AIBU to think DD might as well learn to drive on an automatic car?

I don't know what the problems with the electric vehicles were, I know some were battery related. This is a main dealership, they aren't going to go broadcasting the problems. I do know very few cars are selling. My ds now has my 15 year old diesel estate, kept in tip top condition by my old school DH. I know one person with an electric and one with a hybrid. The rest have petrol or diesel, like the older land rovers.

I can only drive autos and have had no problem sourcing older, cheap cars. The newest car I've bought is 6 years old and that was only because the mileage was double what it would be at that age so it was the same price as my usual 10 year old cars!

I think there's a bit of conflating auto with electric on this thread. I agree that all electric everywhere is a long way off for us normal folk (I'm rural and there's nowhere to charge!) but cars are definitely slowly shifting more auto. In 15-20 years that should mean a higher percentage in the used market.

This x 1000.

Exactly. Plus the ones saying 'oh you'll all be in EVs soon' - what about those of us that have nowhere to charge them?

A lot of the people here saying "everyone drives automatics" and "you can't buy manual cars anymore" clearly live in privileged bubbles where they're able to buy or lease brand-new, premium-brand cars every couple of years.

A lot of us can't afford to do that.

😂 We most certainly will NOT all be driving electric cars in the near future, I think that's very obvious!

I think it's a good idea to try learning in a manual to start with for all the reasons posted. If it's too difficult after a good try, ditch it for auto but it seems really daft to me to not try manual initially.

I can't believe a PP thinks passing your test in a manual means you can't drive an auto 😂

Agreed. When I learned to drive last year, everyone was telling me to learn automatic. I only went manual because the only instructor available taught manual. Learning probably took a bit longer. The advantage is a bigger choice of cars to buy.

But the vast majority of new non-electric vehicles are also automatic now

For the sake of just making learning to drive slightly easier, I would still encourage new drivers to learn how to drive manual cars. It's just pointlessly limiting what you can drive otherwise.

Yes, you might plan to buy an automatic but if you need to rent a car or a van, or you need a courtesy car or whaever, it's still extremely useful to not be limited to just automatics.

Yeah, I recently did some work driving company vans. The one I used 95% of the time was automatic but they had several manual ones. I'd have been a bit screwed if I'd not been able to drive them.

I'd been driving nothing but manuals since I passed my test before I did that job. Getting used to an automatic took me all of two minutes - I was confident driving it before I got out the car park. You can't do that the other way around.

My 5 all passed their test on a manual at age 17 as did I. I think it is important eg sometimes they have to hire a van to move furniture at university stage and beyond. One of my did post office work and had to drive a Royal Mail van at one stage. I have an automatic now but when one child moved house we hired the biggest van I have ever driven and it was manual. My twins share a manual car and sometimes I have to drive it.
One of their friends passed on automatic only and when he wants to use one of those new services where in London you can pick up a hired car for short journeys (cannot remember name of that thing) he has to walk very long distances until he can get to one that is automatic rather than manual.

Do you really think there will be a significant number of people driving manual cars in, say, the year 2074 when plenty of us will still be alive. Unless the planet has been wiped out by the combustion engine by then, of course…

Because they will have learned to drive in a manual, will be nervous, young and inexperienced drivers with no experience in an automatic car. They are also both autistic/ADHD [like both myself and DH] so of course if they learn to drive manual, they will expect to drive a manual.

Not that it’s any of your business of course or relevant to the @whiteroseredrose ’s thread which asks: if you have an automatic/hybrid car and given these are increasingly more prevalent, should you simply encourage your DC to learn on an automatic. My answer is, yes. Why would you do anything else?

For our DS it came down to availability of instructors - there were more instructors with manual cars and even they were thin on the ground. Good to have options - especially when hiring cars - my H has automatic license so sometimes we can’t share driving. Also when I have hired transits in the past they have always been manual (and great fun to drive) but that may have changed, it’s been a while. But agree it’s likely to be less and less useful.

Not for me, changing gears is just drudgery to me. I did learn in a manual, but have driven automatics for the past 25 years and would never go back to manual.

My dd is 15. We've already said just learn automatic. It's so much easier and I can't see a situation where she'd ever need to drive a manual.

Logarithmic tables and slide rules are proper ways of multiplying numbers, calculators and smartphones are for lazy people.
Same as A to Z’s , Yellow Pages and encyclopedias are the proper ways of finding information, Google is for lazy people

You said you'd have to buy another car for them to use, should they pass in a manual. Why?

No I’ve not got it wrong - they will likely never have access to a manual car so they will never need to have a manual licence or know how to drive one. They only need an automatic licence to drive our cars and any future electric or hybrid cars.

No point whatsoever in learning to driving in a manual car.

I've got a manual petrol car from 2014 that is fully ULEZ compliant.

Auto insurance is more expensive and auto cars are more expensive. If you have the money to throw at it, why not. I couldn’t do auto only as I am a mechanic and need to be able to drive everything. Also it was a lot cheaper. Might be cheaper to buy and insure a cheap manual for practicing rather than do auto only. Look at insurance quotes for both provisional and new driver

Exactly. The overwhelming majority of young people buying their first cars need them to be as cheap to buy and insure as possible, which means a lot of them are going to be driving base-spec small hatchbacks which could be 10+ years old. Good luck finding one of those that isn't manual.

I passed in a manual but have only driven an automatic since (15 years). There's absolutely no way I could drive a manual now. Of course with a bit of practice I could pick it up, but in an emergency, with adrenaline pumping - no way. It simply wouldn't be safe.

Honestly, how many times have people needed to drive someone else's car in an emergency? Most of my friends seem to have hybrids that are automatic anyway. It was a bit more expensive to hire an automatic in Spain last year, but not a huge amount. Ditto buying our second hand car... a bit more, but not prohibitively.

I think in 2024 its absolutely fine. DS1 had quite a few lessons in manual and he really can't cope with gears and clutch, so his instructor suggested that he move to automatic.

I was originally of the school of thought that being able to drive manual is a useful skill BUT whilst this may have been true when I passed in 1992, I don't think it is the case any more.

i hate driving auto's with a passion. completely souless. Learn in a manual and have the choice.