New statistics show that only 16 new electric cars were registered in County Donegal last month.
The new Central Statistics Office car registration data for September shows that a total of 458 new vehicles were registered in Donegal.
The vast majority of these were mainly powered by fossil fuels; with 208 diesel vehicles, 145 petrol vehicles, and 89 hybrid vehicles registered.
That means the 16 purely electric vehicles registered accounted for only 3.49% of all new cars in Donegal.
Briain Kelly from consumer energy information website EnergyEfficiency.ie says that it is not realistic for the Government to expect to have 945,000 electric vehicles on the road by the end of the decade.
“Ireland’s 2030 EV target of almost one million EVs is probably not possible with current trends,” said Mr Kelly.
“Electric vehicle targets will be missed across Europe for a number of reasons. While electric cars have tremendous benefits, it is proving difficult to persuade many motorists.”
“There are still some things we can do to encourage people to go electric though, such as installing more charging stations in rural areas to eliminate range anxiety.”
