See all Motoring NewsHaving predicted that diesel sales in Ireland could fall to just 55 per cent of the market, down from more than 75 per cent not so long ago, Toyota Ireland is now revising its forecast down yet further, saying that diesel cars are likely to account for a mere 45 per cent of new car sales in 2018.
That would be a dramatic reversal of fortune for diesel, exactly a decade on from when the change to a CO2-based car taxation system tipped the scaled dramatically in the favour of the black pump.
Toyota is also, possibly not surprisingly, predicting that hybrid sales will take a dramatic uptick, from 3.4 per cent of the market in 2017 to a more robust seven per cent in 2018. By 2020, Toyota expects diesel to account for just 20 per cent of sales, with hybrid cars taking 25 per cent.
In fairness, it would say that - no-one has invested more heavily in hybrid tech than Toyota, but the underlying figures do seem to bear these predictions out. German diesel sales, for instance, fell by seven per cent in just one year, and Toyota's Irish hybrid sales are growing fast, approaching half of all Toyota sales here.
Commenting on the year gone by and his 2018 forecast, Steve Tormey, Toyota Ireland's MD said: "The demise of diesel is very plain to see, but our feeling is that the Irish market will move out of diesel far quicker than the industry would like, or believe.
In our planning for 2018, we'd predicted our hybrid mix of total passenger car sales to grow from 30 per cent to 45 per cent. However the demand coming into 2018 is more like 55 per cent hybrid. Our diesel demand coming into 2018 is down from a 38 per cent mix to 18 per cent, which we had predicted, as Irish consumers look to protect their future resale value and the environment from a health point view.”
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