Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions | Hacker News Reader

Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

latimes.com

405 pointst23867 comments

I got my driver's license in Sweden, and the official driving handbook completely worships manual transmissions, and makes several untrue claims about how much better they are than automatics.

You can choose to do your road test in an automatic, but that'll earn you a restriction on your license, barring you from driving a manual. It's probably fair, but almost everyone (myself included) chooses to practice in manuals, and do the test in a manual to not have that restriction, which further skews the stats in favor of manuals.

An obligatory part of the road test is so called "eco-driving", where you have to demonstrate your ability to drive efficiently, and one way of doing that is to skip a gear when shifting in certain situtations. It's absolutely insane to force people to learn this, when automatic transmissions are consistently outperforming humans at fuel efficiency. If the traffic authorities really cared about fuel efficiency, they should instead sing the praises of automatic transmissions, but they don't, because they have an irrational love of manuals.

And the final kicker: Road tests are done in official traffic authority cars with double controls, and I did mine in a nice, modern, manual VW Golf, that had a gear-shift indicator in the dash. And since the car is most often better than you at knowing when you should shift gears, why have the manual transmission in the first place? It's a complete farce.

The silver lining is that electric cars will just decide this issue once and for all.

  > when automatic transmissions are consistently 
  > outperforming humans at fuel efficiency

What? So far each data sheet has shown higher fuel consumption for automatic vehicles.

DCTs are typically 3–5% more fuel-efficient than manual transmissions.

That's to be expected as a dual-clutch transmission is a robotically operated manual transmission with an extra degree of freedom. Most automatics are completely different technology that has always been less efficient.

It's only correct for modern automatic transmissions. Plus sometimes start/stop.

Probably not for old "3 gear with torque converter" or similiar.

Modern manual cars have start/stop technology too.

However, it's more convoluted to use. You have to engage the clutch, put the shifter in neutral, and release the clutch again. Compared to automatic where you just have to hold your foot on the brake pedal.

Stop/start reduces fuel consumption on test cycles like NEDC for both automatics and manuals, but I'll bet in the real world the benefit is mostly seen with automatics as many manual drivers will rarely bother to use it.

Manual car with start&stop owner here; I always use it when driving in the city, so do all of my friends. It's just slightly uncomfortable the first times, when you have to train your muscle memory.

However, it's more convoluted to use. You have to engage the clutch, put the shifter in neutral, and release the clutch again

This is how you should drive if you know you're going to be stopped for more than a few seconds. 'Convoluted' doesn't come into it - it's the default.

I want to see the people who cycle the clutch twice at a red signal.

When stopped you have two options in a car, sitting with your foot on the clutch (which is flat out bad) and putting the car in neutral.

Putting the car in neutral is basically one meaningful action - changing gear, yes you have to depress the clutch move the gearstick to neutral and then let the clutch go - but to describe that as "cycle the clutch twice" is madness. Am I missing something?

You have to take it back out of neutral, making two cycles of the clutch.

No madness involved.

Most people in the UK? At least, if they want to pass their driving test.

What else is there to do? I don't text in the driver's seat, putting the gear in neutral gives my limbs something to do.

(It happens to involve the clutch, but that is "automatic", as in "muscle memory", even though I drive less than once a month)

If I'm expecting to stop more than few seconds, I put my car in neutral. Every time. For last, let's see, 28 years since I have my driving license.

You can often take it out of gear without the clutch.

Hi. I do this all the time if I'm going to be stopped for more than 2-3 seconds.

I've driven manuals most of my life. Before stop/start came along, I was in the habit of just holding the clutch pedal down while stopped at intersections or in traffic. Anecdotally, I think most drivers do the same.

Now, when driving stop/start equipped vehicles, I always try to use it. But in a manual, it does takes more thinking and effort and I wonder how many casual drivers actually bother.

The thing is, most of the time you don't really know how long you're going to be stopped for. Will that light take 3 seconds or 30? A manual makes you decide whether to stop the engine, but an automatic just does it every time without having to think about it or perform extra steps. (although, you can override it if you know it's going to be a short stop by just pressing the brake lightly.)

I drove a WRX for five years and the clutch was kinda heavy. Not terrible, but enough that I'd put the car I'm neutral at a red light of I was there for more than five seconds.

I'm glad start stop is supported on manuals this way. It makes sense. I thought the stop start systems didn't really save much fuel, but I've read some real world tests that clock in at 8~10% savings. All that idle time does really add up.

> I was in the habit of just holding the clutch pedal down while stopped at intersections or in traffic.

If you take a driving test in the UK and do this, that would be a minor fault. You can only have a few minor faults before you fail the test. The rationale is that you need to be in full control of the car at all times, and when you set off you mustn't drift backwards at all. The easiest way to do this without needing three legs is to use the handbrake. Unless you have a diesel engine that has enough torque without any pressure on the accelerator pedal to pull away.

There's lots of minor faults that don't reflect how people actually drive.

For example if you are turning right and waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, then someone pauses and flashes their lights to let you turn, if you then turn that would be a minor fault in Driving Test conditions - where you are supposed to ignore the driver inviting you to turn and sit like a diddy.

Also you are allowed 15 minor faults before failure, which is quite a lot really.

Huh? Whether or not you put the shifter in neutral has no effect on handbrake (hill) starts. You can still (more quickly, in fact) perform a hill start without also having to put the car back in gear.

And now days, newwer cars have the "hill hold" feature which automatically prevents you rolling backwards anyway.

I consider holding the clutch down really unusual. Never did myself except when I was pretty sure that start/stop would trigger unnecessarily.

Now I just don't care about that, since it was too annoying at stop lights, which has led to incidents of auto-stop and immediate start and even a half auto-stop. Didn't notice and bad effects on the car.

By holding down the clutch pedal, you are literally destroying the clutch. When I was in the driving school, I was taught to never do this. If you are stopping, even for just few seconds, put in the neutral. It becomes automatic movement in a short time.

Few years ago, I had colleagues who came from a certain foreign country and were not used to manual transmission. They got a company car with manual transmission. The clutch was burned in one month.

I don't think having the clutch down destroys the clutch, how would it do that? It is having the clutch partially engaged for a very long time that would destroy the clutch.

A clutch is destroyed by friction - slippage between the two plates that comprise it. This is a useful characteristic when pausing on a hill for a few seconds but I suppose there must be some people that keep the clutch partially engaged for a very long time.

But if you are sitting at a junction with the clutch entirely depressed for a long time the plates are disengaged and no damage is done. That's a bad habit for other reasons, such as if you get rear ended your car is still in gear and could then cause a further accident.

That's right. Driving with the clutch partially engaged will wear it out. But having it fully engaged while the vehicle is stopped won't do any harm.

It will wear out the throwout bearing.

Having driven manual pickup trucks for hundreds of thousands of miles, I'm sure this will happen eventually, but it hasn't yet...

But do you hold the clutch in when stopped?

I generally don't. I too have driven several manual pickups, and only once had a squeaky throwout bearing. But I bought that one used so who knows what it had gone through before me.

I've never heard of this rule, and I suspect it's more valid for tiny European cars than for pickups. If I want to take off quickly, e.g. third in line at a short left turn, I keep the pedal depressed. If I'm tired, I'll shift out of gear. If neither of those conditions holds, I might shift or I might stay on the clutch.

And crankshaft thrust bearings, which could ultimately lead to crank walk. It's more of an issue on high performance AWD cars which require extremely strong clutches. All of that clamping force (probably thousands of pounds) is essentially pushing the crankshaft "into" the engine.

Some engines are more susceptible to this than others.

Holding down the clutch pedal when stopped won't harm the clutch, but it may put excess wear on the throwout bearing that allows it to slide back and forth.

Before stop/start came along, I was in the habit of just holding the clutch pedal down while stopped at intersections or in traffic. Anecdotally, I think most drivers do the same.

I usually keep my foot to the side, as I was explicitly taught in driving school by a professional instructor to do. And if the master cylinder ever starts to malfunction, since the plate spacing is really tight, keeping the clutch pedal depressed while stopped could prematurely burn up the clutch and the torque plate.

Its called 'riding the clutch'. But all you have to do to avoid the wear is keep it fully depressed. End of moralizing.

I don't hold the clutch for too long because that will increase the effort from my left foot, and I don't like how it feels after a week of driving that way.

So, it may require more thinking, but I can rest my feet while the light is red and it actually feels good.

> You have to engage the clutch, put the shifter in neutral, and release the clutch again.

That's both a long-winded and incorrect way of putting it. If you are stopped, then you're either already in neutral with the clutch released or the clutch is already engaged. There is no other way.

Really, the rule is just "you have to have the clutch released". For experienced drivers of manual transmissions, this is one smooth action.

> Stop/start reduces fuel consumption on test cycles like NEDC

I would like to know:

1. How long you need to idle to recharge the electricity to battery you use to restart the engine?

2. Does NEDC and others require that the battery has same state of charge at the end of the cycle as when beginning?

Not really an issue. The energy used to restart the engine is small compared to the fuel savings. An electric starter motor is very efficient compared to a combustion engine at idle.

Stop/start will automatically disable if the battery has a low state of charge.

Just have to hold your food on the brake?

It's a pain...and depending on the break, it really may become pain.

Usually if I drive my manual private car, I disengage the gear already on the way to the red light. It just rolls. I break, motor turns off. When I want to start, I push the clutch, motor turns on, off you go.

The good thing is, If I want the motor to launch, I can by pushing the clutch slightly. I can also release it and put my legs wherever I want. I can relax.

Holding one leg constantly on the break is just annoying. For you, your leg and the guy behind you who has to look into that bright red light pointlessly shining in his eyes.

Just have to hold your food on the brake?

It's a pain...and depending on the break, it really may become pain.

Oh, with an automatic you have the option of putting it in Park also. Certainly, it's a good idea to do that if you're stopped for more than a few seconds. You don't have to keep your foot on the brake, but doing so is enough to activate stop/start.

I should probably have qualified my statement with an "over time, in real driving conditions".

In a measured test, with a skilled driver, who does the right thing for the entirety of the test, it is most likely that he or she will be more efficient with a manual transmission than with an automatic.

However, in real life, for real humans, over a longer period of time, the drivers with modern automatic transmissions will be more fuel efficient than drivers with similar cars and manual transmissions, because the automatic transmission is a reliable machine that will do the same thing, every time. It doesn't care if you had your morning coffee or not, if some asshole cut you off, or if you got distracted or bored or spaced out and forgot to change your gear to the right one.

And, disregarding the disruption the EVs will be, technology constantly improves, while human skill is fairly constant, so it was just inevitable that automatic transmissions would one day overtake manual transmissions in terms of speed and efficiency. Arguing otherwise is just irrational nostalgia.

I'd love to see some kind of study that went deep into how the results pan out over a certain population and why.

My own anecdote is that I'm a better driver in a manual. I'm a lazy driver, and lazy in a manual means avoiding stopping/gear changes by anticipating green lights and so on. Being lazy in an automatic results in more stop and go for me because it's no more effort. I could be as efficient in an automatic, if I put in the effort (which I would probably do if I knew my numbers were going into a study).

Many modern cars are completely drive-by-wire, and have a mode selector inbetween your controls and the car, which forces you into more fuel-efficient driving, e.g. ignoring if you push the speeder all the way down, and accelerating the car at an efficient pace instead. The more sensors and processing you get in a car, the better the car can be a this.

Other modern cars have an "eco display" or similar, which gamifies the experience. My previous car had some progress bars for different aspects, and I spent several boring commutes trying to get to a perfect 100%. (I did it once, I was so happy! Usually only got it to 98% before I hit the city and got stuck in traffic again)

Making automatics more efficient is a technological optimization problem. Making manuals more efficient is a human skill problem. I know which side I'd bet on in the long run. (Hint: Not the human)

"Ignoring if you push the speeder all the way down, and accelerating the car at an efficient pace instead."

That has the potential to be really dangerous though, at least where I drive(a third world country). If a car doesn't do what you expect it to when you provide a certain input, that's a recipe for disaster.

It also depend on the car engine. Slow revving 4 pots need to stay in a specific range to efficiently move the car weight, so a (proper dual clutch) automatic can get an edge there.

Large six cylinder revving to mid-range (say, 7500) with ample torque at all range can drive the car in overdrive even at city speeds, but an automatic will treat most change in throttle as a downshift. Because they have no ability to understand your intent.

I guess self driving car with an automatic can really fix that, especially because they can get geared optimally to the driving inputs the software tells them and they have 'inside brain' information.

Well, those statements need to be qualified because "automatic transmission" is no longer a well defined term now that there are a much larger number of different gearboxes on the market. So saying that "automatic gearboxes" are more fuel efficient is both true and false at the same time.

(For instance, one of my cars has a manual gearbox with an electrohydraulic actuator system and an automatic clutch, operated by flappy paddles. My insurance company says that it is an automatic, while the equivalent of the DMV (correctly) states that it is a manual.)

I drive a manual and I know exactly why it is not fuel efficient: the idiot behind the wheel :-)

I've experienced quite a few humans who, when driving an automatic, seem to select a speed and throttle position that keeps the transmission right at the top of a gear range, with the engine turning much faster than necessary, instead of going slightly faster and letting it upshift. I doubt that's fuel efficient at all.

Even with an automatic the driver has influence on which gear is used, and a driver who naturally doesn't need to know about gearing may unintentionally be telling the transmission, via other inputs such as throttle position and speed, to select too low a gear than what a manual driver would choose.

Correct. A good driver knows how to maximize the efficiency of an automatic, and minimize the wear on it.

A good driver can do even better with a manual.

I'm used to driving a manual, which means I'm used to always knowing the exact amount of power my car will give me, because I know which gear I'm in. I had a loaner car for a while with an automatic box. After a while I put it into sports mode, because in that way i'd never be underpowered if I needed to get in front of somebody. I would usually turn it off on freeways, but the damage in efficiency would already be done.

So there's a Dutch website where people can log their fuel consumption. This s real life, normal people, fuel consumption. I just checked some modern cars, although with a small sample size, and manual transmissions seem to be more fuel efficient. Caveat may be that in the Netherlands an automatic is deemed a luxury and is therefore more often found on cars with bigger engines.

Here's the site: http://www.autoweek.nl/verbruiksmonitor

> However, in real life, for real humans, over a longer period of time, the drivers with modern automatic transmissions will be more fuel efficient than drivers with similar cars and manual transmissions, because the automatic transmission is a reliable machine that will do the same thing, every time.

I'm not sure I buy this. I noticed when I switched to automatic from manual I would drive in ways I would never have done with the manual because, well, it was easier than having to care about RPM, target speed, and current gear state: I'm not worried about automatic drivers being bad drivers, I'm worried about them not caring.

Sure, for professional racing drivers.

The vast majority, certainly >90%, of people who claim to be driving more efficiently manually are simply mistaken.

It's mostly observation bias. They recognize those two situations a day where they really have the upper hand. For a second or two. They don't realize that in most other driving situations they don't even come close.

> Sure, for professional racing drivers.

But note that the transmission in F1 cars is semi-automatic [1]

[1] https://www.formula1.com/en/championship/inside-f1/understan...

The only "automatic" part of that transmission is the clutch. The driver still has to select the gear, and I think that's what the whole discussion here about manual vs. automatic is focusing on.

They drive to the beeps, so the computer is beeping in their ear when it is time to change. And they don't shift through neutral to select a gear. They may as well be automatic for all the input an F1 driver has

The computer beeping is merely a reminder and I'm betting most drivers will even disregard it after they are familiar with the track they are on. Gear changes happen so often and so quickly that waiting for a computer to tell you when to shift is a sure sign of unfamiliarity with the track layout and it's also a hit to one's concentration (ex. if they're trying to pass the car ahead or block the one behind). Anyone that does any sort of track driving consistently should know what gear their car should be in for each corner long before a race.

I'm not sure I agree, if they served no purpose the engineers would remove them. I think when they are in 'lift and coast' the gear changes are different, and I'd guess when they turn the engine modes up they would change again.

If there is no dry clutch and no clutch pedal, I consider that to be an automatic. And in such a system, I'm only allowed to signal gear selection: if I make a mistake or request a gear someone else thought I shouldn't request, the software won't comply. This implies that someone is assuming they know better than me how to drive, and enforce this assumption. This notion infuriates me. It's one thing to operate within mechanical / physical limits of the system, and quite another were someone who is not me forces arbitrary limitations. I take the "we know better than you" extremely personally.

I suggest handling TCP packet retransmission yourself as well. Nothing beats having precise control over reliable data delivery.

Grin. But seriously, at some point, it simply becomes a question of low level control vs improved high level functioning. I love manuals, and drive one, but the writing is clearly on the wall for good reasons. Fortunately, buying a hybrid forces the issue anyway, as others have noted.

I suggest handling TCP packet retransmission yourself as well. Nothing beats having precise control over reliable data delivery.

I used to code intros in assembler on the Amiga, and did some assembler on UltraSPARC, so the joke is completely lost on me. I love assembler and low level control.

Nitpick, but F1 cars do have clutches and they can be operated manually (and must be for starting). The big difference is the cars don't have a clutch pedal, but a pair of clutch buttons.

Now DCTs in road-going cars: undeniably automatics.

What does a dry clutch have to do with it? Wet clutches can be user controlled mechanical systems too, just look at the vast majority of motorcycles.

