Electric cars have no clutch and no gearbox to change, so every one of them is an automatic and every one of them is covered by an automatic licence. As new cars shift towards electric, the set of vehicles that code 78 excludes is shrinking. That is a real argument for an automatic licence, and it is not the whole argument.
An electric car has one forward gear. There is no clutch pedal, no gear lever to work through a pattern, and nothing to stall. In licensing terms that makes every electric car an automatic, and it means an automatic licence covers every one of them without qualification.
That matters more than it sounds, because the usual objection to an automatic licence has always been about the range of cars it shuts you out of. The composition of that range is changing.
Why Every EV Is An Automatic
It is a consequence of how electric motors work rather than a design choice. A petrol engine produces useful power across a narrow band of revolutions, which is why it needs gears and something to disconnect the drive while you change them. An electric motor pulls from a standstill and keeps pulling across its whole range, so one fixed reduction is enough. Nothing to change, nothing to disengage.
So the two-pedal layout in an EV is not an automatic gearbox in the old sense. It is the absence of any need for one. Code 78 is defined as restricted to vehicles with automatic transmission, and an EV sits comfortably inside it: nobody is asking you to work a clutch, which is what the restriction is about.
What This Does To The Value Of An Automatic Licence
The restriction is worth exactly as much as the cars it excludes. If the proportion of new cars that are manual falls, the restriction costs you less.
That direction is now a matter of law rather than forecast. The government has legislated a pathway to all new cars and vans being zero emission by 2035, with an end to sales of new cars powered solely by an internal combustion engine from 2030.
Every zero emission car is an automatic, so the new car market is being steered on a published timetable towards the transmission your licence already covers.
You will see confident percentages quoted about how much of the market is already electric. Those numbers move every quarter and are frequently misquoted, so there are none on this page. The legislated timetable is the part stable enough to plan around.
The other half of the argument is about your own time. Learning to drive is a one-off investment of a great many hours, and the entitlement it buys lasts decades. Which way the vehicle fleet is heading over those decades is a fair thing to weigh, provided you weigh the cars available to you now alongside it rather than instead of it.
What It Does Not Fix
This is where the argument gets oversold, so be precise about it. The 2035 date applies to new cars. It says nothing about the cars already on the road, and those stay in circulation for well over a decade after they are sold.
- The cheap end of the used market will be full of manual petrol cars for many years yet
- Hire fleets abroad are still predominantly manual, and automatics carry a surcharge
- Employers with older or mixed vans will keep asking for a full manual licence
- The manual car parked outside your house today is still a manual car
So an automatic licence is a better bet than it was and still a restriction. If your first car is a two hundred pound runaround from a private seller, the electric argument does very little for you. Both sides are argued in automatic or manual licence: how to choose, and the legal position is in can you drive a manual on an automatic licence.
Learning In An Automatic, Driving An EV Later
The transfer is close to total. Same control layout, same job for the selector, no clutch in either. Somebody who learned in a petrol automatic can get into an electric car and drive it competently within a few minutes. What takes adjusting is the feel, and there are four things worth knowing before you first sit in one.
Regenerative braking
Lift off the accelerator in an EV and the motor becomes a generator, slowing the car and returning charge to the battery. The effect is much stronger than engine braking in a petrol car, and on the strongest settings the car will slow to a halt without you touching the brake pedal at all, which is what "one-pedal driving" means.
The habit it demands is earlier planning. You lift off sooner and further from the junction than you would in a petrol car, and you use the brake pedal less. The brake lights still come on when the deceleration is strong enough, so the driver behind is not left guessing.
Stop-start traffic is where it pays. On Mare Street between Hackney Central and Cambridge Heath you are rarely above twenty miles an hour and you are constantly slowing for a bus pulling out, a cyclist filtering past, or another set of lights.
In a petrol car that is the brake pedal several hundred times an hour. In an electric car on a strong regeneration setting it is mostly the accelerator, lifted early and progressively, with the car doing the rest. The skill it rewards is looking further ahead, which is the skill an examiner is marking anyway.
Instant torque
An electric motor delivers its full pull from a standstill. That makes an EV easy to move away smoothly, and it also makes it very easy to move away faster than you meant to. Treat the accelerator with more delicacy than you are used to, particularly on wet East London streets.
Joining the A12 at Bow you will reach the speed of the traffic sooner than you expect, and lifting off to correct produces a deceleration the driver behind has not planned for. Feed the power in gently and settle on a speed rather than chasing one.
Weight
A battery is heavy, and an electric car generally weighs more than the petrol car it is based on. More weight is more momentum, so leave more room in front than the size of the car suggests, particularly in the wet. The flip side is that it usually feels planted and settled, which is pleasant once you are used to it and slightly deceptive before you are.
