Test automatic.
Drive manual.

For anyone who wants to drive an automatic day to day but keep the manual open — after B197 you may drive both.

For many people the automatic test is the calmer route: nothing to stall at the junction, no clutch to work at the moment the examiner gives an instruction. Your head stays on the traffic instead of on the gearbox.

If it is settled that you will never change gear, though, the ten manual lessons are effort spent on an entitlement you never use. Then the pure automatic training under B78 is the more honest route.

Then you keep practising and drive it again. Failing it in the sense of an exam is not possible.

The test drive is not a TÜV exam but a 15-minute drive with your own instructor, in town and out of town. He decides whether you have the manual safely under control, and issues the certificate afterwards.

So there is no exam appointment, no waiting for a slot and no TÜV fee. Extra practice lessons in the manual are billed exactly like any other driving lesson.

Yes. BF17 and B197 do not rule each other out — you drive from 17 with a supervisor and still take the test in an automatic.

BF17 is an age variant, not a gearbox. It governs only from when and under what conditions you may drive; what you are tested in is independent of that.

Both entries then end up on your licence: the condition for accompanied driving and key number 197. At 18 the accompanying condition falls away and the 197 stays.

If you passed class B in a manual you do not need B197 at all — you may already drive both.

If your licence carries key number 78, you take the ten manual lessons and the test drive afterwards. With the certificate the Straßenverkehrsamt strikes out the 78 and enters the 197; § 17a FeV does not ask for a second practical test.

There is a deadline all the same: the entry has to be made within a year of finishing this training. So do not leave the certificate in a drawer — the trip to the office is one morning.

At least ten driving lessons of 45 minutes each in a manual, and the 15-minute test drive at the end.

Everything else you drive in an automatic: the remaining practice lessons, the twelve special drives and the practical test. The ten manual lessons come on top; they replace nothing.

Ten is the legal minimum and not a ceiling. Anyone who notices after the eighth lesson that hill starts are still wobbly adds another one. We drive them in the city traffic around the Oststraße, where one set of lights follows the next.

No. With B197 you may drive a manual abroad as well.

What gets checked on a European licence is whether key number 78 is entered — that is the one standing for the restriction to an automatic. With B197 it is precisely not entered, so your class B is unrestricted.

The 197 itself is a national key number and only describes how you were trained. At the rental desk on holiday, what counts is what is not on the licence.

Yes, as long as the practical test has not happened yet.

Lessons you have already driven count on whatever the gearbox, including special drives you did in the manual. The decision only becomes final on test day, because that is when the car you sit in is settled.

We hear this regularly in the office after the first few lessons: changing gear eats so much attention that little is left over for the traffic. Then we switch you over and move the ten manual lessons to the end of the training.

No. The test drive runs with your own instructor, in the car you know and on roads you know.

It lasts 15 minutes and goes both in town and out of town. No examiner, no exam appointment, no booking with the TÜV — it is only about whether you move the manual safely.

Afterwards the school issues you the certificate that gets the 197 onto your licence. What the test drive costs is broken out as an item of its own on our prices page.