> This implies that someone is assuming they know better than me how to drive, and enforce this assumption. This notion infuriates me.

You get mad because your assumptions about your own superiority get placed under doubt by reality and physics? Must be hell of a way to live.

Sounds like a dunning-kruger effect and some anger management issues rolled into one.

You get mad because your assumptions about your own superiority get placed under doubt by reality and physics?

Now you're incorrectly assuming that the engineers' and programmers' assumptions about how I drive are correct, and they know better than me. Who are they and what do they know? Who am I and what do I know? What if I'm a professional driver or an engineer just like them, or both? You don't know either of the two parties, so how could you possibly judge this correctly? The answer is - you cannot. You are berating me for challenging what you perceive to be an authority, as if I hadn't studied physics and mechanical engineering and knew nothing about those subjects, and even go so far as to imply I'm incompetent and suffer from an illusory superiority complex based on Dunning-Kruger research.

Is this what we're coming down to nowadays, if someone says "I know what I'm doing, and I don't want someone else to tell me how to do it", they'll be sticker-slapped with a superiority complex? That's the society you want to live in? And that is okay?

Bottom line is: a car with an automatic transmission does not do what I want, how I want, when I want it, and does not drive the way I want and expect it to drive. It fails my requirements, whereas a manual transmission and a dry clutch don't try to meet my requirements or expectations - what I want, how I want it, and when I want it is solely up to me. If I mess up, that's on me as well. It's my problem, my responsibility, and that's great.

As far as I'm concerned, since driving is a very important part of my life and identity, dictating, through the use of transmission or shift points, for example, is attempting to dictate how I live. I, an individual, equate that with someone telling me what I must believe, and what I must accept, "because it's better for me", and this goes against what I believe is my basic right to self-determination. That is one of the reasons I reject the automatic. If I have no direct say in it, then at least I can indirectly vote with my wallet.

Must be hell of a way to live.

I deal with it.

Racing divers would shift exactly like automatic because they need to tease the best possible acceleration out of a given engine configuration.

Day to day driving is wildly different from that, there are only very few situations where people come anywhere close to the maximum acceleration their car would offer. With manual transmission, you can attain submaximal acceleration by flooring the throttle in a low gear. This is much more fuel efficient than getting the same amount of acceleration with a throttled engine at higher rpm. Automatic transmissions make that more difficult or even impossible (depending on implementation).

Worst case: people are unhappy with the acceleration they can get at low rev, because the transmission only allows low rev at throttled state and they don't consider it socially acceptable to rev up. The engine would be capable of much more torque at the desired rpm, if only the throttle could be opened without the transmission shifting for higher rpm. Next time they will get a bigger engine that will be throttled even more. ICE inefficiency rises with high rpm and closed throttle (opening the throttle raises power output more than consumption). Ideal ICE efficiency is when the gear is selected so that torque at open throttle matches the power demand. Manual can come much closer to that than automatic. (Unfortunately, many people don't know that and drive manuals like automatic, e.g. never at really low rpm, never at really open throttle, because they think that opening the throttle would be wasteful)

Racing divers would shift exactly like automatic

I'm not going to say "you're wrong" but I think there are plenty of situations where you know or can anticipate what gear you need to tackle a certain scenario, where an auto simply can't know.

For example, a set of 90 degree bends with (very) short straights between them (this is a real scenario where I live and why I've thought about this at length already). In a manual, you might ride the entire set of bends out in a low gear so you get both the most acceleration between bends and not have any gear changes mid-bend so you're ready to accelerate out quickly. An automatic, on the other hand, would be inclined to change up gear between bends and then have to change back down again once you want to accelerate out as it wouldn't really know what was going on.

My car's transmission has a wide variety of options, including a "race" mode, and I usually drive manual instead, because the semi-automatic options seem to be terrible at anticipating anything and coaxing them through throttle alone is an art beyond me.

> I'm not going to say "you're wrong" but I think there are plenty of situations where you know or can anticipate what gear you need to tackle a certain scenario, where an auto simply can't know.

I know what you mean, the similarity between an automatic and a race driver was only meant to be about the specific context of fuel efficiency, not about shaving of a few more second from your lap times. But in the end, both of those wildly different optimization goals can benefit from a driver's superior ability to anticipate future power demand. And both goals create comparable challenges in "coaxing them through throttle alone", which describes my frustration with automatics pretty well. In day to day driving, people seem to want a certain amount of acceleration at non-aggressive rpm, and automatics that make it hard or even impossible to tap the full low-rev torque of a given engine make people buy bigger engines than they would need if the transmission would better support their use case.

Give me an automatic that allows me to apply unrestricted (by backshifting) torque at any rpm and I would look at it much more favorable.

Source please?

False. Maybe that used to be true, but it's been shifting. Automatics are more efficient than manuals. Examples:

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform...

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2016_Mazda_6.shtml

Eco driving is also about driving with foresight: don't accelerate if you likely have to stop soon anyway.

Braking wastes the most gas.

Yah, this can make an overwhelming difference in the long run. I used to drive semi-regularly between Wisconsin and Minnesota, a stretch of about 280 miles; others in my family would make the same trip with the same car during the same times of year, and my mileage per tank was always significantly different, and we couldn't figure out why initially.

Turns out they used cruise control for most of the stretch, which I never used, and it was often the difference of 3-5 gallons over the course of the trip. Not a huge deal, but $4 gas did influence it a bit.

For clarity, did cruise control produce better or worse mpg figures?

Ah, yeah, I see how what I wrote was not clear.

Cruise control was significantly worse than driving it normally, at least when I was at the wheel.

The route is a very hilly one, so I somewhat suspect it's that the cruise control was not very good at knowing when to accelerate and when to coast.

I find that the cruise control on a 2015 Hyundai (automatic transmission) always gets better mileage than I can without, even on hilly trips. (Where I live all trips are hilly.) I do help it out by shifting to neutral when on long downhill stretches.

It's definitely that.

My 2007 Civic doesn't account for incline when doing cruise control. It has some sort of lookup table that says, "When the owner sets me to 65 miles per hour, I go at this RPM." If I keep slowing down because I'm on a hill, it downshifts a gear and accelerates hard until the car goes back up to 65 miles per hour. Wash, rinse, repeat. I always disabled cruise control on hills because of it.

My fiancee's 2014 Nissan Rogue accounts for hills with cruise control, and it never has these intervals.

So many people hate you if you do that. They will pass you angry, just to stop 5m down the road while you get there behind.

Driving well below allowed speed limit is dangerous, especially in high speed and high traffic roads, because a car behind you might be forced to brake, the car behind it brakes harder, next one even more harder creating a chain reaction that might end up in collision when the last driver doesn't have enough time to stop. There's reason why "minimal speed" sign and rule exists.

Sure, but we're talking about city driving near a red light, not breaking flow on high speed roads.

My mother needs to learn this lesson. Light turns green? Stomp on the gas. Light turns red? Stomp on the brakes.

She drives a minivan with a V8 and uses every bit of it on winding Massachusetts roads. People who haven't grown up with it get carsick.

She's a damn good driver - in 10 years, she racked up about 430,000 miles in a Toyota Sienna without an accident... but holy fuck she's traumatizing to ride with.

She'd love a Dodge Grand Caravan we have them for work service vehicles and I was amazed at how quick it shifts.

At first I thought it was a mistake almost like the engine was lugging but it was in eco mode and shifting early.

In normal mode it can shift through three or four gears in (what felt like) one second. And it has a seven speed transmission.

I was wondering if I got a Hellcat trans by mistake!

My grandparents have a chrysler 200 with an 8 speed automatic and I hate it. It spends it's entire life searching for the perfect gear because the computer has too many to choose from.

When you're on the highway in cruise I'm sure it selects a ratio that gets the best possible milage, but they live in the country. You need to accelerate through tight turns, pass slower vehicles without hitting oncoming traffic and constantly adjust the throttle and steering on dirt roads based on conditions. Driving in the middle of nowhere is a very active process and it always feels like that car is just in the way.

Just a tiny bit of throttle causes it to downshift 2 or 3 times and rev the nuts out of the engine when all I wanted was just a little more torque. Lifting off just a little to prepare for a tight bend upshifts to engine brake, so once you're halfway through the corner and want power to accelerate through now it has to downshift 3 or 4 times to get the revs back up. It feels like I am constantly at war with the transmission trying to get it into the right gear and then stay there. It's the most indecisive codriver I've ever experienced.

Does it have an eco mode engaged? That's what the Dodge van does when the green eco button is on but not the aggressive downshifting.

One other thing about the van it's so sluggish off a dead stop it's as if a normal press of the throttle does nothing a tiny bit more you're spinning the wheels and massive torque steer.

What production minivan has a V8? I can't even think of one looking back to the 1980s.

I've ridden with people that drive like that. Self-driving cars can't come soon enough.

Toyota Sienna. Before that, it was a Chrysler Town & Country, which she went through four transmissions on before finally giving up on it. Looking it up, I guess it was a V6, but it had some serious power on it.

I just found it funny that brake jobs on that poor minivan always cost shitloads of money because she always ground the pads all the way down to the metal and obliterated the rotors. I'm sure that the mechanic always sighed and shook his head ruefully at her.

When I took my fiancee home to meet the folks, she made her carsick. I found this hilarious because I'd grown up with it, so it was completely normal for car rides to be ZOOM-STOP-ZOOM-STOP the whole way.

For the record, I drive like a grandma.

In Norway, too, we have the same restriction. I think I've driven a manual transmission car once or perhaps twice since my driver's test.

As for eco-driving, I was told in no uncertain terms by the guy who examined me that if I tried to drive as eco-friendly as the official course material suggested, he'd fail me for being a hazard to other traffic.

That's because you'll prefer to run over pedestrians crossing the street so you don't have to break and waste kinetic energy. </irony>

-That only works for children; adults have too large a moment of inertia for this technique to be effective.

Seriously, his (valid, IMHO) point was that driving eco-friendly was all well and good when conditions allowed (A distinction not being made by the training manual) - but when interacting with other drivers, accelerating slowly, for instance, would often mean you could never (legally) enter a road where you're required to yield.

The Norwegian definition of yield being that you should in no way impede on the operation of the car with right of way - in theory, if you're entering a road with right-of-way and a driver already on it has to ease up on the throttle pedal even for an instance to maintain safe distance, you're breaking the law.)

Interesting. I'll have too look up what the Swiss road law says about this.

I looked up. Art. 36 para. 4 SVG says: «The driver [...] is not allowed to impede other users of the road [...]», however I don't know what «impede» does exactly mean. Since I often experience that I have to adapt my speed because someone entered the road rather tightly, I think the Swiss are more lax about this. You only «impede» if the other one really has to hit the brake. Maybe.

https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19580266/... (German)

That's everyone's definition of yield, just most drivers are horrible at estimating how long it will take them to properly join the flow of traffic (or they just plain don't care they are cutting someone off)

In Britain, eco-driving isn't a requirement of the test, but the examiner has to comment on it afterwards.

He told me I was a bit slow changing gears, but fine at anticipating when I'd need to stop.

>when automatic transmissions are consistently outperforming humans at fuel efficiency

Do you have data to back this up? Unless you're driving a dual clutch "dry" transmission or a CVT, because of Physics, an automatic transmission will always be less efficient. The Automatic transmission Torque converter [1] will waste some of the energy provided by the engine, especially with city driving.

Also, most automatic cars tend to shift gear up too early, and can't switch to gear n+2. Because of this, you spend more time accelerating to your cruise speed. It's well known that accelerating rather quickly to your cruise speed is the optimal strategy for fuel efficiency, hence the reason to switch from 3rd to 5th gear directly.

With a manual, you can also disengage the clutch when you consider it safe (and not slowing down traffic) and you know you're going to have to stop at the red light.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5G2zQ_3xTc

In modern cars, disengaging the clutch (or using neutral) when coasting (toward a stop or down a hill) is less efficient than staying in gear. This is because it takes some fuel to keep the engine idling, where staying in gear allows the computer to completely cut fuel flow, as long as the forward motion is keeping the engine turning.

can confirm with anecdata: in my car the computer reports 0.0 fuel consumption when coasting in gear but non-zero when in neutral/clutch depressed.

Simple understanding on how a car works - "wheels turn the engine" when in gear, otherwise fuel is consumed when in neutral..

Not so simple. Until recently, a standard ICE couldn't stop injecting fuel while coasting (unless you turned the car off, which brings other problems...).

I remember when I was learning to drive being taught about engine braking (with an automatic) and the tradeoff between using up the brakes or burning fuel.

For every fuel-injected engine the ECU should cut injection when coasting. So "recently" in your case applies to carburettors which will behave as if the engine were idle and thus still feed fuel to the engine. I'm not sure 25 years ago counts as "recently".

> For every fuel-injected engine

Well, I own a 911 that says otherwise. It's an older fuel injection system (Bosch K-Jetronic), but it's most certainly fuel injection. Porsche wasn't the only maker to use Bosch fuel injection.

I just don't think DFCO (deceleration fuel cutoff) was a feature of most of the early electronic fuel injection systems. Perhaps it was standard by the time EFI made it to economy cars. I'm fighting a massive urge to go down this historical rabbit hole and read about it, but there's work to be done today.

Of course it works that way, but just for the note: what the car computer reports in dash is manipulated by software and it can be anything. It's not necessarily completely true.

A counter point: In my previous car the screen showed 0.0 when idling, which obviously was false (as the engine was still running). It should probably show infinite instead. (km/l for 0 km).

Some cars show liters per hour when stationary, which always seemed logical to me.

Or change to l/h when you're stationary or with the clutch disengaged.

another anecdata: I once drove a car that reported negative fuel consumption when driving down the hill.

EDIT: no, it was neither electric nor hybrid car, but some old petrol car with manual transmission (Saab 900 or similar).

A hybrid?

Electric cars generally do that ;).

How modern is modern? I could believe this of my 2009 Honda Fit, but I'm fairly certain that my dad's '92 Civic, '99 Civic, and '92 Accord got better mileage when coasting with the clutch disengaged.

92 was 25 years ago, this isn't a modern car, it should not be on the road if you care about economy and road safety.

Oh, it isn't on the road, my dad totaled it in 2008. It was, however, what I drove for my first 3 years in the workforce, so I got a pretty good feel for how to drive it economically.

My 1998 Saturn noticeably cut fuel on deceleration, it was easy to tell since the exhaust system was perpetually breaking

Come to think of it: the car I drove in 1988 cut fuel when coasting and it had a rather unrefined ECU mapping that would cause somewhat hard transitions from the fuel-cut state to feeding the engine go-juice.

Basically any car that has electronic fuel injection does this. So at least the '99 Civic definitely does it.

Think about what is required to turn the engine over and prevent stalling.

-When the clutch is engaged whilst going down hill the wheels turn the engine. No Fuel Required. -When the clutch is disengaged the engine has to turn itself over - which needs fuel.

*Disclaimer, i'm sure carbourettas (sp?) could well be doing weird ass things so whilst conceptually the above holds they may well be different.

It's not the fuel required by the engine, it's the engine braking. Going down a hill with clutch disengaged, the Accord would accelerate. With clutch engaged, it would slightly decelerate. That's fuel that the engine doesn't need to burn to accelerate it back up to cruising speed.

Ditto when coasting to a stoplight - with clutch disengaged (or in neutral), it would coast for a longer distance, which - if you're careful and know your vehicle - means you can let up on the gas a lot sooner.

Anecdotal, but I did some tests in my previous car (a 2014 Mercedes, automatic) and it coasted really, really, really well. In drive, downhill, on the freeway, feet off all pedals, it would accelerate as much as if I put it in neutral, so I think its software and transmission allowed it to perform as good as a manual in that situation.

Not calling you out specifically, but a lot of people arguing for manual transmissions in this thread seem to base their experiences on ~10 year old cars or older, and weirdly assuming that nothing has happened since, that software and technology in cars has been magically frozen in time, despite enormous incentives for car manufacturers to improve it.

Automatics don't engine brake the same way, the torque converter is only fully engaged when it has some pressure buildup, so it will slip (and not maintain fuel cut) when coasting whenever the wheel speed won't maintain the pressure.

To test, watch your rpm when you left off the gas, if it drops to ~750-1000 rpm, your torque converter is slipping (as designed) and not maintaining fuel cut.

To agree with you, I think the comments in this thread started from a manual transmission standpoint and then everybody thought it applied to automatics.

It's not that simple, since everybody has had lockup torque converters (based on a computer-controlled clutch) for a long time now. As long as the TC is locked up, you have full engine braking. As you slow, it eventually drops out of lockup, you see the rpm drop to idle or close to it, and you feel the engine braking diminish (though you do still have a small amount, as the the transmission does have pumping and drag losses).

No free lunch.

In a manual you are burning fuel when the clutch is disengaged to keep the engine turning over. With the engine engaged you steal from momentum which lowers fuel use.

The mid point of keeping the engine engaged and adding enough fuel to reach your desired stopping point once the RPM enters the same range as an idling engine is actually most efficient.

I'm pretty far out of my element here, but as I understand even that isn't universal. BMW's Valvetronic for instance doesn't engine break the same way as other engines, because they don't have a throttle valve and don't have a vacuum outside the intake valves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKfcV7hITYI

True, but the amounts of fuel needed for idling is minuscule.

carburetor (American and Canadian spelling), carburator, carburettor, or carburetter (Commonwealth spelling)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carburetor

Pretty much any engine that has an ECU I would suspect.

