Last year, the number of candidate registrations for driving licenses rose to a record high.
In all, more than a million of them have passed it, including 800,000 for the B permit, which concerns cars and vans.
To discover
SIMULATOR - Are you paid well?
Read alsoDriver's license: why is it difficult for some to find a place for the exam
To reduce the often hefty license bill and benefit from a certain flexibility, some French people choose online driving schools for their children or themselves.
It is for this last reason that Lucile, 23, registered with Ornikar, one of the market leaders: "
I started my driving hours in Besançon, before moving to Paris and taking my exam has Dijon.
Ornikar is present in 1,700 cities in France, compared to around thirty for its competitor En Voiture Simone.
Very competitive rates
Whatever the brand on the internet, driving instructors are self-employed.
This is precisely what Patrice Bessone, national president of education and road safety at Mobilians (ex-CNPA) and director of a "physical" driving school, criticizes, indicating that there are "
a multitude of trainers in the online driving schools and therefore no individual customer follow-up
”.
However, this abundance is not necessarily viewed with a negative eye by the candidates.
“
In Dijon, I had an instructor who was just starting out, he made me draw diagrams instead of driving.
So I changed it very simply via the platform and I would certainly have dared less in a traditional driving school
,” says Lucile.
Read alsoFaced with soaring fuel prices, the concern of driving schools
These sites are also adorned with a fun aspect to appeal to young people: they offer "
gamification
by displaying a colored badge when a new milestone is reached.
And it's a formula that seems to work, since according to Édouard Rudolf, co-founder of En Voiture Simone, the platform claims a score of 4.87 out of 5 on more than 90,000 reviews submitted by customers.
2021 was a pivotal year for the site, which has exceeded one million subscribers since its creation in 2015. In just seven months, between June 2021 and January 2022, En Voiture Simone gained 400,000 new registrations.
One of the main explanations is the free code training, one of the group's loss leaders.
It is thus enough to pay 30 euros to the organization of its department to pass the examination, whereas it is necessary to pay nearly 300 euros in a traditional driving school to revise it.
Online driving schools also offer very competitive rates for driving licenses.
For 28 hours of driving, it is thus necessary to pay around 1000 euros, against 1800 euros for 30 hours in a traditional driving school.
For Benjamin Gaignault, co-founder of Ornikar, this is explained by the
"removal of additional charges related to premises and volume effects
" thanks to multiple registrations on the platform.
Lucas, Lucile's brother, has also decided to take his license online.
"
Ornikar allowed me to pay less for it, I was able to save between 300 and 400 euros in total
," says the 19-year-old.
Nine months to take the exam in Paris
But if online driving schools seem attractive, one of the black spots is the difficulty in obtaining an exam date.
Online schools do not have the legal right to enroll their customers.
They are therefore obliged to pass the permit as free candidates by registering themselves with their prefecture.
The places allocated to traditional driving schools are fixed, while free candidates place themselves on the remaining availabilities.
Delays can be considerable in some cities.
Lucile realized this when registering: "
When I found out that I had to wait nine months to take the exam, I preferred to go to Dijon, to my parents' house, where I found a niche in two weeks.
»
Read alsoDriving a car without a licence, from myth to reality
This problem should be solved thanks to the creation of the site permisdeconduire.gouv.fr by the government.
Launched nationally in 2020, it allows all candidates to make an appointment themselves in their department.
Thus, traditional driving schools will no longer be a priority and “
everyone will be on an equal footing
”, rejoices Édouard Rudolf.
Currently, the platform is only available in 38 departments, mainly in the south of France, and it will cover the whole territory by the end of the year.
For now, it remains very difficult to measure the success of online driving schools.
In 2020, out of a million French people examined, more than 43,000 were free candidates.
And nearly 45% of them obtained a positive result at the end of their passage.
Édouard Rudolf points out that among these free candidates, "
80 to 90% come from online driving schools
", which would represent approximately 3.4% of market share for driving licenses.
"
It's just a niche
," says Patrice Bessone.