Quiet
You lose engine noise as a source of feedback, which is a small thing for you and a large one for pedestrians. New electric cars are required to emit a sound at low speeds for exactly this reason, but do not rely on being heard around Whitechapel Market or outside a school at pick-up time.
The Highway Code hierarchy of road users puts the responsibility on the person who can do the greatest harm, and driving something almost silent through a crowded street is a good illustration of why.
It bites hardest where East London is busiest. Pulling out of a side road onto Barking Road, or passing a cyclist on the approach to Bow Roundabout, you are moving something heavy and nearly silent past people used to hearing a car coming.
The Highway Code asks for at least 1.5 metres when overtaking a cyclist at speeds of up to 30mph, and more space at higher speeds. In an electric car treat that as a floor rather than a target.
Is It Worth Insisting On An Electric Lesson Car?
Usually not, and the reason is that there is very little left to learn once you can drive a petrol automatic. The pedals are the same two, the selector does the same job, the mirrors and the steering are identical, and the difference in feel is a lesson's worth of adjustment rather than a course.
Insisting on it carries real costs. Electric school cars are far less common than petrol automatics, so you get a shorter list of instructors and less room to move if you need to reschedule around a test slot. Given how long the waiting lists in London can be, that is a lot to trade for a difference you could absorb in an hour after you pass.
The case for it is narrower and it is legitimate. If you already own an electric car, or you know the car waiting for you at the end of this is electric, then learning in the thing you will actually drive is worth something, particularly if you want one-pedal driving to feel ordinary rather than novel by the time you are alone in it.
Otherwise take the automatic hours that are genuinely available to you, and spend the time you save on the routes out of your test centre.
Taking Your Test In An Electric Car
It is an ordinary automatic test. Same sheet, same routes, same limit of 15 driving faults with no serious or dangerous fault, and the same category B licence with code 78 at the end. Nothing about the fuel or the motor appears anywhere in the marking.
Two practicalities. The car must meet the DVSA's rules for a car used on test like any other, and the tell me and show me questions still apply, though some answers differ in a car without an engine bay full of fluids. Learn them against the car you will test in. The rest is in what is different about an automatic driving test.
The Used Market Is Where This Gets Decided
Most arguments about automatic licences that go wrong go wrong here. People weigh the new car market, where the direction is settled and legislated, against their own likely purchase, which for a first car is usually neither new nor nearly new.
A car sold today can still be on the road fifteen years later, so manual petrol and diesel cars will keep turning over in the used market long after the last one is built, and the cheapest end of it will change last. If your first car is a cash purchase from a private seller, that is exactly the segment where an automatic licence narrows your choice most.
Two things soften that. Automatics have been common in the used market for years, so this is a narrower choice rather than no choice. And the cars entering the used market now are far more likely to be automatic than those entering it a decade ago, so the constraint loosens each year rather than tightening.
The Practical Conclusion
If you are choosing a licence now and expect the cars in your future to be new or nearly new, an automatic licence is aligned with where the vehicle fleet is legislated to go. If your future involves borrowed vans, cheap used cars or hire cars in southern Europe, it is not, and no amount of electric car news changes that.
One thing worth saying before that. Nothing in the electric shift removes the need to be able to drive. An electric car is easier to operate and no easier to place on a narrow street, judge at a junction, or park between two vans in Bow. The licence covers the car. The skill is the same skill.
The honest framing is that the electric shift removes one of the arguments for a manual licence rather than all of them. Where the rest of them land is a personal question, and the sequence for earning either licence is the one set out in learning to drive in East London. Rates are on the prices page and the lesson itself on the automatic lessons page.
Automatic lessons are £37 an hour, or £350 for a block of ten, and the skills transfer directly to any electric car you go on to drive.
Book automatic lessonsQuestions about EVs and licences
Can I drive an electric car on an automatic licence?
Yes, any of them within category B. Electric cars have no clutch pedal, so they fall inside the code 78 restriction rather than outside it.
Are all electric cars automatic?
In effect, yes. An electric motor pulls from a standstill across its whole speed range, so a single fixed reduction gear is enough and there is nothing to change or disengage.
Do I need a special licence or training for an electric car?
No. It is an ordinary category B car. Regenerative braking and the instant response of the motor take a little adjustment, but nothing about the licence changes.
Is it worth learning in an electric car specifically?
Only if you know you will be driving one soon. The controls are the same as any automatic, so learning in a petrol automatic transfers almost completely. Availability and cost usually decide it rather than principle.
Will a manual licence become useless?
Not for a long time. New car sales are legislated towards zero emission by 2035, but the used market, hire fleets abroad and older commercial vehicles will keep manual entitlement useful well beyond that.
If the car you expect to be driving in five years has two pedals, learning in two pedals is not a compromise. One hour is enough to see how it feels.
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Published 1 September 2026. Prices and DVSA figures are checked when this page is revised. If anything here has changed, ring us and we will confirm it.