The oldest car I have that has an ECU is from 1987 (although judging the fuel efficiency on that car when it was new is a bit hard since the engine has been completely reworked since then -- including an aftermarket ECU, new injectors, new ignition etc which makes the car a tad more fuel efficient than my 2012 car)

Had a manual 85 RX-7; it had fuel cutoff above 1000 rpm when coasting (drivetrain engaged)

I also have an 09 Fit. I use the clutch to coast all the time. I think the only gauge that shows fuel usage is the mpg one? when I coast it just goes over to infinite. I don't think it does that when I don't put the clutch in.

This used to be the case with fuel injected engines from 80's to 00's but because of new regulations current ECUs might, again, inject fuel while coasting just to keep the catalytic converter warm and operational.

The amount is obviously negligible but it's quite crazy to spend more fuel in order to reduce emissions :)

Smog is a real health issue, and US city's are vastly better now. So, IMO it's well worth a tiny bit more global warming.

Check out what's going to go into Chinese cars ..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3cFfM3r510

> The amount is obviously negligible but it's quite crazy to spend more fuel in order to reduce emissions :)

That is what Volkswagen are being forced to do.

This is interesting. How do hybrids handle this? Use electricity to warm the converter?

This may be a bit too much information, but it's a good read if you're interested in the technology behind it:

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01062316/document

Emissions per mile, miles per gallon, capital cost. You can only optimize two of them.

I suspect they just put a sensor there and inject fuel if it cools too much. For short coasting it's probably not a problem.

When you coast with engaged clutch, you will engine brake. Energy doesn't go to the engine for free. Adding the fuel to counter the engine braking is less efficient than letting the engine run idle while coasting due to losses in the power-train. Plus, more efficient cars still have to inject fuel. The electro-hydraulically controlled conventional gearbox of the Lupo 3L disengages the dry clutch while coasting for a reason.

Of course, engine braking is obviously more efficient than friction braking, but that's not coasting, that's engine braking.

Another funny note is that "conventional" automatic gearboxes have the highest gear (usually the only overdrive gear) have a coasting clutch on it, so it's not even technically possible to coast with engine engaged. You're always idling if you let go of the speeder, losing energy to the torque converter that doubles as oil pump for the transmission.

   When you coast with engaged clutch, you will engine brake

True

   Energy doesn't go to the engine for free.
   Adding the fuel to counter the engine braking is less
   efficient than letting the engine run idle while coasting
   due to losses in the power-train

It is a bit hard to understand where you're trying to go here but assuming that you state it takes fuel to 'counter the engine braking' you're wrong. Engine braking is just that, using the engine as a brake. The engine is used as a pump, air (and only air, no fuel is added) is compressed, the air heats up, this heat is dissipated by the cooling system. That is where the energy actually goes, as heat. Losses in the power train only add to the braking effect.

This is also why it is a bad idea to use engine braking with a 2-stroke petrol engine: 2-strokes rely on oil mixed in with fuel for lubrication. When using the engine as a brake no - or hardly any - fuel is added to the incoming air while maintaining high engine speeds, starving the engine of lubrication.

They're talking about the situation where you're coasting and don't want to brake.

It's a bit hard to understand where you're trying to go here but assuming that you state it doesn't take fuel to "counter engine braking", you're wrong.

Engine braking is just that, using the engine as a brake. If no fuel is added, pumping losses will make it act as a (relatively weak) brake. If you want to coast without braking, with the clutch engaged, you will need to inject fuel to counter the pumping losses of the engine, losses which are higher if the engine is not idle. Losses in the power train add to the braking effect, which must further be counted with additional fuel.

If you're going downhill with clutch disengaged and maintaining your speed, engaging the clutch will very likely increase your fuel consumption for the same task (maintaining speed). Automatics have a coasting gear (usually the last or only overdrive gear) for this very reason.

(Sorry, I had to do that.)

Side notes: 1. Coasting is not braking. People seem to be mixing "coasting to a stop" and "coasting" in general. Engine braking, when your intention is to reduce your speed, is more efficient than friction brakes, but coasting does not mean that you intend to reduce your speed. 2. Who drives a car with a 2-stroke petrol engine? :)

The fact that you use extra fuel when coasting isn't enough to make it less efficient, you'd have to be using less extra fuel than the extra fuel you would otherwise have to use to replace the benefit you extract from your potential energy by coasting.

Some ECUs also cut fuel on braking. I remember reading a review of a car where the reviewer (obviously an "enthusiastic" driver) was disappointed that he couldn't do left-foot braking because it kept cutting the fuel.

(Left-foot braking is a technique where you keep the power down in a bend but dab the brake to adjust the fore-aft balance of the car. It is common in rallying - there is some awesome footage somewhere on YouTube of the driver's feet in an 80s rally car. His feet move so fast it looks like he is dancing on the pedals.)

This is one of my pet peeves. Sometimes I use left foot braking to transfer chassis weight from one side to tve other. Having a throttle cut off sucks. I won't buy a car with it anymore.

I can't think of any situation outside of a race course where this would be a necessary maneuver. If you're going so fast on public roads where you need to left foot brake to transfer weight to avoid skidding off the road, it sounds like something is wrong. Where are you doing this enough where having a car with throttle cut off is enough of an annoyance where you won't buy a car with it anymore?

For reference, I got pretty good at this technique while driving autox, which for those unfamiliar is basically a race course around cones in a giant stadium parking lot, one car at a time. But in my 10 years of driving on public roads, I've never felt the need to use it even once.

Different driving styles. I focus on safe driving. Being able to transfer weight around bad bumpy roads helps me drive safe. Roads are not great in Puerto Rico and I drive a FWD car.

Edit: Downvotes? For driving safely on shitty roads? I hope people don't assume Im being a jackass driver just because I use my left foot.

Could you give a specific example of how this makes you safer? I really don't understand how braking could cause an appreciable weight transfer at speeds I consider appropriate for "bad bumpy roads".

I have never been to Puerto Rico, but in Nicaragua and Honduras is highly advantageous for your health and safety to flow with the rest of traffic. He is completely right, this comes in handy because so many roads (especially in mountain areas) are very inconsistent and messy.

I agree. It's also incredibly difficult for those who haven't practiced as you have. The few times I have tried it (in safe conditions) I have ended up braking far too hard. My left foot somehow doesn't have the "feeling" of my right foot on the pedal.

One racing driver technique that can be useful in normal conditions (in a manual) is heel-and-toe braking. I use it to avoid excessive engine braking while downshifting, and sometimes for hill starts without using the handbrake.

It's much safer if that how you learned to drive from day one. Unfortunately most existing drivers don't have the skills to safely left-foot brake so that's how we teach new drivers.

You are right! Its not a common skill. Im left handed so left foot breaking feels natural to me. Plus I drove manual cars for years and am used to feel the clutch/brake bite with the left foot.

It doesn't take long to get smooth with a left foot.

Also left foot braking is much more useful day to day than heel-toe. Especially if you ever deal with suboptimal traction. Plus, faster reaction times.

Heel-toe is also dependant on the pedal placement and clutch weight. But I don't see it being useful in day to day. Rev matching is not something you do on daily driving. You usually tend to short shift at lower rpm.

I'm not downvoting you, but I disagree with your line of reasoning.

Just because YOU don't see why a feature might be useful does not mean that it isn't useful. It just means you don't see a use for it.

Similarly, while cutting the fuel on break application might be useful or even beneficial in the case of a normal / particularly bad driver (slamming down all the peddles in an emergency) it does mean a drastic change in the human/machine interface. I would say that just like ABS is a good safety feature and airbags / restraint belts are good safety features, the vehicle should CLEARLY MARK these features. Their automation may (EG as in the cases of baby seats) be counter-intuitively less safe in circumstances.

Oh so that's what was happening...

Two days ago my friend and I were driving a rented car and we've noticed that when coasting, the computer said the fuel consumption is 0, but when the friend disengaged the clutch, the fuel consumption actually went up (!) to some value. We've been wondering what's going on, and we actually suspected a software bug in the fuel consumption indicator. Thanks!

Not only that but staying in gear when going down hills or slowing down will reduce the wear on your breaks by using the inertia of the engine to slow the car instead of break pad friction/heat.

I've always wondered about this.

In my head, using the engine/transmission to "brake" when in gear going down hills or slowing down seems like a bad idea. Something is getting stressed in order to slow the car down.

Having to replace my brakes makes sense, they get worn out, and its relatively inexpensive (especially if I do it myself). I have always been wary of staying in gear to brake. And, as it so happens, my manual has 130k miles on it, stock engine, transmission, and clutch. Never had any problems.

I would love to understand the science behind why using the engine/transmission/clutch to brake is better for the car than just using the brakes.

Just what the previous commentor said: saves on wear and tear on the brake pads.

As for wear on the engine: the engine is actually designed to mesh with the transmission. Engine braking is not much different than accelerating.

>> Just what the previous commentor said: saves on wear and tear on the brake pads.

When I was learning how to drive a manual, my Dad was a huge fan of them and all of our family cars were manual. I was taught that it makes a huge difference when you're driving in the mountains to use engine braking instead of your brakes. He also explained the difference in braking in traffic and using engine braking to do so and how it supposedly saves on gas as well - something about idling the engine versus continuing to have the engine running?

I'd be interested to hear from people who regularly drive in the mountains and the advantages/disadvantages of engine braking versus using your brakes and if that was some myth or actually real.

The point about gas is certainly true, thought I can't speak to the rest as much.

While you're accelerating, you're giving the engine gas to keep it moving and prevent a stall. While braking you aren't accelerating, but you still need the engine to keep going at speed.

If you depress the clutch, it disconnects the engine from the wheels. The engine will then get a trickle of gas (even if you don't accelerate) to keep it moving while the car breaks.

If you don't depress the clutch, the engine stays in connection with the wheels. Their motion drives the engine - the reverse of normal - keeping it moving without burning any gasoline at all.

It's not generally a big difference, but if you're in the hills of Colorado you might care more.

When breaking with engine, the kinetic energy of movement is converted to heat not via friction (like breaks do) but via compressing air in cylinders which does not cause extra wear on anything.

I think you're referring to "Jake Braking", which is very noisy and is banned in many towns (in California).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_release_engine_bra...

"Jake Braking" is similar, but pertains more to diesel engines which have a special valve to support this since they work differently.

Engine braking on a gasoline engine is actually quieter than normal operation.

At least the manufacturers of those products assert that correctly installed ones are no louder than the diesel engine in normal operation.

http://www.jacobsvehiclesystems.com/about-us/environmental-h...

The Car Talk guys addressed this and agreed with you. It's better to use the brakes to slow down since they're ablative and designed to be replaced with wear. Causing the engine to do extra revolutions means extra wear on something that's quite difficult to replace/repair...

That said, I drive a manual and use the engine for braking...

I have always thought this.

Growing up in the mountains, in Colorado, it was drilled incessantly into me how important it was to use engine/transmission braking on long hills, etc.

I know it, I understand it ... and it always irked me.

I never liked the idea that I would save wear and tear on a consumable that is meant to be regularly worn and repaired and instead transfer that wear and tear to an integral part of the car that is non-trivial to replace or repair.

I would think very carefully about this if I were towing a boat or a horse trailer, but in a normal car it just seems backwards.

I believe the reasoning here is that braking all the way down a steep grade can cause your brakes to overheat and become temporarily inoperable. I don't know whether this is a real effect or not, but I have heard it given as a justification for engine-braking.

This happened to a friend of mine driving through the rocky mountains in Canada; brake system overheated and he had no breaking ability until it cooled down.

It's definitely a real thing. It's usually referred to as "brake fade" in car enthusiast communities. It’s usually more of an issue when racing, but it can happen if you have to do many hard stops during regular driving as well. I think it has to do with the pads releasing a gas when they get hot which creates a thin layer of “air” between the pad and the rotor.

It's the reason that sports cars generally come with bigger brakes. Sure, a Toyota Corolla might be able to stop in a similar distance, but things change when you have to do it 5 times in a row.

For most people, it’s not really an issue though.

unkeljoe: "braking all the way down a steep grade can cause your brakes to overheat and become temporarily inoperable. "

That condition is known as brake fade/fading and occurs mostly with drum brakes and can occur on bicycles, motorbikes and automobiles.

Braking heats the brake drums, which then expand. The drum may expand in diameter to the extent that the brake pads no longer contact the drum sufficiently enough to slow the vehicle. Your brakes "fade" away.

Many vehicles have disc brakes in front and drums on the rear, an arrangement usually sufficient even in hilly country. Of course when pulling a boat or trailer having all disk brakes would be a safer bet.

Brake drum fade is by far the most common manifestation, but there are other types of "fade", e.g., brake fluid can get heated up enought to boil and reduce braking system pressure, brake pads can "slip" more at extremely high temperatures:

http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/do-mechani...

Last ditch efforts: shift into a lower gear, use any emergency brake (which is mechanical and bypasses the braking fluid system and so won't fade due to boiling fluid), and finally, use the inside of a hill/mountain as a giant brake pad by sliding your car's body into it as gently(!) as possible.

Finally I feel compelled to warn anyone who ever pulls a trailer, boat or RV about a potentially fatal phenomenon they may encounter on even gently sloped roads: undamped driven harmonic oscillation between towed and towing vehicle. My first experience:

VW Beetle towing a U-Haul trailer on a Pennsylvania turnpike mountainside. Traffic moderate in both directions.

On a long downhill segment the trailer hitch began to move to-and-fro left and right, gently at first but, as I attempted to correct with steering, rapidly growing in amplitude. My steering reaction time and corrections were unfortunately timed precisely so as to _increase_ the amplitude of the oscillation. In a flash the rear end of the Beetle was hopping right and left! Insight - I need to dampen the oscillation. I gripped the steering wheel, braced both forearms against my legs and reduced all steering corrections to a minimum (I just kept the car on the road and in the proper lane). The car's front end skidded left and right as I kept the wheels as straight forward as possible. Then I slowly applied the brakes. This brought the oscillations under control and the speed down. I continued the trip at a much slower speed despite the honking of frustrated drivers behind me.

That first experience, enhanced by both impending ignominious death on a mountainside and the sudden realization of the utility of my mathematical physics class* [1], was exhilarating.

In the years since I have myself seen this occur several more times, which makes me think it must be a not-uncommon event that requires some warning.

It once again occurred on IH 10 between Houston and New Orleans, one of the flattest pieces of land in the USA. A heavy-duty six-wheeler pickup was hauling a trailer full of goods on an extremely gentle slope at near 70-mph when his trailer hitch began to oscillate left and right. I had been following and observing his truck and noticed that the system seemed to be periodically oscillating, so I stayed well back and did not attempt to pass even on a four-lane highway. Finally things took a turn for the worse and, within 6 seconds of back-and-forth oscillation and attempts at correction, both truck and trailer were driven off the road into the grassy median. Luckily the median was wide flat grass and no harm occurred to driver, truck or trailer. I stopped and crossed the road as the driver took off his cowboy hat, waved it at his truck and trailer as if dismissing an unruly horse, bent his back, and put his hands on his knees in amazement.

I spoke to him awhile, reassured him and gave as best an explanation to him of what I saw and what he might do to prevent further mishaps. He was quite out of sorts and I'm not certain he was fully able to absorb the lesson. He was definitely astonished to find himself on the median with his truck and trailer turned around 270 degrees from the direction he intended.

Had this happened on a strip of highway without such a wide median the truck would have driven at ~60 mph into ongoing traffic at 70 mph. Had this happened on a hillside, I would estimate a 50% chance of both vehicle and trailer plummeting downhill. For these and other reasons, I think this phenomenon must kill more than a few people each year.

More discussion of fish-tailing trailers:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=tr...

Physics can save your life:

[1] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/oscdr2.html - Under topic "Driven Oscillator Example" the red curve describes the ever-increasing amplitude experienced.

I recently saw this video of a car & trailer oscillating based on how the trailer is loaded, and thought it was really interesting to watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SXQt-8SZYT8

Very similar but there was an additional degree-of-freedom, the driver's steering (and braking), which can either improve or worsen the situation. Initially I tried to countersteer to correct the oscillation, but I was too slow - the oscillation amplitude increased! Changing tactics to damping the oscillation by keeping the wheels as straight ahead as possible (and slowing) did the trick or I likely wouldn't be posting this!

Thank you for the writeup! I hope I never need to use that information, but I'm glad I have it now.

I would just like to commend you on your bravery. Towing a trailer with a Beetle in the mountains takes some stones.

I needed to get to the Northeast for a summer job. One of my professors had a Beetle and a locked U-Haul that she wanted moved to Boston. Now that I look back I probably should have asked to see the contents of the trailer!8-))

It was a fun trip with only a minute or so of harrowing possible death-down-the-mountainside. I'd recommend it to anyone!

Oh yeah its real. Back 20 years ago I came down from Guenella Pass to Georgetown in Colorado and just about lost my brakes on those switchbacks just above Georgetown. One of the scariest situations I've been in.

It's not about wear and tear. Brakes heat up when they're used, and descending an entire mountain on the brakes is likely to overheat them to the point where you have no braking power left at all. Not a good situation to be in on a steep slope. Using engine braking to keep your speed under control prevents this.

