Buying and driving electric cars is surging in popularity. With more than a million electric vehicles and hybrids on UK roads as of August 2023, the industry is at an electrifying turning point. This goes in hand with a renewed vision for sustainability across the motoring sector, and a firm focus on cutting carbon globally.

If you’re daunted by the thought of swapping out your petrol or diesel car and flipping the switch to electric, then you’re not alone. But the good news is that for most of us switching to an electric car, and learning to drive it, isn’t that difficult – and you might just love the advantages it brings.

With fully electric vehicles like the Honda e and e:Ny1, the wheels are driven by an electric motor (or motors, plural, in some cars).

When it comes to how electric cars work, it’s relatively simple. The electricity powering the motor comes from a lithium-ion battery, which is why these cars are known as battery operated vehicles. This battery is charged by plugging into a mains electricity supply when the car is parked.

That means you can refuel your car while you’re refuelling your stomach, or going about your daily business, making electric cars incredibly convenient to drive.

If you’re looking for a flexible option, cars like the CR-V bring fuel and electric battery drivetrains together. The electric battery provides you with smart fuel efficiency, while the combustion engine backs it up for some extra power and charge-on-the-move capabilities.

Curious about how these systems work together to power PHEVs? Explore the technology behind the cars.

If you’re unfamiliar with EVs, it’s natural to ask how to drive an electric car. But the truth is, the differences aren’t that major. You don’t need a different type of driving licence, and you won’t need to learn anything new. In fact, most of the EV driving experience will be quite familiar. If you’ve driven a combustion engine car with an automatic gearbox, then an electric or hybrid vehicle will feel very similar.

• You’ll notice the biggest difference when you start the car, because you won’t hear the starter motor and the engine kicking in as you would in a petrol or diesel vehicle. In fact, you probably won’t hear anything at all – but you’ll see the dashboard instruments come alive.

• A simple selector lever, like that in a conventional automatic car, selects Drive, and then – when you squeeze the accelerator pedal – the car moves away on electric power, almost silently. EVs are often whisper-quiet at low speeds. In fact, some electric cars make artificial noises up to 12mph, just to alert pedestrians.

• You never need to worry that your electric car might stall – another plus! Forget moving through the gears manually, as electric cars provide smooth and seamless acceleration. In a hybrid, the petrol engine will automatically start up when it’s needed, and the gearbox is automatic.

You’ll see these features in action in battery electric vehicles, and hybrid cars. When driving electric cars, you can reduce the pressure on the accelerator to regulate power flow to the motor. As the momentum of the car takes over, the wheels begin to turn the motor, which now becomes a generator and sends electricity back to the battery for use later. This produces resistance at the wheels, slowing the car down.

With careful use of the accelerator pedal, you can control the speed of the car without needing to use the brakes at all. So, in city driving, for example, instead of constantly moving back and forth between accelerator and brake as road and traffic conditions change, you can just vary the pressure on the accelerator pedal and the car’s speed will follow suit.

With regenerative braking, efficiency takes the spotlight. As you slow down your car, the kinetic energy is absorbed by the battery for even greater range.

If you want to supercharge your electric and hybrid car driving experience with these state-of-the-art driving technology options, you can learn more about regenerative braking today.

Hybrid vehicles are convenient to use because they self-charge, using a generator driven by the combustion engine. If there’s fuel in the tank, the car can charge its battery. The assistance of the electric motor and battery improves the efficiency of a hybrid, which means low running costs – the Honda Jazz hybrid returns 62.8mpg in official tests, for instance. That means less time spent in petrol stations and more time doing what you want to do.

In short – no. Thanks to their automatic transmission, driving electric cars is seamless and simple. The battery manages the drivetrain and there’s no need to think about problems like stalling an electric car, as there’s no clutch or gear to worry about.

An EV with a depleted charge can only be pushed if it has a neutral gear, like the Honda e. This can be quite helpful in cases where you run out of battery at an unfortunate time.

When driving an electric car, your may have knobs or switches to select the reverse gear. This is more of a familiarisation system, as electric cars don’t work on a gear-based transmission. Internally the battery-based drivetrain reverses, allowing the car to go back.

There’s no real difference when it comes to driving an electric car on a motorway over a traditional combustion engine vehicle. The experience is generally the same as a normal automatic petrol car, with a few differences, such as a more responsive acceleration in an EV.

With only the acceleration and brake pedal present in the EV, the driving experience is essentially the same as an automatic vehicle with a combustion engine, yes. From a technical perspective there is a difference, as there is no gearbox to speak of, but they drive very much the same.

A common misconception due to their similarity with automatic cars is that electric cars don’t have any gears to speak of. Instead, they have one or more electric motors that respond to the accelerator pedal by sending a proportional level of electricity to the drivetrain.

In practical use, most modern electric cars have a “neutral state” where you can push and steer the electric car manually. This is not exactly a neutral gear, as they don’t have a gear-based transmission. Some EVs, such as the Honda e, however, do have a neutral gear.