For many teenagers, it feels like the first taste of true adulthood: sinking the clutch to the floor, coaxing the gearstick into first and lurching into motion.
But soon, such a milestone could seem as archaic as travelling by horse and cart.
At least half of all AA and BSM driving instructors will teach only in automatic cars within the next decade, internal data suggests, marking a decisive shift away from manual-transmission lessons.
In January 2022, 86% of instructors working with the two driving schools taught in manual vehicles. By early 2025, that figure had dropped to 75.3%. If that rate of change continues, manual driving instructors could soon become, in the words of industry insiders, a “niche business”.
Some in the industry expect the change to happen even faster. Mark Born, the head of the AA and BSM driving instructor academy, said instructors were adapting more quickly than learners.
“Among new instructors entering the profession, 36% now choose to teach exclusively in automatic cars,” he said. “In the next five years, that trajectory will start to accelerate dramatically and in 10 years – if not far sooner – I’d guess that manual driving instructors will start to be in the clear minority, if not actually a niche business.”
Manual lessons would, at that point, become more expensive than automatic ones, he said. “There will be more people wanting to learn to drive manuals – because those are the cars that their parents are handing down to them – than instructors able to teach them.”
Learners in automatic cars can focus on hazard awareness and road positioning earlier than those in manuals – but tend to have lower test pass rates. Photograph: Ian Allenden/Alamy
This shift occurs alongside a significant decline in the number of driving instructors. Between April 2011 and April 2024, the number of approved driving instructors in the UK fell by more than 6,000.
Adam Bragg, the co-founder of Drive, a driving instructor training company, said instructors were “crossing over to automatics as quickly as they can”, but learner demand was proving slower to adapt.
“The demand from learners [to have lessons in automatic cars] is slower than we expected, which is largely down to new drivers being given hand-me-down cars, which are currently predominantly manuals,” he said.
Bragg considers his family a case in point. He is keeping their manual car six years longer than he otherwise would so it is available for his daughter when she turns 17. “My family is far from alone in making these sorts of decisions around when they’re going to go electric,” he said. “It’s only when hand-me-down cars become electric that manual driving instructors become a thing of the past.”
The AA Driving School has forecast that by 2025–26, more than one in four driving test passes will be in automatic vehicles – a rise driven in part by growing electric vehicle adoption and regulatory pressure.
Born said he anticipated changes to the licensing system to keep pace, including the introduction of a fast-track conversion route for learners who passed their test in an automatic car but later wished to drive a manual. Currently, those who pass their test in an automatic vehicle are not permitted to drive manual cars without retaking the full practical test.
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“Conversations are already being had around whether those who have learned in an automatic car could do a minimum amount of extra training, or spend time in a simulator, to get a licence that will allow them to use a manual,” he said.
The shift could add to pressure on an already overstretched test system: driving instructor Donna Michelle Evans and her pupil Menelik Calvin said this year that learners were waiting months for a test slot. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
Recent data indicates that learners in automatic vehicles typically require fewer lessons to reach test readiness – about 25 to 35 hours, compared with an average of 45 hours for manual learners. The simplified mechanics of automatic vehicles eliminate the need for gear and clutch control, allowing learners to focus on hazard awareness and road positioning earlier.
However, automatic learners tend to have lower pass rates. In 2022–23, the pass rate for automatic driving tests was approximately 43%, compared with 48% for manual tests.
The change could put further strain on an already overstretched driving test system, said Jason Tilley, of the Tilley school of motoring in Nottingham. As of March 2025, nearly three-quarters of test centres across Great Britain were reporting waiting times close to the legal maximum of 24 weeks.
“People pass their tests quicker if they’re learning to drive automatic cars, which will help us get through the backlog of people waiting for lessons more quickly – but worsen the problems at the test-centre end of the pipeline,” he said. “There are no easy answers.”