Engine braking imposes negligible wear and tear on the engine. Instead of fuel-air explosions driving the pistons up and down, the pistons inefficiently compress and expand air at ambient temperature and pressure. Sure, extended use might take 100 miles of life off a 300,000 mile part, but are you really going to worry about that?

The theory is if you go down a long mountain the brakes will be very hot when you are getting towards the bottom which means the performance is not as great. So if you then suddenly need the full power of the brakes it is not available anymore.

Also if the mountain is tall enough the brakes might not make it all the way down which has happened a few times in Norway with catastrophic results for large vehicles like busses.

i drive automatic, and I use engine braking. just turn off "overdrive", downshift to second, or first

I just listened to Click and Clack a couple weeks ago, and a guy called in asking why his brakes caught on fire after he went down a long hill.

Suffice to say that they do not recommend against engine braking--quite the contrary. Think about it: the engine is already spinning, so spinning it at a higher RPM for a few tens of seconds does no more wear than accelerating.

The issue is not brake wear--the issue is brake fade, and potentially boiling your brake fluid!

When you're going down a long hill, downshift and save your brakes! It could save your life!

Your engine is designed to withstand fuel-air explosions. When engine braking, all it does is compress and expand air, at much lower pressures, so revolutions during engine braking are easier on your car than those during regular driving.

Clutches get less wear during engine braking because it doesn't slip. When you disengage and reengage the clutch because you're using the regular brakes to slow down, the clutch slips and damages itself.

In the end, the reason for engine braking isn't to reduce the cost of brakes--it's a safety measure that keeps the brakes cool for emergencies & miscalculations, since overheated brakes don't work.

> Clutches get less wear during engine braking because it doesn't slip. When you disengage and reengage the clutch because > you're using the regular brakes to slow down, the clutch slips and damages itself.

And when you have to change down, while engine braking? (I have an odd learning style. Please don't mistake this for "You're wrong because..." It's a case of "I don't understand why, so...")

A friend once told me that the UK required you to half-engage the clutch while using the brakes and the engine together. I've also read something to the effect of modern brakes are much more efficient so (at least one) UK "advanced driving school" teaches that it doesn't really matter.

I have an older car (1998 Mazda 626 wagon). It's a manual, and when I drive downhill I put it into third and let it coast, braking to reduce speed. Should I be putting it into second, and letting it run up to 3500-4000 revs? Should I leave it in third, and use the brakes? Does it consume more fuel to do this, in a car of that era?

I've often meant to ask my local mechanic about this, but never think about it when I'm there.

Drive with clutch disengaged. Use clutch only while you quickly shift into an appropriate gear. The longest I use clutch is when I am starting of from a stop in first gear. Once I have momentum, dip clutch fully and shift and release clutch as soon as gear us shifted. When clutch is half pressed, clutch plate gets highest wearing as plates are half pressed against each other, not enough friction is there to stop clutch disc slipping (as it is while clutch is not engaged) against each other thus causing wear. When clutch is fully pressed, the clutch plates are seperated so they dont rub against each other and wear.

The way I shift is as I approach a downhill I keep driving it in gear rather than coast. If its steep downhill, you can brake ahead to lower your speed to something you are comfortable at. Shift down to the gear for that speed and then back off the gas if you need engine braking. You can use brake in combination with engine braking gear if you needs to slow down more than using engine braking alone. I shift down when speed gets lower than in current gear.

Your drivetrain is designed to withstand the stress of acceleration, normal engine braking isn't going to register.

>Something is getting stressed in order to slow the car down.

The exact same components that are stressed in order to speed your car up.

Since your engine doesn't have combustion raising cylinder pressures, the total power 'absorption?' under engine braking is necessarily less than the full power output of the engine which the drive train was designed to handle.

The exception is if you have rear wheel drive and enough weight transfer to the front to get wheel hop. But, afaik, this is a problem unique to motorcycles.

You maintain better control of the vehicle if you leave the clutch engaged and engine brake instead of slowing down with it disengaged and using the actual brakes. It may not seem that way to inexperienced manual drivers, but once you've driven a manual in traffic a few times you learn that engine braking is safer and more precise.

Also, on a large, heavy vehicle with a manual transmission, you can get in trouble with misjudging braking time/distance if you only rely on the brakes to slow down and stop. When I have a full load in my pickup (1982 C10) I have no choice but to engine brake as the wheel brakes lose more stopping distance the heavier the load, not to mention it keeps them from overheating and failing early over time.

This makes particular sense for a pickup. When unloaded the truck's weight balance significantly skewed toward the front, allowing for less traction in the back, and so you need to rely on the front wheels more for braking. When you're loaded, that's sitting more-or-less over the rear axle, increasing traction there. So you can afford to rely more on the rear (driven) wheels with engine braking in addition to the conventional brake balance that's biased to the front.

Cars are designed so that you stop the car by pressing the brake pedal, so that is generally the better way to do it.

* 4-wheel braking, even if it is a 2wd car.

* ABS/Traction control systems are designed around brakes, not engine braking.

* Regenerative braking (if equipped) uses the brake pedal

* There is a smooth application of braking power from 80mph to 0mph. Engine braking is indexed (I can only choose which gear), and cannot bring the car to a complete stop.

* The limiting factor with brakes is traction, which isn't improved by using engine braking.

* Using the brake pedal is a single action. Engine braking involves at least 3 (clutch in, shift, clutch out).

* Brakes are cheaper to replace than clutch/transmission.

* Engine braking alone does not activate brake lights.

The only exception is when there is a danger that the brakes will overheat: descending a large hill or hauling a heavy load. The default instinct should be the brake pedal alone.

> Cars are designed so that you stop the car by pressing the brake pedal, so that is generally the better way to do it.

I wasn't speaking of coming to a complete stop, only of slowing down with the flow of traffic. I should have worded it better, I'm sorry.

> Using the brake pedal is a single action. Engine braking involves at least 3 (clutch in, shift, clutch out).

But if you're already downshifting while slowing down, which you should be, it's actually not extra effort. It's completely natural.

> Brakes are cheaper to replace than clutch/transmission.

That entirely depends on the vehicle and the type of clutch. In my extensive experience (I repair cars on the side, and have done so my entire adult life) the parts themselves often cost about the same. For example, when restoring my Bronco II I bought a clutch kit for $150 and a full set of front brake rotors, pads, and new calipers for about $200.

On my Crown Victoria, which was formerly a police vehicle and therefore has the upgraded heavy duty disc brakes on all four wheels, a shop quoted me $700 for a brake job. The parts alone were $350 through them. Of course I saved a ton by doing it myself, but most people can't or won't do that. The labor for a clutch swap versus a brake job is, again, dependent on the complexity of the vehicle. Most manuals still in use in the US are older model cars, with relatively easy to replace clutch parts.

> The only exception is when...hauling a heavy load.

Which I specifically spoke of. :-)

> The default instinct should be the brake pedal alone.

In an automatic, yes. In a manual, only when needing to stop suddenly or when you've downshifted to 2nd or 1st and you're stopping altogether.

Engine braking does activate brake lights on modern cars. So does throwing an anchor behind your car. Deceleration is included in the algorithm.

I tend to engine brake except in circumstances where I actually need more braking power.

Especially with hilly driving, it gives you a lot more control when slowing down, and you can accelerate straight away since your foot is still on the accelerator pedal.

There's nothing worse than being stuck behind a driver (usually a tourist) in a hilly area who is riding the brakes all the way down.

Sure, but it will cause increased wear on the clutch plates. However, idling, keeping the clutch disengaged in neutral for longer periods of time increases wear on the dual-mass flywheel. So, whatever you do, you are damaging something :) . Personally I try to balance it out, but on longer down-hill slopes or when slowly coming to a traffic light I try to keep it in gear. It takes a bit of effort to train, but I really think that you can come close to hybrid economy figures (your mileage may vary :)) ) with thinking while driving. Remember Clarkson from Top Gear driving a 4.0 liter Audi for more than 1200 kilometers with one tank (which is around 82-85 liters) but with a lot of "work" behind the wheel. He got around 6.5 l/100km which is around 36-37 US MPG (or whatever freakin' unit you guys over the pond are using :) ).

Are you sure? I am pretty sure the clutch does not wear when fully engaged. It is only during engagement and disengagement where there is chance of wear. The transmission on the other hand...

You are completely correct. The clutch only wears when engaging and disengaging. If you're in neutral, the synchromesh can wear in some cases, though.

Rev-match your downshifts and you won't wear on the syncros or on the clutch nearly as much.

This is true, but the clutch bearings and spring may wear faster if the clutch is kept disengaged for too long, instead of switching the gearbox to neutral.

It can't be much wear since I have driven several manual cars hundreds of thousands of miles and never changed a clutch once.

> Sure, but it will cause increased wear on the clutch plates.

Only if your clutch is so badly broken as to make the car undriveable.

It shouldn't slip if it's fully closed.

This is called Deceleration (or Direct) Fuel Cut Off (DFCO). When the engine is turning at > 1500 RPM, and your foot is off the accelerator, fuel is stopped to the engine.

This shifts the engine from combustion, where gas explosions cause motion, to motion causing the engine to turn. Because the engine is still in motion, when the RPM drops below 1500, then engine can resume fuel and begin combustion again.

When you disengage the clutch, the engine is disconnected from the wheels, and requires combustion again to keep running.

> where staying in gear allows the computer to completely cut fuel flow

I don't think you need a computer for this: it's called engine braking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_braking

"In modern cars, disengaging the clutch (or using neutral) when coasting (toward a stop or down a hill) is less efficient than staying in gear. This is because it takes some fuel to keep the engine idling, where staying in gear allows the computer to completely cut fuel flow, as long as the forward motion is keeping the engine turning."

This is very interesting - thank you.

I shift cars into neutral while going down hills because I strongly dislike the subtle lurching of the hill descent control ...

I never thought I was saving any appreciable fuel.

However, what does happen is that (provided you don't mind speeding) you exit the bottom of the hill with much more stored energy, allowing you to coast (in or out of gear) much further before it is necessary to apply the throttle again.

So it's interesting that the direct effect of coasting in neutral does not save fuel - however I still think the net effect (again, provided you don't mind speeding when exiting a hill) is fuel-saving ...

It's actually illegal in many states to coast downhill in neutral.

Coasting down a hill in neutral definitely saves fuel compared to coasting in gear if you can utilize the kinetic energy. If you're coasting down a hill and then need to stop quickly it's better to coast in gear.

There is nothing preventing cars with manual clutches from doing that. People going down hills with manual transmission also keep the car in gear (they teach you that). And it doesn't matter as it is not much fuel compared to the fuel used when accelerating, where automatic transmissions are less efficient.

If that is the only reason for automatic transmission to be more efficient, then i doubt it is.

> People going down hills with manual transmission also keep the car in gear (they teach you that).

It's taught for safety reasons. You have more controls of the car with the motor attached.

Yep. Where modern in some cases includes cars from 26 years ago. (My 1990 Chevy Corsica - inline 4, with a single throttle-body injector did this.)

Well, TIL on that, so thx! Still going to pop into neutral w/o engaging the clutch and coast a ton, as I've always done, though :D

Lock-up torque converters don't waste power. They started to become popular in the 1970s, and are pretty much universal now.

You're right, however those only work at higher speeds, hence the "especially with city driving" :)

From wikipedia : A Lock-up clutch is used in some automatic transmissions for motor vehicles. Above a certain speed (usually 60 km/h) it locks the torque converter to minimise power loss and improve fuel efficiency.

Negative, current generation transmissions lock up from first gear.

It's typical to omit locking while the transmission is cold, some transmissions may not lock the first gear, or may not lock at lower revs, or at slower speeds, but generally the lock is there and it's just software that controls locking. You can rather safely assume that on most modern cars and in general conditions the torque converter will lock starting from the first gear.

The lock-up only locks up in very limited conditions, especially older ones. There's basically a few specific speeds with a 10km/h margin that locks up.

My Mazda CX-5 locks up in all conditions, even if it is cold and in the first gear. And it has better EPA than the same model with MT.

"We’ve combined the best attributes of conventional automatic, continuously variable and dual clutch transmissions. The transmission locks up to couple directly with the engine over a far wider range than other automatics. This delivers a significant improvement in fuel economy and a more direct, manual-like power delivery and driving feel. Shifts are quick, accurate and smooth across the six speeds."

So, as they mention, this transmission is unique. It does, however, not lock up in all conditions - it remains unlocked until you hit 8mph. It sounds like an interesting transmission, but this is not the "norm". All conventional automatic transmissions should be able to do this, although it results in very different wear patterns (brake rings and clutches in the transmission will see much greater wear). It is not quite as interesting as a dual shift transmission, though.

(Having looked at a picture of the transmission, ignore the "combined the best attributes of..." - it appears to be an entirely conventional automatic transmission with a very different operating profile.)

It locks up after 8 mph probably because if it locked up at any lower of a speed, the engine would be too close to stalling.

Also, the ZF 6HPxx (and newer) transmissions behave the same way. My 2011 335i will lock up in first gear (probably around 10 mph, but it depends on the load). This transmission has been used by BMW since at least 2006. A derivative of it is also used in the Ford Mustang now.

I should try a car with one of those transmissions, then. They sound quite interesting. While I have driven quite a lot of cars, I have never dealt with such a transmission, but it sounds both nice and efficient. How's the comfort tradeoff? I believe the lock-up was initially avoided due to comfort, as people liked the "gooey" transition between gears.

I'll keep that transmission in mind next time I go shopping.

I also drive a CX-5. When I test drove it, one of the things that stood out to me was how it felt "heavy" when taking your foot off the gas. I guess that was just the engine breaking that I wasn't used to on my previous vehicle. Over the last year I've averaged 30-31mpg (mostly highway), which I don't consider too bad for an AWD compact SUV.

Yup, and it is also nice that if you just touch the brakes when going downhill the AT downshifts to engine-brake stronger. I can also feel when the converter locks up when accelerating. Particularly when the engine / AT are cold the acceleration is not ideally smooth because of this (well, it is still much smoother than I can do with my other car with MT).

My dsg has 2 real clutches

Those things have not been true of automatics for the last two or three generations. They have clutches inside the torque converter, they can block shift. But it is only the latest generation of gearboxes that return better economy figures than manuals. Until very very recently auto boxes were indeed much worse for economy.

The TC only locks under light load on the highway, and isn't 100% effective there because the hydraulic fluid still produces a lot of drag.

That's not true any more, for recent transmissions. They can lock from first gear. E.g. ZF 8 speed, Mercedes 5,7,9 speeds.

Well, engine braking to the red light would have been more efficient. :)

But indeed, automatic cars are less efficient. They do not know what you will do next, so they often make erroneous gear shifts that waste fuel and time. They don't know when to coast or when to engine brake (For older transmissions, the overdrive gear had permanent coasting, and could not engine brake at all), often have lossy pumps, etc.

Dual clutch transmission are awesome, though.

I am from Brazil, here the population hates "hydramatic" cars as they call automatic cars.

I saw one accident that the cause was lack of transmission knowing the future:

road crossing, bad road signs didn't made clear who had priority, so both drivers went forward.

Both cars tried then to stop, but the automatic car instead had just shifted up, then as the driver tried to stop, it lurched forward and hit the other car, then it spun and crashed on the wall of a school.

The automatic car was a sports car from the 70s though, so I guess the transmission was even more dangerous.

Automatic transmissions back then were quite the hydraulic maze, as they operated entirely on hydraulics. These days, they're electronically controlled. I don't think the failure rate has changed.

In a manual, you can of course clutch out as long as your clutch cable (or hose for hydraulic clutched cars) doesn't fail, which is not an option you have for automatics. These kinds of failures do occur today, though. See the famous Toyota "unintentional acceleration" scandal, where a software error read "0% throttle" as "100% THROTTLE GO GO GO GO", causing death in a few cases. There's also a case of a person that was stuck in a car that could not stop, driving at constantly increasing speed on the highways of France, IIRC. He couldn't turn the car off or get it out of gear. You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake.

Up here, manuals are normal (with automatics slowly getting more and more popular), mostly because everyone knows just fine how to drive them, and automatics are much more expensive. I, personally, can't decide which I prefer. I'd much rather drive fully manual than a "retrofitted" automatic like the one in a Lupo 3L, and I still have to try a dual clutch transmission, for which I might end up having similar opinions. They always seem to change wrong, the changes are rough and slow, and the clutch engagement is very binary, leading to odd engage/disengage.

I like conventional automatics in cars that haul heavy loads (pushing a 4 metric tonne trailer over a curb in reverse at low speeds without the possibility of gaining some speed first make you worry a lot about your clutch in a manual), and our busses and trucks are generally fully automatic, with more gears than you would bother counting.

> You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake.

The typical car has brakes that can dissipate 4x the engine power, so either the driver failed to press hard enough or the brakes failed in that case.

I suspect that your brakes will seize very quickly if you try to battle your engine at full power.

Current VW DSG automatics are okay, butter smooth. I drove one from Germany this year. Too bad it's a VW, since I don't like their cars that much. My normal car is a manual Suzuki Jimny DDIS which drives like a tractor.

