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Roughly one in every four driving tests in Britain are now being taken in automatic vehicles, per latest figures, as drivers opt for more EVs and shy away from manual transmissions.

Increasing Trend Toward Automatic Vehicles

Figures show that 470,000 of the 1.8 million licensing exams taken in Great Britain during the past year were done in automatic vehicles.

Insurer AA said the shift is being driven by the UK's prohibition on new petrol and diesel cars coming in the year 2030.

Emma Bush, a top official of AA's driving school, said that the need to know how to operate a manual transmission car is becoming "less important for numerous people."

Qualification Requirements

To get a complete driver's license for Great Britain, a individual must pass their assessment in a car with stick shift.

If the exam is completed in an automatic vehicle, the driver would get a restricted certification, limiting them to driving automobiles with self-shifting gearbox only.

Northern Ireland grants its separate driving licences.

Upcoming Shifts

Ms Bush said that individuals learning to drive are "feeling secure with the concept of their driving future being electric."

"As we head closer to the year 2030 and the restriction on the internal combustion engine vehicles, a growing percentage of trainees will prefer to train in an electric vehicle as that is what they will expect to use."

Policy Changes

After the national vote in the previous year, the ruling party pledged to restore the combustion engine prohibition to the next decade, after the ex-PM the prior government pushed it back to 2035.

Economic Benefits

The decreased operational expenditures of electric and hybrid vehicles is also appealing to a lot of individuals.

EVs can be considerably pricier than a petrol or diesel car or a hybrid vehicle upfront, but the price difference is narrowing.

Furthermore, EV owners can expect to reduce expenditures on gas and repairs outlays.

Teacher Viewpoint

An industry professional, the operator of a driving academy in a UK town, stated that automatic cars are "the future" as the car industry moves towards electric vehicles.

For student motorists, the instructor noted, automatics can make the exam simpler, as "there's just a lot less to do."

Inexperienced drivers can "wreck a transmission system," Ms Howe added, stating that stress may cause them to shut down the motor.

She also pointed out the shift was positive for road safety as "drivers are more alert" driving an auto transmission vehicle.

"It simplifies the driving experience - it's less work for the motorist to do so they can focus better on the driving conditions."

Numerical Growth

Drivers attitudes toward EVs have evolved dramatically in just over a decade.

The number of licensing exams taken in automatic cars was over 87,000 in 2012/13, or roughly six percent of total exams, according to the figures.

That statistic rose to 479,556 in the 2024-2025 period, the latest interval with comprehensive figures, or twenty-six percent.

The AA is predicting that twenty-nine percent of every exam will be conducted in self-shifting cars in 2025/26.

Demographic Variations

The figures also revealed that an increasing number of males are choosing to take their tests in automatic cars.

In the early 2010s, 23.2% of trainees taking tests in self-shifting cars were male drivers. Last year, that number was 39.1%.

The pass rate for automatics in the previous year was somewhat less than for stick-shift vehicles. But, the disparity has decreased since 2012.