We all hated our driving tests, surely. If you're young and hip like half of the PH editorial team, you may have had the luxury of hill-start assist, reversing sensors, maybe even blind-spot monitoring so you didn't swerve violently in and out of the dual carriageway lane next to you. If you're old (sorry to the PH bosses), it was probably more a struggle of balancing the clutch without revving the nuts off it while pulling away up a hill, and perfecting your parallel parking; a skill many clearly racked up a major or two on, given the state of the parking outside the office...
Well, be prepared to scrap plenty of that; the future of learning to drive in an electric car is about to be upon us. No gears, no questions about where the engine coolant has to go; just get in and press go, like any iPhone The Youths are already used to.
It's lucky most kiddos have their parents to help them through the magical journey. Peugeot has recently done a survey that found 40 per cent of parents would prefer their children to jump straight into an EV for their driving lessons. There's no time like the present to save the planet, right? That said, nearly a third of parents believed learning to drive or owning an EV would be more difficult than petrol or diesel. You just can't win.
The electric learning future does pose some conundrums, primarily if the art of learning to drive a manual will start to die out quicker than the manual cars will. There's a reduction in mechanical understanding (not that most of us remember to check the dipstick every week...) as well as an ignorance to actually driving safely on the road. When your fancy electric car beeps and alerts you with every minor hazard, are those who don't know any different going to be paying attention?
Plus there are the added concerns about the cost of EVs, and whether or not new drivers (and their parents...) would even be able to buy one for precious Tiffany and Tarquin when they pass their test, meaning their shiny new licence is already redundant when greeted with a 2008 Fiesta and its clutch pedal.
Thoughts? Is it good to jump on the bandwagon early? Or is it premature to steer drivers away from the good old nuts and bolts - and, yes, pistons - of automotive?
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