There is no such thing as a modern passenger car with an engine more powerful than the brakes. All cases of "unintentional acceleration" where the driver "could not stop" are cases of driver error: the driver refused to use the brake pedal, or was pressing the gas pedal instead.

The other thing these dummies are forgetting to do, in their panic, is to simply turn off the engine.

In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error.

Reasons that a driver might not simply turn off the engine: 1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast. 2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling. 3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything. Oil buildup in the intercooler (which any used car will have) that ends up sucked into the intake is a fairly normal way for a diesel engine to self-destruct if you're not quick enough to clutch in so you can keep the engine under control with some load.

Reasons a driver might not be able to hold the engine at full throttle: 1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load. 2. Brake failure. 3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van that was idling in first gear using only the brake (long story), and that required a lot of effort. I would not have been able to do it if any throttle had been applied.

>In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error.

That wasn't what happened. People were driving at high speeds on the highway and claiming they couldn't stop. They were wrong.

>1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast.

That's why you turn the engine off and then turn the key back on, or don't take the key out. Usually you have to take the key out to engage the steering lock.

Besides, which is worse, accelerating uncontrollably until you reach the car's maximum speed, or killing the engine and not being able to steer?

>2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling.

Wrong. All such designs let you turn off the engine by either holding the button down, or by pressing it multiple times. People just were too dumb to learn how their cars worked.

>3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything.

Wrong and stupid. We're not talking about 1960s diesel engines with mechanical fuel pumps here, we're talking about modern vehicles with engine computers and electric pumps. Kill the power and they stop.

>1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load.

That's why you press them hard right away instead of trying to modulate the engine power with them....

>2. Brake failure.

Impossible. The odds of having a separate brake failure at the same time as an unintended acceleration failure are astronomical.

>3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van

We're not talking about big diesel vans here, we're talking about regular cars in America which run on gasoline having unintended acceleration problems. Americans do not drive diesel cars, and certainly not diesel vans.

Do you have any more completely irrelevant anecdotes to try to disprove my assertions?

1. I may misremember, but I do seem to recall a case where the unintended acceleration happened in a Toyota as the person was parking, with the car accelerating into the wall in front of them. But, indeed, that may be misinformation, so I'll retract the statement.

However, this does not mean that people all had the time or ability to stop. Unintended acceleration can happen in many cases, such as in a case of highway driving where, as they try to brake, they notice that the throttle is held. If this happens as someone needs to perform an emergency maneuver, the braking distance will be greatly increased, and they might lose control over car as power is still transferred.

In most cases, it might be very easy to handle the situation when you're prepared, but when you have very little time to observe the problem and correct it, things are less likely to turn out well. You might not have enough time to realize "Ah! My car is not reducing throttle, so I must set the automatic transmission to Neutral!", let alone perform the action prior to collision.

2. The steering wheel lock is different from car to car. My current car (VW) engages the lock when the key is removed and the gear is in "STOP", but my previous cars engaged when the key was rotated counter-clockwise two clicks, making it easy to hit the lock instead of simply stopping the engine. Not being able to steer is quite a fatal thing - see the accidents caused when steering wheel locks were first introduced. Especially when the electric kind was introduced (Chevrolet?), which had problems with spontaneously engaging the lock. This caused people to crash as they were suddenly unable to exit, or enter a turn, with only a second or two to stop the car. On a highway, you ultimately end up crashing into the barrier if your steering wheel lock engages.

3. And how are such designs implemented, if I may ask? Oh, software? Right. Do I need to say more, or do I have to explain exactly why this makes the mechanism entirely untrustworthy?

4. Wrong - you really at least read a bit on diesel engines. First of all, modern diesel engines (That is, 2016 model cars) have two diesel pumps - a low-pressure, electric pump in the fuel tank, and a high-pressure (that is, 1-2000 bars) pump driven mechanically by the drive belt. The electric pump is needed to bring fuel up when starting the car, as cold diesel is difficult to pump, and the starter won't result in significant pumping pressure from the high-pressure pump. However, once started, the low-pressure pump is irrelevant to engine operation, providing only a slight pumping assistance. Killing the engine the "proper" way is done by not opening the injectors, causing the pumps to simply recirculate fuel.

However, this has nothing to do with diesel runaway. During runaway, the diesel engine is not running on diesel, but on engine-oil leaking into the cylinder, often through the air-intake. Modern diesel engines almost always have turbochargers, which leak engine oil into the intercooler once their sleeve bearing, through which engine oil is actively pumped to avoid metal-to-metal contact, have been worn down, increasing the gap between turbine axle and bearing. Once enough oil has built up in the intercooler (which acts as an oil reservoir in this case), you risk sucking it in - and as any diesel engine will happily run uncontrolled on engine oil, this causes engine runaway. This can of course also happen due to other leaks, such as piston or injector seals. The lack of control means you either get to engage a gear and minimize damage as you wait for engine oil to stop flowing into the intake, or if you cannot provide any load, wait for the engine to explode, leaving behind melted pistons in what is now an expensive paper-weight. Remember that a diesel engine ignites fuel with compression (with fuel injected normally injected a full compression to allow for slight ignition timing adjustments, hence the crazy fuel pressure), not spark.

While gasoline engines can also suck in engine oil, they have electric rather than mechanic ignition, and they cannot burn engine oil well enough to run on it anyway.

5. You still need to overpower the engine, even when slamming the brake with all your might. A small gasoline car is probably easy to kill, but a more torquey engine will take quite some effort to stop.

6. Brake failure impossible? What? Brake pipes can burst, caliber piston seals can leak, and regular brake disks seize.

The first two modes of failure usually happen when you apply brake pressure. The more you apply, the more likely that you will break your old brake lines and piston seals. In other words, if your brakes are going to fail this way, they're going to fail when you need them. The dual fluid system of modern cars mean that in some cases, you will get more than one braking attempt (an attempt being a press on the pedal of any kind), but not many, and not in all braking modes.

Brake seizing is of course a possibility, unless you drive around with carbon fiber brakes.

7. Going up to the parent comment - "I am from Brazil", talking about the car reputation there. Feel free to join the comments, but don't try to pretend we're talking about something else now. I don't particularly care about Americans and their poor taste in cars, or your incorrect information about them not driving diesel cars (although they are not nearly as popular as in the rest of the world). Of course, the original post was about American transmission statistics, which are quite unrelated to the engine type.

Do you have any more incorrect or just plain uninteresting comments to try to disprove my assertions, or shall we let it be? :)

Not trying to be confrontational, but I have to say... I don't buy that story at all.

Automatic transmissions back then didn't even have lock-up torque converters. You could always stop the car unless the throttle got stuck. The transmission can't suddently send the car screaming forward if the person isn't on the throttle.

On another note, the main automatic transmissions of those days were probably the TH350 and TH400, which actually stands for "turbo hydramatic". That's probably where the name came from.

>But indeed, automatic cars are less efficient.

Browsing fueleconomy.gov looks like that's no longer the case. Looks like the newest versions of the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, and Toyota Corolla have better gas mileage with the automatic transmission, for example.

That was certainly true for older automatics. However, the tranny in my 2 yrs old bmw 3 seems to be freaking prescient. It seems to always be in the right gear at the right time and transitions are buttery smooth. I tried playing with manual gear control, via stick or shift paddles for old times sakes. But the result is noticeably messier. And btw, it's not a dual clutch.

> because of Physics, an automatic transmission will always be less efficient

You making that claim based on how automatic transmissions currently work, right? And not on every way they could work.

Purely from logic, your claim has to be false: Imagine a humanoid robot sitting in your driver's seat, driving your manual transmission car, its robot arm doing the shifting exactly as a human would. Your manual car has been turned into an automatic and it is not less efficient.

I suppose you could argue that the robot, being part of the car, has an energy requirement. I would then argue that we could shrink the humanoid robot down to the size of chip with sensor inputs, and replace the robot arm and gear shift with a solenoid or whatever, thereby saving considerable energy.

By this thought experiment alone, I don't see how anyone can make a statement about automatics always being less efficient.

"automatic transmission" is usually taken to specifically mean a torque-converter based hydraulic transmission, rather than a general class of self-shifting transmissions. I'm sure that's the sense in which the parent comment to yours meant it.

You're just repeating what he said. A dual clutch automatic can be more efficient, but the more common torque converter type won't be.

What you describe already exists but it doesn't get called "automatic". The car companies don't call it that, the drivers don't call it that. It'll be called DCT or the older sequential manual gearbox.

> Purely from logic, your claim has to be false: Imagine a humanoid robot sitting in your driver's seat, driving your manual transmission car, its robot arm doing the shifting exactly as a human would. Your manual car has been turned into an automatic and it is not less efficient.

You're forgetting a very important factor: the automatic transmission can only respond to the drivers actions. Unlike the driver it has no knowledge of future plans. It will happily shift up 2 seconds before I hit the brakes because it has no idea I'm planning to take a left turn in 20 meters.

A lot of cars today are probably more aware of what is going to happen in 20 meters than the driver is.

Surely the same data that is used for automatic braking, lane assist etc could be used to improve timings on automatic gear shifts?

> Surely the same data that is used for automatic braking, lane assist etc could be used to improve timings on automatic gear shifts?

I don't think that data is very useful in city driving where most of the shifting happens. No radar or lane detector can detect my intention of taking the next exit on the left.

That being said, I remember reading a piece a while back about a car manufacturer working on linking the car's navigation/GPS to the automatic transmission. So as long as you enter the destination in the GPS it can make more informed decisions.

  > It will happily shift up 2 seconds before I hit the brakes because
  > it has no idea I'm planning to take a left turn in 20 meters.

Purely hypothetically, a car could be fitted with an operator control to convey that sort of intent. It could be something the driver could operate without taking their hands off the wheel — perhaps a stick on the left of the steering column?

You already have one of those. If you are driving a 4-speed automatic, you can see that you are in 3rd and sense that it might be about to upshift and a turn is coming up, you can whip it from D to 3 to hold it in 3rd for the duration.

Correct. It's basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automatic_transmission .. implementations vary in quality but on high end cars, tends to be extremely nice to use.

Maybe that's true for old fashioned cars, but with the move to hybrids and electrics, all of this becomes irrelevant.

In another subthread to this I posted numbers for various models of BMW, Audi, and Mercedes. I could find one Mercedes model where they report worse fuel economy and slower 0-100km/h acceleration time for the version with an automatic gearbox, in all the other models I looked at, the manufacturers rate the automatics as more efficient and having better acceleration than the manuals.

These are of course high-end current model year vehicles, if the tech they have hasn't already trickled down into cheaper cars, it will do so very shortly, making my statement even more broadly true.

Please bear in mind that manufacturers currently self-police and that they test under artificial conditions. Hence, there have already been several scandals with Honda, Ford, Hyundai and Volkswagen either manipulating, or falsifying results; not even the onboard computer can be fully trusted: the only precise measure is noting how many liters were put in and how many kilometers were driven on that quantity, and that only on the spec tire size and with the assumption that the odometer is correct.

> It's well known that accelerating rather quickly to your cruise speed is the optimal strategy for fuel efficiency, hence the reason to switch from 3rd to 5th gear directly.

I don't mean to be pedantic, but I think your logic is backwards here, ie. It's well known that 5th (top) gear is the most fuel efficient, hence the reason to accelerate to it rather quickly (the optimal rate would vary between cars), I think would be more reasonable.

I don't think the cruise speed factors into it, and neither does switching from 3rd to 5th, unless it's part of the strategy to get to 5th faster.

But then again, I never realised that accelerating harder to get to 5th faster is actually more fuel efficient [1], so thanks for the heads up!

[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a6827/6-driving-tactics...

Low gear is best for acceleration and overall control, high gear best for cruising. So accelerate in 3rd (or 2nd if your car is fun) to cruising speed, put straight in 5th/6th and activate cruise control.

It's a waste of energy and clutch/gearbox actuation to use the in between gears and there's never anything wrong with being in a low gear at any point unless your engine hits the red line.

On most cars fourth gear is really for cruising at a lower speed than is comfortable (or safe) in fifth.

You can also very easily downshift sequentially through the gearbox. Downshifting through several gears takes much more practice to do properly and isn't very useful on the road.

I learned to tease my 4-speed automatic TDI into shifting from 2nd directly into 4th, by accelerating strongly to 40-50 and then abruptly lifting throttle.

Coasting in neutral or with the clutch disengaged is both more dangerous and less efficient then engine braking.

In the UK you will fail your driving test if you coast, and in some countries / states it is illegal - with good reason.

Just google it - not a single article supporting your argument.

But if you're coasting down a hill and not braking, your engine is idling and you're making use of gravity. The engine will be turning over at ~1000rpm instead of 2000rpm in my diesel.

Understandably it is dangerous as you are not in control of the transmission and therefore the wheels, hence the failure in the UK. But I got through some incredibly scarce times by coasting a bit on the commute to work...

With automatics you would need to brake down the hill to stop the car "running away" as it wouldn't engine brake automatically to compensate for gravity's effect.

With automatics you would need to brake down the hill to stop the car "running away" as it wouldn't engine brake automatically to compensate for gravity's effect.

Most automatic transmissions (or at least the ones I've driven, which arguably is not more recent than late 90s) have low ranges where there is engine braking. That's the exact use case for them. Automatic doesn't (or didn't) mean that you must never shift manually.

Automatic transmissions in large vehicles like trucks and buses usually don't have freewheels either, so there is always engine braking.

Every automatic car I've ever seen has had the ability to downshift to engage engine braking. (Even the CVT in cars like the Prius has an engine braking mode.) I've seen advocates of manual transmissions cite a lack of engine braking as a reason to switch in multiple conversations, so I've gotten the impression that a lot of people just aren't taught how to drive an automatic properly. (Do they not talk about this in driver's ed? I don't even remember anymore.)

Very few drivers in the U.S. know when to turn overdrive off or use a selective gear.

I would argue even being able to drive a manual doesn't make you know what is best either

The e-brake in my automatic Volvo is shot, so my wife and I were practicing how to engine brake down from 50 km/h to a crawl. She was surprised that she was never made to learn this in driver's ed.

> Even the CVT in cars like the Prius has an engine braking mode

Well, of course a hybrid has engine braking - that's kind of pivotal to the whole hybrid design. It freaked my wife out the first time we went down a 7% grade in ours in 'B(raking)' - once the battery charged holding down the brake pedal caused the second MG to disengage from the transaxle and spin at max RPM's to bleed off the excess energy.

But yes, every automatic car I've ever been in has had engine braking as well - going down the same grade by mother will shift her Chevy Impala into '3' and can easily coast down the same hill only applying the brake to turn corners.

Would be nice if our Prius didn't require holding down the brake pedal, but in a way I think it plays into the natural instincts of a driver to do so - but it's a habit that can get you killed driving a manual or standard automatic transmission by overheating the brakes, so hopefully my wife doesn't go down any grades in a car other than our own without me.

> The engine will be turning over at ~1000rpm instead of 2000rpm in my diesel.

Right, but when you're coasting you're burning fuel to turn over, unless you have a perpetual motion engine. Whereas engine braking (on a car with an ECU i.e. one made since 1996 or so) you could be doing 2000rpm but burning no fuel (gravity is turning the wheels which are turning the engine).

> (gravity is turning the wheels which are turning the engine).

... which brakes the car, so you still lose energy.

Can't find literature at the moment, but ISTR that the valve train can take several kW to operate.

Sure. Turning the engine is going to take energy one way or the other. But you can use energy that would otherwise be wasted heating up the brake pads rather than energy from burning fuel.

I think the alternative was coasting, not braking.

So if you're coasting you're spending fuel to increase your speed (relative to what you'd do by staying in gear). In the situation where you're considering coasting that's probably not a tradeoff you want to be making.

My current car has "regenerative breaking" that charges the battery(not a hybrid, just a normal BMW). I haven't tried any testing without cruise control on, but with cruise on it will definitely do a little breaking on highway downhills to maintain speed.

Every generation of car is getting better at all these things, so statements about efficiency almost all need a "cars built prior to 20XX".

Honda Civic 06 i-Drive (CVT) will shift into lower gear, thus engine brake, if you brake hard enough to trigger the shift threshold. And you can go directly into manual override whenever you hit the wheel paddles or push/pull the stick.

Slight tangent but my car could fail the test then :) It automatically coasts (yep, engine back to idle and everything) when in it's most economical automatic mode.

Hi Peter - I should have specified that this is for manual shift. What sort of car do you have if you don't mind me asking? (And is it Ruby Red? :) )

Haha, yes, that's why I specified it as a tangent. I did think it was a weird feature though as I knew the controversy over coasting :) And yep, a red AMG A45!

Nice!

Apparently Mercedes call it "glide mode" or "gliding mode" depending which bit of marketing you look at. I couldn't find a technical description though (beyond what you already said).

I've seen it called "sailing" (and the icon on the dashboard is of a sailboat). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4N8BlXro9w (see 48 seconds in) - but this could be a language difference between territories.

The A45's dual clutch transmission engages in 100ms after touching either the brake or the throttle. Losing control isn't an issue in this case.

I used to coast off of exits with sharp turns in my RX-7. Usually at well above the limit for the turn. Fun times, but potentially very dangerous.

In some cases coasting in neutral will save fuel, in others it will not. This depends on the specific situation.

