The number of automatic cars on UK roads has risen by 118 percent in a decade – and autos now make up almost one in three cars in use.
The statistic is a stark contrast to a little over a decade ago. Back in 2014, automatics comprised only 16.3 percent of the cars on Britain’s roads.
This means the number of automatics has increased from 7.1 million to more than 15.5 million in just a decade.
The number of manual cars has only increased by 2.4 percent, from 36.6 million to 37.5 million.
Automotive data specialist CAP HPI says the volume of automatics has increased ‘exponentially’ every year since 2014 – while manual numbers have fallen for the past five years.
Last year, more than 1.5 million new automatic cars were registered, a near-tripling of 2014’s 538,000 cars.
Manual cars, meanwhile, have plummeted during the last decade, from 708,000 in 2014 to a mere 274,000 last year.
Brands that are among the automatic leaders include Kia, which accounts for 5.1 percent of all automatic registrations, Land Rover with 4.0 percent and MG with 3.9 percent.
Automatic appeal
“Changing driving habits, especially in congested urban areas, have made automatics more appealing to drivers,” said CAP HPI senior data director Stacey Warn.
“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.”
Car makers have responded by reducing manual gearbox line-ups – with some big brands eliminating them entirely.
What’s more, growing numbers of new drivers are opting for automatic-only driving licences. In 2022, there were 550,000 drivers with auto-only licenses; by 2022, this had more than doubled to over 1.1 million.
“Estimates suggest that by next year, a quarter of learners will qualify with a license limited to automatic cars only,” added Warn.
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