Analysis of transmission data has found that cars with an automatic gearbox make up nearly a third of the cars on the road. The numbers have risen by 118% over a decade.
Between 2014 and 2024, the volume of cars with an automatic gearbox has risen by 13%, from 16.3% of all cars on the road, known as the car parc, to 29.3% by the end of 2024.
In 2014, there were 7.1 million autos on the roads. A decade later and this has more than doubled to over 15.5 million, an increase of 8.4 million vehicles. Over the same time span, the amount of manual cars increased by 2.4% from 36.6 million to 37.5 million. The volume of automatics has risen exponentially every year since 2014 while the volumes of manuals has been falling for the past five years.
Registration data showed that the amount of autos has nearly tripled from 538,000 new registrations in 2014 to over 1.5 million in 2024. In the same period, the number of new manual vehicles fell from 708,000 to 274,000. 2020 was the final year in which the amount of manual cars increased in volume with 23,000 registrations.
“Changing driving habits, especially in congested urban areas, have made automatics more appealing to drivers for their ease of use in stop-start traffic,” Stacey Ward, senior data director at cap hpi which carried out the research said. “Advances in technology over the past decade have also greatly improved automatic transmissions’ efficiency and responsiveness.
“The rise in popularity of EVs, which are always automatic, has significantly contributed to the increasing shift towards automatics over manual. Manufacturers have responded by reducing manual gearbox options, with some major brands eliminating them entirely from their lineups. Additionally, more new drivers are opting for automatic-only driving licenses. In 2012, there were just 550,000 drivers with automatic licences. In 2022, there were over 1.1 million, with this figure expected to continue to increase. Estimates suggest that by next year, a quarter of learners will qualify with a licence limited to automatic cars only.”
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