A quarter of driving licence passes will be for automatic-only cars by 2026, reckons the AA

Tucked away that 'save the manuals' placard? Time to dust it off. The AA reckons that a quarter of learners will qualify with a licence limited to automatic cars only by 2026.

And it's been building slowly over the last few years. Just five per cent of newly qualified drivers passed with an automatic-only licence in 2021, but the next year, that almost trebled. Numbers haven’t been finalised for the last 12 months, but the best maths bods from the AA Driving School reckon it’ll creep up to around 20 per cent and climb further as the decade progresses.

That significant shift likely has something to do with the impending switch to electric cars. The majority of EVs work on a one-gear transmission basis, meaning more electronic management and no need to step on a clutch.

However, plenty of folks are still learning in a manual car – 83 per cent to be exact.  

That’s probably because learning in an automatic doesn’t actually make it any easier to pass your test. In fact, according to the AA’s figures, six per cent more learners qualify by manually rowing the gears, possibly in a knackered old supermini.

Camilla Benitz, MD of AA Driving School, said: “As more people become confident with the idea of their driving future being electric, the idea of needing to drive a manual vehicle will feel irrelevant to many. Indeed, we see many are already choosing to not only learn in an automatic, but to learn in an electric vehicle.

“We see this trend continuing and the need for manual tuition declining, though manual licences will remain important for some drivers as they will want the option to drive a larger variety of vehicles. Pre-pandemic more females than males took automatic tests, but we are now seeing male numbers increase and expect that trend to continue at a faster pace than before due to more automatic vehicles being available and more people buying EVs and hybrids.”

Possibly fun fact alert! It became possible to get an automatic-only licence 55 years ago, almost to the day.