Automatic only.
No gear stick.

In practice yes, in theory no: the classes and the theory test are identical to class B.

On the road everything to do with the clutch and choosing a gear falls away — no stalling as you pull off, no changing down before a bend. Your attention stays on where you are looking, your distance and the set manoeuvres, and many people find the test more relaxed for it.

Easier does not mean shorter, though. The twelve special drives, the 55-minute practical test and the two years of probation are the same. The difference sits on your licence afterwards as key number 78.

Yes. Ten driving lessons in a manual and a 15-minute test drive with your instructor are enough — a second practical test at the TÜV is not needed for it.

With the school's certificate you go to the Straßenverkehrsamt: the 78 is struck out and the 197 entered. No new application, no new eyesight test. The entry has to be made within a year of finishing this training.

So the ten lessons come up either way. Anyone who puts them into the training from the start gets the licence without a restriction on it — and that is exactly the difference between B78 and B197.

Yes, everywhere your German licence is valid — but automatic vehicles only.

The 78 is a European key number and is printed on the EU card licence. At a check abroad it is read exactly as it is here, and it travels with you: there is no country in which the restriction suddenly stops applying.

It gets risky above all where someone offers you a car on the spur of the moment — the van on moving day, a friend's car. With a 78 on your licence a manual is driving without a licence, even for two streets.

Because B78 does without the ten manual lessons — but you have only saved them for as long as you never need a manual.

If you do need one later, you drive exactly the same ten lessons and the same test drive, then with an appointment at the Straßenverkehrsamt on top. And until that day the restriction sits on your licence.

That is why B197 suits most people: the same test in an automatic, the same calm in the test car, only without the 78 afterwards. Anyone who knows for certain they will never change gear is still right with B78.

Yes, any of them. Electric cars have automatic transmission without exception and so fall under what B78 allows.

The same goes for hybrids and for the many newer petrol and diesel cars with a dual-clutch gearbox. What decides it is not the drivetrain but whether the car has a clutch pedal.

Anyone switching to an electric car anyway will barely notice the restriction day to day. It can still catch you out — with a hire car on holiday, or with a company car you do not get to choose.

Yes, as long as the car is an automatic. Key number 78 applies abroad exactly as it does in Germany.

That is the day the restriction shows up most often. In southern Europe and in Britain the manual is still the standard fit, while an automatic is a category of its own that has to be booked expressly.

So never book a vehicle class “or similar” without stating the gearbox, and do not accept a replacement car with a manual at the desk. The rental contract changes nothing about what is on your licence.

No. Where the restriction is on the licence because of a medical limitation, the route to a manual runs through a practical test.

The simplified route via ten manual lessons and the school's certificate applies expressly only to a 78 that came out of ordinary automatic training. With a medically grounded restriction the Straßenverkehrsamt decides what is required.

If you are not sure which case applies to you, bring your licence to the first consultation. Then we look at the key numbers on it together.