Young motorists who cannot drive manual cars face £900 insurance hit
Young motorists who can only drive automatic cars are paying £900 more a year for their insurance as record numbers abandon manuals.
Insurance premiums for drivers aged 25 and under have risen £644 a year on average in the last year to surpass £2,000.
But for young motorists who are only able to drive automatics, premiums rose by £916 to £2,803 a year on average, according to Compare the Market.
It comes as learner drivers are opting for automatic cars during their driving tests in greater numbers than ever before. Official figures show tests in automatic vehicles rose to a record high, with 324,000 automatic-only tests being taken last year – an increase of about a third.
The figures showed that automatic-only drivers failed their tests more often than those driving manual cars, with 48pc of learners in manual cars passing versus 43pc of candidates in automatics.
Some 865,000 driver qualification checks were carried out last year, according to figures from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA).
Of these, roughly a third were for automatic-only drivers, despite two in three cars on the road being fitted with manual gearboxes, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, an industry body.
The rise of tests being taken in automatic cars was partly attributed to the increasing popularity of electric cars. By design, most electric cars are single-speed, making them effectively automatic.
A number of manufacturers, including Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have begun phasing out gearboxes from new vehicles as fewer drivers learn to drive manual cars.
The exception has been Toyota, who announced last year that a manual or semi-automatic gearbox will be an option on its next generation of electric vehicles, as part of an initiative to make the cars “fun to drive”.
Learners who pass their test in an automatic car need a separate licence to drive a manual. Automatic cars typically have a higher purchase price than manual cars, making them more expensive to insure.
Automatic gearboxes also tend to be more expensive to repair than their manual counterparts, pushing up premiums even further, according to GoCompare, another comparison site.
Insurance premiums have surged for all drivers due to high repair cost inflation, and account for 66pc of total running costs. However, average annual fuel costs have also dropped from £851 to £799 as wholesale energy prices fall, Compare the Market found.
Julie Daniels, of the comparison site, said steep rises in premiums for under-25s risked putting off young people from driving altogether. Four in 10 young drivers said they may have to take out additional debt to afford to stay on the road.
She said: “The substantial rise in the cost of car insurance could make driving prohibitively expensive for lots of young people.
“The increasing cost of car insurance is concerning for young drivers across the board, particularly those who have only learnt to drive automatic cars.
“These drivers face paying over £900 more this year to insure their car. If the cost of driving continues to increase, it may force some young motorists off the road.”
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