If you're coasting down a hill to a stop, then it's better to coast in gear to use approximately no fuel. If you're coasting down a hill to long level stretch of road it's better to coast in neutral to obtain kinetic energy. If one wants to follow speed limits it's sometimes necessary to first coast in neutral then use engine braking at the bottom of the hill.

The optimal strategy in all cases is actually coasting in neutral with the engine turned off, and then starting the engine when you need to increase your speed. (This advanced technique may be illegal, though).

"Do you have data to back this up?" Official data (source: https://www.mazdausa.com/siteassets/pdf/features--specs/2016...)

* Mazda 6 2.5L SkyActiv-G MT: 25/37 MPG

* Mazda 6 2.5L SkyActiv-G AT: 26/38 MPG (28/40 MPG in Grand Touring model, not available in MT)

As for the torque converter inefficiency - that is true only for some ancient transmissions. A modern torque converter will waste some energy only during shifting the gears. After synchronization, the torque converter is locked and the connection between the engine and the wheels is mechanical, just as in MT.

"It's well known that accelerating rather quickly to your cruise speed is the optimal strategy for fuel efficiency"

And now - any data to back this up? I don't have hard data, but I have some hard theory. Modern engines have variable valve timing technology which allow them to work in a much more efficient thermodynamic cycle when under light load and low RPMs. When you're not using the full torque of the engine it works in something like an Atkinson or Miller cycle, with high compression ratio and much higher thermodynamic efficiency. A bad thing about Atkinson-like operation (achieved by keeping the inlet valve open longer than normally) is that it reduces the effective capacity and hence power of the engine. So if you press the accelerator pedal fully, the ECU switches the engine to a classical Otto cycle, which is less fuel efficient but gives more power. Hence, if you accelerate fast, your mileage will be worse, not better.

Another issue is that keeping high RPM at low gear (possible with turbocharger running on full pressure) to accelerate fast makes it harder to control burning all the fuel efficiently because there is less time to do that in each cycle. And also the temperature of the cylinders goes quickly up which makes it harder to avoid detonation. So in order to not destroy the engine, the ECU will adapt the injection / spark / valve timings and lambda coefficient to avoid explosive burning of the fuel by decreasing the effective compression-ratio and increasing lambda to decrease the temperature. Lower compression-ratio and higher lambda means lower fuel efficiency.

That's why when I "eco drive", the ECU keeps the gear extremely high, so that the engine works typically in a range 1000-1500 RPM. Now this is quite hard to achieve in practice when driving an MT car, because whenever you want to accelerate faster, you'd have to gear-down by 2 or 3. That's why ATs are better for fuel efficiency.

BTW: I do own 2 cars, one with MT, one with classical hydrokinetic AT, so I have a comparison. I'd really not be able to drive my MT car using such high gears as my AT car can. And also I can't switch gears so fast as an AT can do, even though my AT is not the fastest among all ATs.

I think modern torque converters actually lock together once the speeds match.

Disengaging the clutch is not recommended, since it modifies the balance of the car. When you are accelerating, the rear wheels are supposed to be under more pressure, then have better grip. The opposite when using the brakes. Not having that balance (for which the car is designed/tested) can lead to dangerous situations in certain conditions. Also, the gain in gas consumption is very debatable.

> Do you have data to back this up?

I think this is widely known fact for modern cars. Automatics (may) have more gears & can consistently shift more optimally than average human driver, making up the loss of "wet" torque converter.

Automatics and manuals have basically the same efficiency. All numbers from fueleconomy.gov

2016 Ford Fiesta FWD 4 cyl, 1.6 L - Auto: 27/36, Manual: 27/35

2016 Ford Focus FWD FFV 4 cyl, 2.0 L - Auto: 26/37, Manual: 26/36

2016 Volkswagen Golf 4 cyl, 1.8 L - Auto: 25/35, Manual: 25/36

These can be pretty inaccurate in my experience. It's annecdata, but my brother's Corolla is rated at 6.7 L/100km on highway for the manual, but he had no problem getting 5.6 L/100km in reality. 16% less than claimed on a 10 hour drive.

I think they may be vastly underestimating manual drivers ability to optimize this.

EDIT: Actually on the US site the Auto is rated for 6.9 L/100km, 7.1 L/100km on the manual. The Canadian NRCAN rated it 6.7 L/100km.

42 mpg, 50.4mpg

Everyone feels like they are a better-than-average driver.

The EPA has a standard testing regime, and modern automatic transmissions nearly always score at parity or slightly better than the manual option mounted to the same vehicle.

Interestingly, this is also true for things like 1/4 mile times. "Muscle car" guys hate this, but if you look at the numbers, a modern automatic transmission is both more efficient and more performant than the manual option.

That is absolutely untrue. Go look at EPA estimates for the same cars in Auto/Manual.

Besides, most manuals are 5 or 6 speed. I was reading about new ZF transmissions and they stated a 14% fuel efficiency gain over a standard 5 speed

What is your point? Lots of automatics are 6-8 speeds now.

My point is automatics have better fuel consumption than manuals. Especially the newer 8 speeds.

Even many of the CVTs have fake gears because people didn't like the sound and feeling of a straight up linear CVT, so they might be more comparable to automatics.

I can give examples of cases where it's NOT true.

Subaru BRZ/WRX manuals have better Milage EPA ratings than their automatic counterparts.

Having spent 12 years with a WRX, and moved a couple years to a Hyundai Genesis Coupe; while my wife still drives a Subaru Forester... Subarus are a bad example here. They've got great engines and other factors, but their automatic transmissions really suck.

Is there anywhere else where you can get what's supposed to be their high-performance car (my WRX was the year before STI came out) or the performance variant of another (my wife's Forester is an XT), where that automatic transmission is just a 4-speed? And subjectively, it's a rather balky one at that, with very slow shifts.

For comparison, my Genesis Coupe's auto tranny is an 8-speed, which maximizes the time that the engine is at its most efficient. It's also got smooth lightning-fast shifts in comparison to either Subaru.

I have a manual 2015 Subaru WRX, and I can get way better MPG number than listed, if I want to. I don't, but I can.

I call bullshit. Last time I looked up the BRZ, the automatic was far better than the manual, something like 36mpg vs 30mpg (highway). Most likely, the manual has much lower gearing than the automatic.

I don’t have data on hand, but there are some issues with your claims. They're accurate when comparing a manual transmission to an automatic from the 70's, but newer automatics have essentially closed any efficiency gap.

1. On most automatic transmissions (probably anything newer than the early 90's), the torque converter has clutches inside of it which allow the pump to be directly locked to the turbine. This makes it behave basically the same as a clutch in a manual transmission - no constant slipping. The converter will usually “lock up” once you’ve reached a cruising speed. So, it is less efficient during acceleration, but once the converter locks up, it’s much more comparable to a regular manual transmission. The only thing that still hurts the automatic at that point is the fact that there’s a hydraulic pump which must be driven at all times to maintain pressure to keep the various clutches clamped. So yes, this is where city driving can show some efficiency differences. However, ...

2. On newer automatic transmissions (i.e., transmissions from probably around 2006 and up, such as the ZF 6HPxx series which is found on many Fords, BMWs, and some other brands), the torque converter actually behaves even more like the clutch in a manual transmission in the sense that it’s far more “aggressive” regarding when it locks up. For example, my 2011 BMW will usually lock the torque converter as soon as you take off in first gear (it even sort of feels like when you’re taking off in a car with a manual transmission). Then, it remains locked the entire time after that (even during shifts and wide-open-throttle conditions).

3. Newer automatic transmissions (such as the ZF mentioned above) do in fact have the ability to jump to any gear. I believe this is one of the main things that separate transmissions like the ZF 6HPxx from older style electronic automatics like the 4L80E which use a sprag system. The newer transmissions have a clutch pack for every gear which allows them to jump to any gear rather than following the sequence.

4.I believe that many CVT transmissions still use a torque converter anyway.

This was my general impression - especially the early shift issue. I learned to shift manuals ~500 rpm higher than where most automatics seem to, a decision that seems made to produce the smoothest possible automatic acceleration at a cost to efficiency.

Notably, this feels way less pronounced with faster, sporty automatics, which are willing to give you a feel of acceleration and shift more like manual drivers.

Here, we are instructed to use the clutch only for switching gears. At least in your driver's licence test.

>gear-shift indicator in the dash.

My VW has this. It's useless, I never look at it. It is very simple and clearly intended only to give the best results on the controlled gas mileage testing - I believe that if a manual car has a gear-change indicator, the EPA test drivers are supposed to follow it. The advantage of a human selecting gears is that they can use more information than just the speed and engine rpm; for instance there is no point shifting into 6th gear if you see a big hill right in front of you. It also never indicates for the driver to skip a gear. Maybe you will save a few bucks on gas if you follow the indicator religiously but you'll probably break even after you have to replace your clutch early.

You say it's useless, but then say "maybe you will save a few bucks on gas if you follow the indicator". Isn't that the point? To teach/remind you how to save gas?

I agree that it is imperfect, and imo annoying/distracting. But it may work for a large number of drivers, most of the time.

My point is that they far over-prioritized fuel economy. If you actually drive like that you will be spending a lot more time changing gears than necessary, and that almost any acceleration will require a downshift. I wouldn't recommend trying to stretch the gas mileage in the snow, for example, since you might need power to recover if you start to slide.

Completely agree. Those indicators ignore that we can't accelerate as fast as a double-clutch automatic in case of emergency.

Overusing clutch is not such a big problem, but that it leads the driver to keep low rpm. Especially diesel engine is sensitive to that and can be damaged.

It is a trade off - you can trade a some of engine lifetime for a slightly better consumption by keeping the engine in low rpms, where it is stressed more than it should. That's exactly what the indicator suggests.

it's not useless if you're deaf.

> The silver lining is that electric cars will just decide this issue once and for all.

They won't decide the issue as they have no transmission, they are option number 3 so to speak.

That was probably his point :)

The issue will still be decided, in that it will no longer be an issue.

And since the car is most often better than you at knowing when you should shift gears, why have the manual transmission in the first place?

From my empirical experiments, and from understanding how modern automatic transmissions work, the assertion above is incorrect, and here is why:

a modern automatic transmission is controlled by firmware, a unikernel. The shift points and the shifting logic are based on the developers' very dim understanding of economy and of performance driving, and because the firmware is so shitty, there is often a significant latency involved - by the time the unikernel has managed to process all the inputs from all the sensors, compute a decision and acutally shift the gear, I've long since shifted with a manual. On top of that, the developers' opinions of what's acceptable and what makes sense are truly dim and utterly infuriating: as I drove the manumatic in hypermiling mode in which I normally drive a stick, the idiotic unikernel refused to upshift because the programmer thought that the gear would be too high and the RPM's too low, neither of which was the case. This was a 3 liter V6, so with plenty of low-end torque for the situation I was putting it through.

Incensed, I repeated my experiment on other makes and models: the result was always the same.

After so many years of automatic frustrations, I will never again own one: the day when I'm no longer able to buy a vehicle with a manual transmission is the day I take a bicycle or walk with the two legs nature gave me, or engineer my own car, and the car manufacturers can go to hell, because they sure won't be seeing any of my money ever again.

Yeah, downvoted for honest and informed opinion. Unfortunately this is quite common in HN.

I downvoted you for random assumptions and insulting people you never talked to.

> a modern automatic transmission is controlled by firmware, a unikernel

Have you seen the source? If not, how do you know it's a unikernel?

> The shift points and the shifting logic are based on the developers' very dim understanding of economy and of performance driving

"dim understanding"? Do you have a reference for any of that? Why do you think it's developers, not mechanical engineers or engine testing that resulted in the shift threshold?

> there is often a significant latency involved - by the time the unikernel has managed to process all the inputs from all the sensors

Again, that's a heavy assumption unless you have a source for it. Also, from own experience in actually writing control software like that, real world sensors can be read tens/hundreds+ of times per second. But even with tiny 8K microprocessors you can process it more quickly. Mostly you sit in a tight loop and wait for new data. Processing it takes tiny fraction of the wait time.

> On top of that, the developers' opinions of what's acceptable and what makes sense are truly dim and utterly infuriating

Yeah... you're just throwing ad-hominem around. Please come post some sources which support your opinions.

I have noticed systemic abuse of ad hominem labeling anyone who doesn't lavish high praise and criticizes instead.

Please show some emapthy and think about how the code could be improved instead, so these criticisms can be addressed with a practical solution.

In this particular case, all my criticisms can be addressed by offering a manual transmission option with a dry clutch, not even code optimization is required.

Also, as a firmware writer, you know that all such source code is under strict non-disclosure agreements, and whatever I know or have seen, I wouldn't be at liberty to discuss or cite, or else I risk legal penalties. We're neither anonymous nor protected here.

As for unikernel, any firmware or subsystem concerned with one task - such as running a vehicle - is by definition a unikernel - all firmware is, as its running one single monolithic application image.

Developers versus mechanical engineers - in this context a mechanical engineer is also a developer, just of the transmission, and they often write the software themselves, too.

Finally, as a firmware writer, please explain to me why there is a lag between depressing an accelerator pedal in a 2011 Volkswagen Golf, why the engine will often konk out unless the accelerator pedal is pressed fully when starting on a hill, and why a 2012 Buick LaCrosse will display "shift denied" on the dashboard when I try to upshift from 5th to 6th going at 1,400 RPM, which would put me at 1,200 RPM, well within the engine's ability to continue running efficiently?

> lag between depressing an accelerator pedal

Well, doesn't fuel flow need to be increased before acceleration can begin? That causes latency, much more than software would. Perhaps the software is causing a little bit of that, perhaps there's a simple delay loop instead of a sensor there and it's a little too long.

We'll never know, but there are plenty of guesses you could make.

> why the engine will often konk out unless the accelerator pedal is pressed fully when starting on a hill

That doesn't at all sound like a software problem. It sounds like you're conflating "I don't like my car" with "my car software sucks".

> upshift from 5th to 6th [...] 1,400 RPM [...] 1,200 RPM

Are you certain that upshifting like that would only drop you 200 RPM? Not at least 1000? I'm fairly certain that's not correct.

> [...] all my criticisms can be addressed by offering a manual transmission option with a dry clutch [...]

Just buy a manual car if you care so much. Or buy a journal and vent into that rather than the HN comment section. Goodness gracious.

Well, doesn't fuel flow need to be increased before acceleration can begin? That causes latency, much more than software would.

No, because the engine in question is a common rail diesel engine, which means that the fuel is kept under a constant pressure of 2,200 atmospheres, ready to be injected into the cylinders. The only thing that has to happen is for the piezoelectric injectors to open. On a vehicle with a common rail diesel engine without firmware, where the logic is hardwired electronics in the ECU, and the throttle is connected with a cable as opposed to drive-by-wire, such a thing does not occur: zero latency, instant response.

As I owned both types of vehicles, I was in the unique position to observe and experiment. These are vehicles from completely different manufacturers, one German, one Japanese. The Japanese diesel has no issues or problems whatsoever. That's the one I kept.

Not a single stall since going back to a mechanical throttle. And also, I've learned on a manual and have been driving them daily for decades.

And for the record, I had two firmware updates on the drive-by-wire model, and they only helped marginally with throttle response, but never fixed the issue.

> I have noticed systemic abuse of ad hominem labeling

You literally said it's due to developers' dim opinions. Lots of people don't like auto transmissions, and that's fine. Just chill about it.

> you know that all such source code is under strict non-disclosure agreements

Nope. Are you saying that all such code is under strict NDA? Likely, you can still say you signed one and cannot talk about it if that's the case.

> I wouldn't be at liberty to discuss or cite

As in, you cannot link to an existing, public article that supports what you're talking about? I call BS.

> any firmware or subsystem concerned with one task - such as running a vehicle - is by definition a unikernel

That's not a definition of a unikernel. You can easily have embedded systems with no kernel to speak of. It may be a unikernel, but since you're possibly under NDA you're not saying that, are you?

> Finally, as a firmware writer, please explain to me...

I'm not a the author of those systems, therefore I will not make assumptions about them. And I recommend the same to you.

What you're describing is behaviour and sure - they may behave like this for some reason. Blaming that on a specific part of the system, or technology, or developers that are dim and do stuff without a reason, without a good proof is neither useful nor helpful.

You literally said it's due to developers' dim opinions.

I did, and I stand by what I wrote: the product is bad, no matter how you slice it and dice it! But to label a generalized categorization based on anecdotal yet empirical experiments as ad hominem is outrageous. In my view, that is wanton abuse on equal grounds with censorship and other repressive measures, just because someone on the Internet doesn't like what someone else on the Internet wrote.

Lots of people don't like auto transmissions, and that's fine. Just chill about it.

That is a very personal issue for me, because driving is a physical and mental activity that I undertake intensely every day, and take it way more seriously than the average person. If I could chill about it, I would not have commented in the first place. But if one does not report what's broken, it will never get fixed:

"we can't fix it if we don't know it's broken."

Now, I don't mind having that choice, but when it means that it messes with my capability to choose a manual, because none is offered, that is where I have a major problem. If people want to drive automatics, I don't like it, but it's their choice and in general I don't care, as long as I can have my choice available, a manual. Live and let live. However, the situation is not developing in that direction, quite the opposite.

You can easily have embedded systems with no kernel to speak of.

