This Is Local London: An all electric Porsche. Will everyone be driving electric cars in the future?An all electric Porsche. Will everyone be driving electric cars in the future?

Currently in the UK, most people will learn to drive a manual transmission in a car. This then means that they can go into any car, including automatic cars, to drive them. However with the ban of petrol and diesel cars in 2030 looming over us, will the next generation ever learn to drive a manual transmission? 

Due to air pollution and climate change, the UK government has decided that by the year 2030, the sale of all new petrol vans and cars will be banned. This means that you can’t buy a brand new petrol or diesel car from 2030. This is to encourage people to buy electric cars, which pollute the air less, but don’t necessarily have a lower carbon footprint. 

Driving instructor’s cars are always quite new and up to date, because then the cars are more reliable and have better safety features; however, by 2030 they won’t be able to buy new petrol or diesel cars to teach people how to drive in. 

Would they consider completely getting rid of their petrol fleets and replacing them with electric cars? 

 

If they did do this, people might never get the chance to learn to drive a manual. 

This might seem like it’s no problem, as you’ll only be able to buy new electric cars, which don’t have a transmission, but this doesn’t mean that petrol cars will be banned from the road immediately. Currently, new drivers don’t generally have the funding to be able to afford a nice new car, let alone an electric car, so they would most likely buy an older, manual petrol car. But if there is nowhere for them to learn how to drive one, what will happen?

 

A possible solution is for driving instructors to keep running older manual cars, but they wouldn’t be as reliable. There is the possibility that electric cars could have fake manual transmissions (such as the one that Toyota has filed a patent for recently) to train drivers, but it wouldn’t quite be the same. There is also a problem for young adults who want to learn how to drive a manual, for the enjoyment of driving sportier manual cars. They would want to get their license somehow.

In the future, driving licenses could be for electric cars only.