The basics of driving an automated car To start driving, you place your appropriate foot on the brake pedal, relocate the gearlever to Drive if you want to go forward or Turn around if you wish to reverse. Then relieve your foot from the brake pedal at the same time as you release the handbrake and the car will begin to slowly relocate.

Video Transcript:

Automatic cars are becoming increasingly popular as they are easier and more relaxing to drive than a car with a manual gearbox. New technologies such as hybrid or fully electric cars are better suited to automatic gearboxes. So as these types of cars slowly take over, manual gearboxes will eventually disappear. If you haven’t driven an automatic car before, the lack of a clutch pedal and different gearbox controls may cause confusion. So in this video, we will show how to drive an automatic car before we start. Make sure you subscribe to our channel and click the bell so you are alerted when we upload a new video. Also, we love to read your comments, so please scroll down and let us know what you think.

It sounds obvious, but an automatic call is the same as a manual car. Except for the gearbox. This means that the car will choose and control its gears for you, but everything else will be the same. The driver will still have to operate all the other car controls in exactly the same way as they would in a manual car. So all of our other videos showing how to steer a car, brake progressively or maintain good road position are still relevant. Just ignore anything about clutch control or gear selection.

Since we don’t have to change gears manually, we can keep our hands on the steering wheel for more of the time, which can help with car control. Also, since we don’t have to think about gear selection anymore, this allows us to concentrate on other aspects of driving, such as planning ahead or nearby hazards.

This car is a 2019 Suzuki Swift and it has a 1-liter petrol engine, the gearbox has six speeds under the normal gear selector mounted in the center. To start the engine, we need to press and hold foot brake whilst pushing the engine start button. Other cars may use a key to start the engine, but we will usually need to press the brake pedal.

There are a few different types of automatic gearboxes, but whatever your car has, the gear selector will usually work in the same way. There will be several letters and sometimes a few numbers. The letters refer to the main drive modes. P is for park, R for reverse and for neutral and D for drive. Any extra letters or numbers you see are there so you can have more control over the gearbox for certain situations. So check your car’s manual to understand when these extra settings should be used.

The park setting locks the transmission, preventing the car from moving. It should always be selected when we park and leave the car. But we also apply the handbrake for extra security. We select the drive for normal forward driving. We press and hold the brake pedal and then select the drive. When we release the brake, the car will slowly creep forward. This creep function is useful as it is the perfect speed for maneuvering to increase our speed. We press the accelerator pedal and the car will change gear whenever it is needed. If we are accelerating gently, the car will change up gears earlier.

To maintain efficiency. But if we need to accelerate quickly and press the accelerator harder, the gearbox will change up gears much later to give us more engine power. Whenever we press the brake to slow down or stop, the car would change down gears on its own so that we always have a suitable gear available.

If we need to stop for a moment, look at this pedestrian crossing. We can leave the gearbox in drive and just keep the brake pressed to hold the car still. When we can see that we are going to be stopped for some time, we can select Park as the gearbox will be locked and we won’t need to keep the brake pressed to stop the car moving forward. Hill starts in a manual car, require careful coordination of the car’s controls, but in contrast, Hill starts in automatic cars are really easy. We’ll stop on this hill to practice. Once we’re ready to go, we push the brake pedal to select drive, then simply lift our foot from the brake and press the accelerator to drive away.

It is impossible to stall as the gearbox controls everything for us. If we are only stopping for a moment on the Hill, perhaps when in a queue of traffic, then we don’t even need to come out of drive. Just hold the brake to stop the car and then push the accelerator to drive away, the cars creep function stops the car from rolling back.

Next, let’s try a maneuver so that we can use reverse gear. Parallel parking between these two mini should do. To select reverse gear, we need to press and hold the brake pedal and then we can use the gate boxes creep function to slowly move the car. We don’t need to press the accelerator. Just released the brake pedal to let the car move and push the brake when we need it to stop again. Once we have finished, we select park and release the foot brake.

Most automatic cars allow us to manually control which gear is used. On this call, we can select M on the gearbox shifter and then use small paddles on the steering wheel to control which gear is used. Other cars may have numbers or extra letters which offer other functions, so check your car’s manual if needed, in certain situations, having manual control over all gears can be beneficial. For example, to reduce wheel spin on slippery surfaces, we can choose to pull away in second gear.

Or when driving down very steep hills, we can select a lower gear than normal to increase engine braking and reduce the need to brake. In this case, we are using lowercase to allow the engine to develop extra power to get us up to speed quickly on this dual carriageway. But once we are driving, normally, it is usually more efficient to select the normal drive setting on the gearbox.

The last set of the gearbox to talk about is neutral. This gearbox mode selects no gear and allows the car to freewheel. This might be useful if we need to push or tow the car, but it shouldn’t be selected when driving as it would allow the car to roll downhill on its own, reducing our control over the car.

So remember to learn how your car’s gas selector works, Use the creek function to move slowly, Use any manual controls when needed and select drive for a smooth and easy journey. If you found this video interesting and would like to be notified when we release the next one, then please click our logo to subscribe to our channel. If you would like to help us make new videos, then please consider becoming a member or patron of our channel.

*The information above does not constitute legal advice or opinion, nor is it a substitute for the professional judgment of a qualified attorney.