Any firmware is an unikernel unless it is running as a generic operating system with generic processes and running multiple, distinct applications, or capable or running more than one single application. Otherwise, if the firmware is one single image running as one single monolithic body of code, they are one and the same. BIOS firmware, for example, is a unikernel. OpenBoot PROM is a unikernel. ECU firmware is a unikernel.

It may be a unikernel, but since you're possibly under NDA you're not saying that, are you?

Okay, you got me. I may not say anything. Well played, well played, I salute you.

>> sensors

More to the point, the sensors are either wired directly to the controller or data is retrieved over CAN. And there may not even be a spin-lock waiting for that data, data acquisition could very well be interrupt-driven.

The latency claim is totally unfounded, and anyone who has made use of an embedded platform (even as weak as PIC or Arduino) to collect data can see it as totally and utterly wrong.

The latency claim is totally unfounded, and anyone who has made use of an embedded platform (even as weak as PIC or Arduino) to collect data can see it as totally and utterly wrong.

Where is the latency coming from, then? Other than disputing what I wrote, no explanation of where the latency is coming from has so far been offered.

I will gladly accept an explanation where the latency is coming from, and have even listed concrete models, years, and scenarios to facilitate a concrete explanation. Please, have at it.

I didn't downvote you, but you are on Hacker News, and you are complaining about bad software, and making the claim that said software will never improve, despite car manufacturers having extremely high motivations - to the tune of billions of dollars of market share - to improve this software, to meet stricter fuel efficiency laws and safety laws.

Solving good automatic transmission in isolation is basically solving general AI. And then you have the opposite problem of constantly trying to predict how the black box will behave.

Much better to have the driver (regardless of human or software) control both transmission and the other concerns.

Automatics will never shift well until they can consider the road ahead. Upcoming curve, slope up or down, heavy traffic, etc. all affect a driver's decision about when to shift and which gear to select. So you basically need the sensors a self-driving car would have, and at that point, manual vs. automatic transmission is sort of irrelevant.

Very similar situation in Germany.

I think the misinformation could be an historical artifact from times when automatic transmission technology was in early stages.

I don't think there is a lot of misinformation in Germany. I'm German and I simply buy manual transmissions because they are a lot cheaper and I know a lot of people who are they same. I really would prefer an automatic transmission, but spend an extra 2000 euros for that bit of extra comfort? No thanks.

I was referring to the misinformation about higher fuel efficiency of manual compared to automatic. I heard it too in driving school.

The real question is: Will it save more money in gas than it costs extra to buy?

The rabbit hole goes deeper: how do you price in externalities like pollution for fuel? Or for an automatic transmission?

Also, recently even in Sweden we passed the point when more than 50% of all new cars have an automatic gearbox! Manual gearboxes are not here to stay.

Next car I'm getting, which is soon, is going to be an automatic if my plans turn out well. For some car models its very hard to find manual gearboxes, for example Kia Sorento manual is unusual. I assume its the more expensive car, the less likely it is to have a manual tranmission.

Automatics tend to be less fuel efficient, especially older cars. More recently, CVT style transmissions have been able to be more reasonable. But a typical automatic use much less direct ways to transfer the power, than a simple gear to gear linkage.

> when automatic transmissions are consistently outperforming humans at fuel efficiency

Take a look at official car manufactures tables, in most cases automatic is less fuel efficient, cars where it is more efficient (at least according to the manufactures) are not as common.

Restricted B category licence in Europe allows you to drive only cars with automatic gear transmissions. If you want to drive only such cars then you are not obliged to do full licence. But manual transmission cars are considerably cheaper and are more likely to be available (previously in the family, rental, friend etc), so it is your choice. Nobody is forcing you to do that.

Automatic gear suggester makes the suggestions based on the revolutions and if you know what you are doing (takes a little practice and understanding), is always late. Manual transmission gives you more control over revolutions. This could also mean more fun driving. You can also use your engine for slowing down etc. The same could be done with robotic transmission, but that is usually more expensive to have and you do not get to control the clutch release.

Besides, you gain better motor control of your body as a bonus.

For the record: I do not think that drivers who prefer automatic gear box are somehow inferiour, everyone has its preferences. Just driving with the manual gear box car requires very specific additional skills and consensus in Europe is that these skills must be officially validated.

Automatics used to drink 10% more until very recently. It's not strange that this is still taught.

Even to this day it's probably hard to beat a good manual driver for eco perf, but perhaps average drivers do at least as well with a modern automatic.

>that'll earn you a restriction on your license, barring you from driving a manual. It's probably fair, but almost everyone (myself included) chooses to practice in manuals

It is fair. When you do motorcycle training for up-to 125cc, you can take a scooter which doesn't have gears, or motorcycle with gear. If you learn how to use gears you know how to ride a scooter, but if you take a scooter, you're not allowed to ride a motorcycle with gears. It's 100% fair, and it's logical.

This is only partly true. While it's correct for the A1 license (up to 125cc), if you have provisional + CBT you can do that training on an automatic bike and then go out and ride a geared bike for as long as you renew the CBT.

Personally, I think it's a silly restriction. I learned gears on my own, if you know how to ride a bike it's not complicated to pick up - even in the CBT training they expect learners to pick it up in a half hour or so.

Very much worth noting that the CBT is a UK-only thing, and meaningless outside the UK.

Some EU countries don't require CBT-equivalent training to ride 125cc

In the UK at least, CBT is not geared vs automatic specific. If you do your basic training on a scooter, you can still ride a geared 125 unaccompanied on the road. The full test is specific though.

The bigger issue with scooters vs geared bikes isn't the extra effort of using the gears, it's the much higher centre of gravity and (usually) wider turning circle of geared bikes that complicates manoeuvres. More forward planning is required to avoid tight turns that require high bank angle at low speed, turns that are easy on a scooter. The higher centre of gravity means it's trivial to drop the bike if braking while turning at slow speed. It's easy to hold up a scooter in the same situation.

>In the UK at least, CBT is not geared vs automatic specific

Of course it is, I was actually talking about UK. Bottom of CBT cert has a line "Moped / Motorcycle", if you have "Moped" ticked and want to ride a gear bike, you have to re-do the CBT on a gear bike.

This is not correct. There was a review done of the training scheme and a recommendation was made to change this. But without legislation, the most the DVSA can do is "recommend that riders take further training if they want to ride a geared motorcycle".

See item 6 in the table on page 8 of https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

FWIW, I think a staged CBT is a fine concept, especially in London, but there's a risk that an automatic-only CBT would make things worse because of the incentive structure.

In a busy urban environment, focusing on the hazards on the road should be a much higher priority than mastering machine control. Spending time on a scooter is a fine way to adjust to this. Moving on to a geared bike is less problematic as the amount of new input and reactions that need to be dealt with at once is reduced. But a split between auto-only and geared CBTs would probably push more riders to go geared sooner rather than later (to avoid prematurely limiting their options), and increase overall risk on the road. I think this is part of the reason for the prevalence of geared cars on the roads in the UK.

On the other side, if you learn to ride out in the countryside, there's no guarantee you'll be any good at handling the hazards of rush-hour metro traffic.

This is pretty interesting to hear as an American. The only restriction on motorcycle licenses in New York is whether or not your do your road test with two wheels or three (so if you take your test on something like a CanAm Spyder you'll have a 3 wheeler only restriction). You can pass your road test on a 125cc automatic scooter then turn right around and buy a Hayabusa or fully loaded GoldWing and ride it legally.

I don't agree with this. Driving a scooter/motorcycle is certainly different from driving an auto/manual car. Your comparison is closer to CDL/non-CDL.

I've never heard of a situation where a person harmed themselves or others because they tried driving a manual transmission without knowing how to do so. People who don't know how to drive them simply don't drive them for one of two reasons: 1) they are too scared to try 2) they can't make it more than 2 feet without stalling.

My sister and I both acquired licenses with automatic transmissions and eventually owned manuals. Being required to take a new test to acquire a new license to manually control the transmission would have been impractical and annoying.

My driving instructor (in the UK) came from Sweden. He thought automatics were much safer and reckoned everyone should drive one, especially in the city, but he didn't like teaching them because they were so boring.

I'm in the UK and if I lived in a bigger city I'd have an auto, but since I live just outside a small city I keep my manual because I like the feeling of driving. For me driving and automatic is just not as fun.

Same here in Lithuania - everyone learns and takes exams with manual transmission or they won't be legally allowed to drive stick. Same with "eco" driving - staying in higher RPMs or downshifting to overtake a car is a no no. But after passing driver's exam most people buy automatic - it's just so much more convenient in the city.

I would rage in traffic if I had to do "clutch, neutral, cluth, first gear" mantra for 20 minutes to move a little in traffic - releasing break pedal to crawl a bit and then pressing it again to stop is a god send after driving manual for 6 years. :)

Manual is good for 300+ bhp weekend cars, not daily use cars.

downshifting to overtake a car is a no no.

Interesting. German driving schools actually explicitly tell you to downshift before overtaking so that your acceleration is higher and you spend less time in the "wrong" lane.

wow, you are incorrect in almost every statement. I get it, you like easy driving without worrying about clutch and gears, but not everybody is like that.

I would never want automatic transmission for my car, it's inferior, expensive, less fun and car has no way knowing details of road situation I am facing and choices I am about to make. And I am far from petrolhead person FYI.

Another point - I don't know a single person who has automatic gearbox in their car, not even soccer moms.

Automatic gearbox is faster, and probably better for complete novice drivers so they can focus more on situation on the road. That's it. It is more costly, will wear engine faster, removes some connection between driver and car (includes fun of driving, but not only). Plus it creates desperate and sometimes dangerous drivers when they sit in a car with manual, which will almost inevitably happen.

    > it's inferior, expensive, less
    > fun and car has no way knowing
    > details of road situation

I agree, and have believed those things since my mother (literally) taught me them! But I've never driven an automatic, and the small number of people I know in the UK who have switched to an automatic are never, ever going back.

Food for thought.

I'm one of that small number in the UK who drives an automatic. I used to drive a manual but more than 10 years ago switched to an automatic and I wouldn't want to switch back. To me driving is about getting from A to B with the least hassle and an automatic helps with that.

I just switched because I simply couldn't get the vehicle I needed (2016 Toyota Tacoma, 4 doors, 6' bed) with a manual transmission. I love the truck, but I still wish I could have had it with a manual. When my girls are old enough to drive, I hope I can still find a manual that's safe for them to learn on, just so they'll know what to do if they ever need to use one.

Won't a double-clutch + kickdown get around the safety limitations though?

As a manual driver I can potentially screw up fast acceleration from a still-stand, e.g. when needing to do a quick merge with pretty bad consequences.

I've also noticed that my shifting is very tuned to the weight of the people normally in the car, I choked the engine twice when on a trip with friends and a full car. Embarassing and potentially dangerous. Note: more than a decade experience on manual.

Double clutch+ downshift works only for the transmissions that have parts where they enable that usage. Many don't.

> wow, you are incorrect in almost every statement.

And yet you didn't refute a single one of them, and only offered subjective preferences and personal anecdotes.

You like driving a manual. Bless your heart. Modern automatics still accelerate faster and are more fuel efficient than manuals. Just take a look at what the car manufacturers themselves report.

People can invent points and refutals. Physics, dictates manuals to be more efficient.

Automatic transmission 'learn driver habit' multiplies the above, and yet everybody in this discussion ignores it. CVT comes closer to efficiency of manual, but it's not popular because "the car just doesn't have the power on demand dude".

This subject is a horse beaten to death, and then to a pulp, where people that have sporadic and rather incomplete knowledge, write novels based on what was on the car sale pitch.

And, yet, here's an example where EPA numbers on a car model where the automatic has better gas mileage:

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2015_Scion_FR-S.shtm...

Now, perhaps this doesn't accurately represent real world driving conditions but nonetheless, physics notwithstanding, it does suggest that an automatic can be more efficient using standard measurements.

So far in this thread multiple people have brought up that the numbers reported by the car manufacturers themselves, for current model year cars, across a bunch of manufacturers, show that automatic transmission cars are more fuel efficient than manuals.

I see two explanations for this:

1) They're all lying

2) Technological progress has finally caught up to a system that is bounded by human skill and hand-foot-coordination.

(I'm betting on technology, are you betting on the human?)

faster? yes, I stated that, everybody knows that. more fuel efficient? people asked for you to prove it, so far nothing. have some facts into the discussion? all info I've seen so far in past 10 years (which doesn't mean all of them of course, I may be wrong on this), automats have higher reported consumption compared to manuals. So do 4x, obviously for different reasons, but it's consistent and expected.

All other points I mentioned - you don't care about neither. Just bashing swedish system because you don't like it from you own personal view (if you cannot skip gear and whine about it, you are complete beginner, there ARE good reasons they have it and it happens in real world). My opinion might be biased since I always drove manuals for my own car, and rental automats have been consistently horrible/mkay boring at most (this includes latest Porsche and Ferrari 458 btw)

You don't have traffic where you live? I like driving manuals too but 45 minutes of stop and go traffic each way would be torture in a manual so I have an automatic.

I have a manual in London, I don't feel it's a torture. Nothing against automatic, it will definitely make it a bit easier, but it doesn't take too long to put a first gear and move nor is it painful to hold the clutch if necessary.

>You can choose to do your road test in an automatic, but that'll earn you a restriction on your license, barring you from driving a manual.

Interesting. Here in New Zealand, once you move from your learners license (fully supervised driving) to restricted (ability to drive by yourself with conditions), if you sit the test in an automatic you get a condition for automatic only on your license. Once you sit your full license in an auto, that restriction disappears.

It's similar in Netherland. Manual transmission is standard, and automatic slightly looked down upon. But hybrids have to be automatic, so even a hardened driver like my wife had to accept automatic transmission. I always sucked at working the clutch, so automatic is probably better for me anyway.

When would skipping a gear be more "eco"?

I find the shift indicator annoying. Depending on the car (e.g. my diesel 1.6L), it will probably be unreliable. One example is suggesting to shift up when driving on a light ramp when going over 2000rpm - this might be more eco, but it will put strain on the engine and also decrease your reaction time if you need to accelerate.

The only useful thing that the indicator does convey is to keep it between ~1200 - 2000rpm and don't go over 130km/h if you want to save fuel.

Interestingly my car model has the best fuel efficiency available only on manual, the same engine automatic uses slightly more fuel. But an automatic is generally safer (instant reaction time) and less troublesome (can't choke the engine). I don't think one has any chance of doing things like controlled drifts with an automatic.

An often lost fact in automatic vs. stick-shift discussions is that in practice automatic transmission causes much heavier wear on the brakes of the car.

This is because with a stick-shift you can just gear down when going downhill or before a foreseen stop and let the engine do most of the breaking for you. You then only use the brakes to bring the car to a full-stop on the last couple meters. This gets you much better mileage on your brake disks and pads. Can't do that with an automatic.

Plus it's more fuel efficient.

I use engine braking in this way, but I've often wondered how much additional wear this is putting on the clutch. Given that brake pads/discs are cheap, and a clutch is not, maybe in the long run this doesn't actually work out cheaper?

If you rev match properly, the down shift should be just as smooth and quick as a normal up shift.

E.G. you're in fourth gear at 50 MPH, you engage the clutch pedal, shift to third, tap the gas, and release the clutch pedal.

I'd be more worried about wear of the valve train. Brake pads are cheaper.

My previous car automatically engaged engine-breaking when going downhill, when it was appropriate to do so. I also had paddle-shifters if I wanted to do it myself. Your statement that cars with automatic transmissions can't engine brake is wrong.

Some new cars (and likely some older ones) offer paddle shifters and other ways to kinda pretend to be a manual. Eg most Subarus have this now.

As someone who preferred cars with a manual transmission until recently, the paddle shifters are useless when accelerating (they just don't work well, and rarely feel "smooth"), but I really appreciate them for engine braking in the snow.

I wonder if you could get similar brake-saving results if you got accustomed to switching to manual mode when braking and then switching back to drive regularly.

Hey, I have a Subaru with those paddles! I never knew what they were. I've never pressed them.

In an automatic you can downshift to one of the low ranges, and that will effect engine braking. The ones I've driven allow you to shift between the forward ranges without depressing the lockout button, specificaly for this reason.

Unfortunately it seems a lot of drivers don't know about it.

Here in Belgium the majority are the ones with a manual transmissions. The resell value of a car with an automatic shifter is also a lot less than the version with the manual shifter.

But the car market is also changing. We are (regarding cars) a diesel country but as the government want to promote (as they are less polluting) petrol and electric cars, the taxes are becoming a lot higher for those who want to drive with diesel.

If I'm not mistaken (not a car enthousiast) diesel cars with automatic shifters are rare. So when diesel is out, it may also change in this department.

> If I'm not mistaken (not a car enthousiast) diesel cars with automatic shifters are rare.

Pretty much any European diesel executive car (Mercedes E-class, Audi A6, BMW 5 Series) is equipped with an automatic.

Manuals are better for fuel economy because they are more efficient. A torque converter loses more power as part of its design, it is unavoidable.

Manual transmissions are also typically lighter which also results in an efficiency gain.

If you prefer an auto that's fine, you're in a huge majority. But the idea that they are more efficient than manuals is factually wrong.

If you run across an individual model of car where the EPA estimates give an advantage to the auto that is because of gearing and nothing else. That tells you the manual transmission was given much more aggressive or "sporty" gearing, probably starting with the final drive ratio.

