IS IT WORTH GETTING AN ELECTRIC CAR FOR A LEARNER DRIVER?

Q

I am buying my granddaughter a car to be used to learn in as an early 18th birthday present. She is not interested in cars, only what they do for her, and has left the choice to me. I wonder if, for her generation, it makes sense to get her to use electric from day one. I have in mind a five- or six-year-old Nissan Leaf. What do you think of the plan? DF

A

I admire your forward thinking, however I can also see a couple of potential pitfalls.

Firstly, it’s worth keeping in mind that if your grandpasses her test in an electric car she’ll only be able to have a licence permitting her to drive cars with an automatic gearbox. Indeed, we can expect the art of driving a manual car to become a niche skill from 2030 onwards, because unless someone makes a manual electric car (nobody has, and nobody has any plans to), driving schools are only going to be able to buy – and instruct in – automatics.

Until then, though, the ability to drive a manual might prove useful – let’s say, if your grand-daughter needs to hire a car on holiday, or to drive a pool car for work purposes. If it were my daughter learning, I’d probably want her to have the option to drive a manual, as it remains a useful and applicable skill.

The second potential problem is with the range of the used Leafs you’re looking at. For your budget, you’re probably looking at cars with only a 100-mile real-world range, or thereabouts.

That should be fine if your grand-daughter only plans to undertake shorter journeys around town. But longer trips might prove trickier. And given that she’s young, and therefore probably still setting her life up, that range (or lack of it) might prove to be a stumbling block, especially if she finds herself with a hefty commute at a new job, or a long drive home from university.

She may therefore end up needing to change the car you’ve picked out for her so lovingly, either for a pricier, newer electric car with greater range, or for an internal combustion-engined car.

And if that does happen, with reference to my first point, she won’t be able to choose a manual version – so she’ll be constrained to pricier automatics.