of 4,158.

New car registrations nationwide for the month of January 2026 were up 3.3% (34,604) compared to January 2025 (33,499).