But that's a rare situation.

Governments standards change slower than technology. Automatics used to be slush boxes that robbed power while shifting at inappropriate times. Now they aren't.

I love manuals, but I have to acknowledge modern automatic transmissions are very well executed.

The driving schools are a huge lobby group in the laws regarding getting your drivers license. After I got my license, they successfully lobbied for a mandatory lesson for instructors (not too expensive, but still not a small income). Learning stick shift is harder, and takes a lot more practice. There is probably some economic interest in having people learn to drive stick.

The only AT cars that I know have better fuel economy than good manual drivers are cars with CVT (continuously variable transmission). They are expensive and not something I would fix myself though :)

The love of manual transmissions isn't irrational, it's merely outdated. Manual transmissions were indeed more efficient than automatics up until about 10 years ago.

Governments aren't exactly famous for being completely up-to-date on everything. The driving handbook you're complaining about was probably written 30 years ago... Back then, automatics really did suck badly.

With modern cars, automatics do get better fuel economy than manuals according to all the official fuel-economy tests I've seen. One big difference between the two that I've noticed is that in automatics, they tend to have taller gearing overall, and cruise at lower rpms (because of a taller final gear). This is most likely because it's so fast and easy for an automatic to downshift when it needs to, unlike a stick; this is especially important when using cruise control on the highway. The main problem with automatics (but not DSGs like VWs have) is the inefficiency of the torque converter. But modern automatics have worked around that really well with TCs that lock up and unlock very readily, so they're really not much different than a manual with its slipping clutch.

Luckily, here in the US, for all the things we do wrong with cars and drivers' licenses, there's no automatic restrictions I've ever heard about. I've heard of some states having such a thing on their licenses, but in reality I've never heard of them actually sticking that on someone's license if they took the driving test in an automatic. Almost anyone is allowed to jump in and drive a stick any time they want.

> The driving handbook you're complaining about was probably written 30 years ago

No, it's continually updated, and featured lots of other modern facts about cars. For example, from a safety perspective, it urged people to stay the fuck away (maybe not using those words) from cars manufactured before 2000, because safety ratings increased a lot between 1990 and 2000, across the whole board.

The eco-driving requirements are 10 years old, at the most, but the manual still states facts about automatic transmissions that were true 30 years ago.

It's also important to remember that getting a license in European countries is generally a lot harder than in the US, so the eco-driving requirements results in people having to spend time learning the "theory" behind it, spending valuable driving lessons with an instructor to learn it, practice it, and getting evaluated on it during your final road test, and failing to drive "eco-friendly" will result in you failing the test.

So it's a big deal, it affects a lot of people, and it's mostly been obsoleted by technology. The gains from forcing people to learn eco-driving are minuscule, and the whole piece of shit could be replaced with one simple sentence: "Please buy a modern car". The last 10-15 years have seen crazy efficiency gains, and buying a new car will do more for the environment than a lifetime of eco-driving in an older one.

And that grinds my gears. :-)

> Almost anyone is allowed to jump in and drive a stick any time they want.

Fortunately that is pretty self-regulating, because it's incredibly hard to drive a manual if you haven't had practice and training. :-)

>Fortunately that is pretty self-regulating, because it's incredibly hard to drive a manual if you haven't had practice and training. :-)

Exactly. Why bother regulating this at the DMV when people who can't drive a stick simply aren't going to try anyway (unless they're trying to actually learn and a friend is teaching them)?

That's weird about the handbook. You're exactly right: if you want to drive economically, the easiest thing to do is simply buy a newer car (and of course do things like not do full-throttle acceleration from stoplights, but that applies equally to all cars). Automatics in the last 5 years have surpassed manuals.

Tesla tried to have transmissions with multiple gears in their electric cars... thankfully it didn't work out the way they hoped.

If you look at fuelly you may see different numbers. I know that for my last car: honda accord, and my current car: kia soul, manual transmissions both get noticeably better gas mileage even though the MSRP claims otherwise.

I'm a car enthusiast, and I was a manual transmission purist for many, many years. But then I had to be honest with myself, and admit that the VAST majority of my driving is commuting in traffic. And that driving is much less annoying with an automatic. My leisure driving is maybe 5% less fun without a manual, but that's far outweighed by how much better my daily commute is. At this point, I'd only buy a manual for a car that's not a daily driver.

Exactly! For commuting you should get an automatic and for the weekend you should get a manual.

I was a fan of manual cars for a long time, but the more time I spent stuck in traffic, the more I love automatic transmissions.

Disagree. I have been stuck in SV traffic for over a decade, on and off, with a stick shift. Even with the traffic I still don't hate them. When I really hate the traffic, I jump on a shitty motorcycle I bought on Craigslist.

Depends on your car - especially how heavy the clutch is!

While I agree regarding traffic I think everyone would be way more courteous and the roads would be safer if everyone drove a manual.

Just go to Italy or Argentina (100% manual) and you'll be disabused of that idea VERY quickly... that's the worst behaving traffic you'll ever see.

There are tons of inputs to consider here but driving a manual car does make you a bit more attentive to what your car is actually doing.

Check out Brazil.

Definitely not. Check out any country that is not US for that. Not just Argentina or Brazil, but Europe too. Poland, for example.

(Personally I think everyone would be way more corteous and the roads would be safer if traffic laws were actually enforced. What I mean by that is e.g. ANPRs deployed pretty much everywhere, automatically fining you for speeding. The way most drivers I know treat traffic laws as mere suggestions is ridiculous.)

I realize you received a few of these comments already, but please also check out India if you think driving a manual improves safety and courtesy.

Maybe not courteous, but at least attentive. If you're driving a manual in stop and go, it's hard to be playing with a cellphone (not that it doesn't happen). You are being forced to spend some thought on the act of driving, which I think is a good thing.

Not really. An experienced manual driver can do it all with his/her eyes closed. It's just like the change from new driver to experienced driver.

One hand on the gear stick, one hand on the steering wheel, you shouldn't have a spare hand to use your phone. Or do you steer with your knees? :)

So you need to keep your hand on the stick while cruising on a long stretch of road or highway? That's where smartphone use becomes dangerous imo.

Manuals would probably shift driving away from the ignorant/nice/slow style of bad driving found in the southern US towards the attentive/aggressive style of bad driving found on the east coast. Definitely not more courteous, but probably more efficient and safer.

I just spent two hours this morning in bumper to bumper traffic. In a diesel. With a manual. Shifting and clutching the entire time. All that monstrous low end torque just made the diesel want to take off the entire time.

Still I wouldn't change that for anything in the world. I always hated the lag between stepping on the gas pedal and the car beginning to move in the automatic. No clutch. That's no life, sucking all the enjoyment out of operating machinery.

You're going to love electric cars. Zero lag.

It's insane. I visited my uncle in Petaluma and he drives a volt. He's normally a very slow driver (drives us insane ;), but one day we were running late to dinner (don't do that to my aunt...) so he decides to floor it (again, flooring it for him, so like 45 MPH) and that car just _took_ off.

I was very surprised at how much torque the car had. It's one thing to realize, "oh, yeah, of course electric cars have more torque because x, y, and z" but a completely different thing to be sitting in it when the car decides to go 20 MPH faster in a blink of an eye.

I drive the UK variant of the volt, and while it has good acceleration, it also has a variable lag from the pedal being fully depressed to the acceleration starting.

>I was very surprised at how much torque the car had.

The torque curve on EVs is awesome for sure; I can't wait to own one. But I'll bet that most people have never driven a ICE car with any real power or an automatic transmission tuned for acceleration as opposed to gas mileage. They also "take off" with minimal lag.

Oh yeah. I drive a 2000 Toyota Corolla, so even a Camry is 'fast' to me. I just have to convince the SO to let me purchase a motorcycle...

I just have to convince the SO to let me purchase a motorcycle...

And thereby ruining cars for you forever. Oh, your $250K McLaren does 0-60 in three seconds? Yeah, so does my $10K bike.

It does save you money on cars, though. With two bikes in the garage, we're content to drive slow compacts when we need four wheels.

I had a similar "oh wow" experience when I discovered motorcycling, but eventually gave it up because I kept getting nearly hit by inattentive drivers. You pay dearly for that cost:performance ratio advantage over supercars, and the cost is safety.

I'm nearly hit by inattentive drivers on a daily basis. I've been riding bikes for so long that I just roll with it. I knew they were going to invade my space probably before they did because I read traffic ahead and to some degree predicted the possible outcomes.

But unfortunately that comes with time and experience. I've said in the past that if you can survive the first five years, you'll probably be pretty safe on a bike. I survived my first five years, despite of myself in retrospect, and the only time I've been down on asphalt was last year on a patch of black ice 400m from my garage. 35 years of not hitting pavement, only to be brought down by a stupid piece of slick road at 15mph.

I would never argue that a motorcycle is as safe as a car. For the youngsters under 25, I'm amazed that anyone survives, including myself. :-P But it's been mostly accident-free for me for 35 years. YMMV, in fact it probably will.

Haha, I agree re: under 25. I started cycling when I was 19; a motorcycle is a very intoxicating thing for a 19-year-old brain. I'm glad I survived. No accidents, but definitely some close calls.

The Volt isn't really an electric car, more of a hybrid - the gas engine is connected to the driveshaft, and the electric motor is only 82 hp. For a 3500 lb car, that's not much power. The Volt is IMO only marginally more "electric" than the Prius.

It is a similar experience, I'll give you that, but a LEAF (110 hp, 3300 lb) or Model S (300-700 hp, 4700 lb) will give you a much more exciting ride.

But no clutch, and no shifting. Just let off the accelerator for instant regenerative braking, and turn the wheel left-right. Acceleration isn't everything when driving; a clutch gives a car challenge, personality.

For me, driving without a dry clutch and without a shifter is no life.

> I always hated the lag between stepping on the gas pedal and the car beginning to move in the automatic.

There's always a semi-automatic transmission. In my Lexus IS 350 I can set a low gear before overtaking for that "instant throttle response".

Manual transmission is incompatible with cruise control with proximity detection, because the automated system can't shift (or it would be an automatic transmission). I would buy a car which has both (like the Smart) and manual shift in difficult conditions (like driving over mountain passes in snow). However the Smart I rented didn't have a clutch. It's weird. I don't know.

While the use-cases for cruise control are more limited with a manual transmission, I wouldn't go as far as to say the two are incompatible.

I would never use it in heavy-traffic and rarely on a single-carriageway (i.e. anywhere that travelling at 60+ mph is a hazard), but if you're only switching between 4th and 5th, then it really is very useful

I don't know of anyone that uses ACC for city driving or non-motorway commute. This might be due to the nature of British roads, though

I have ACC on a shift gear and it's great on highways. Not entirely incompatible for sure.

Me too.

Me too. However I don't have proximity detection. I don't think this would be useful. Say you have traffic then the proximity detector will stall your engine.

I am using cruise control to stay exactly at the speed limit. In Switzerland there are sometimes long and boring stretches with low speed limits, and nasty traffic enforcement cams.

My 6MT car has laser cruise control and while I have to operate the clutch and shifter, it doesn't disengage cruise. works just fine.

Agree - I was the same for many years, always refusing to buy an automatic because I thought it would suck all the fun from driving. And like you, most of my driving was spent in traffic.

I eventually got an automatic, and I will never go back to manual! And if you get an automatic with 'flappy paddles', you can still have full control when you're not in traffic.

Downvoted for sharing my experience. Nice.

I also drove a manual while commuting about 70 miles a day on the freeway.

I figured out that you can make manual driving as comfortable and carefree as automatic, but that type of driving typically wears on the clutch. For instance, you might just hold down the clutch in stop/go traffic if you don't know if you'll change gears or not. I was even pretty proficient at using my phone while driving with a manual but once again this involved a style of driving that wears out the clutch much quicker. The end result is you end up paying for a clutch replacement every 3-4 years which adds to the TCO of the car. After 7 years I'm switching back to an automatic and I don't think I'll miss my stick shift at all.

To the contrary, I find just popping it into neutral frequently is a much more comfortable way of handling stop-and-go than holding down the clutch all the time.

Do it right, and you don't even need to engage the clutch. Right when you let off the gas, pull the lever to neutral. If you're really good, and you're still rolling, you can give the throttle a little blip and put it right back into first w/o any clutch.

I always hear people say this but going from auto to manual I haven't really found commute driving any worse (granted, it's not fun in either case).

This is why I take the bus or train, even in towns where most people drive(when possible).

I used to commute from Downtown Hartford to the Airport. 20 minute drive, 40 minute bus ride. I showed up happy and refreshed and having had time to read, my coworkers showed up stressed out and miserable. I mean, I guess you save 20 minutes, but....

I like taking the train but I generally find a bus ride pretty unpleasant.

Not all places have trains, and not all buses are unpleasant. My rides in Hartford were all great. A lot of the anti-bus thing in America has some pretty ugly roots, but I'm not going to argue about it on HN.

At least in my experience, it's the bus itself that's unpleasant. Getting whipped side to side while the bus navigates streets it can barely fit on, loud creaking as every fastened component of the bus struggles for freedom as the structure of the bus flexes, and it's usually either too hot or too cold.

Add people to that and you've got a real grab bag.

I mean, sure, the relative safety of neighborhoods has some ugly roots too, but I'm not personally going to go live in a bad neighborhood just to prove a point.

I had to evacuate for a hurricane and spent more than 12 hours in stop-and-go traffic (traveling just over 100 miles). I did that in a manual transmission and vowed never to own one again.

I live in Silicon Valley and sit in nasty traffic daily in my manual transmission car. It's such second nature it doesn't even register.

A motorcycle is a different story. Holding the clutch in with your left hand gets downright painful after a while. Thankfully lane splitting is legal here.

I commuted about 1.5 hours/day in Southern California for 4-years in a manual transmission. Never once did it bother me.

Shifting in traffic becomes second nature, it's not some difficult thing that you have to think about.

The only challenge with a manual transmission is that it makes it harder to do stuff in your car with your hands, like eat a burrito, that you shouldn't be doing anyway.

SV MT driver too, I simply don't get it either. You're already sitting there. The controls are not hard to operate.

I have semi-regular nightmares about getting stuck in eternal stop-and-go traffic on Storrow Drive in Boston on my motorcycle... The lanes are too narrow to lanesplit, there's nowhere to get off (it's a very limited access expressway and the exits are usually even worse) and people honk and swerve around you if you try to attain the average speed of the crowd by leaving a gap. Yeugh. My left hand hurts just thinking about it.

I think if it's annoying, you're not driving in traffic the right way. Sure, it's annoying for aggressive stop-and-go driving, but if you maintain a consistent speed with the traffic in front of you (see traffic shockwaves [0]), a manual transmission is better than an automatic.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M

I would give nearly anything for 'maintaining a consistent speed' to be an element of my commute-hour freeway driving :)

Most traffic will let you be consistent, even if it's at 2 MPH :)

> ... if you maintain a consistent speed with the traffic in front of you...

Good luck with that in CA. Whenever you ease off to anticipate a stop, you'll just get a bunch of jerks changing lanes in front of you to save a car-length or two.

I never understood how to use automatic transmission in snowy/icy conditions. To me it's basically a lottery. With manual transmission and clutch I can actually recover from a slide almost immediately (the moment you start sliding you disengage transmission right away with clutch and do initial correcting maneuver which you cut short the moment you feel any kind of traction in order not to oversteer; it takes some practice on each car but you can try it on empty parking lots during winter nights). This is not possible with automatic transmission, the neutral gear still drags wheels, driving them to slide. Of course, if you have a 300+hp engine and are a race driver, you might try to correct it using full throttle, but don't try that with a normal car unless you want to massively increase your chance of hitting traffic.

Dude, many Americans can't drive in rain let alone snow and ice.

I'm not sure where you're getting that. There are hundreds of thousands in my area that seem to do it for several months every year.

I think they're trying to be flippant. Not worth indulging

Many Americans live outside of your area. Anyone who has experienced rain in California knows that people don't know how to drive in the rain. But it's not just there. You see people driving just as close to cars in front, without headlights or sometimes using high beams, unable to demist their windscreens etc.

I've lived in northern states where everyone does 10 over in the rain and maintains the speed limit even with 2" of snow on the ground.

I've lived in southern states where people refuse to go faster than 40 if the roads are anything less than bone-dry.

Totally depends on what people are used to driving in.

L1 or L2 if available was always the advice I was given.

> I never understood how to use automatic transmission in snowy/icy conditions. ... it takes some practice

The second part of your statement I quoted above is how. Recovering is identical except for the declutching (instead, if it is a power generated skid the reaction should be to reduce power). But the true part of the recovery (be it with a manual or automatic tranny) is performing the correct wheel turn in the correct direction and amount to recover. And getting that down requires enough practice so that the reaction becomes muscle memory habitual. Once that is done, recovery in an automatic is just as trivial.

You'd be amazed how many people, who never had any training and have never practiced skid recovery, have the initial reaction of turning the wheel the wrong direction (hint: almost everyone who has not ever practiced the maneuver will do this) - which of course simply makes the skid worse.

You can avoid skidding on the corners by going a little slower? I drove an automatic Camry a while in a ski resort and the only real problem was when the gradient got too steep so you couldn't get enough grip to get up which is not a transmission problem.

Automatics have traction control. The computer that operates the traction control is much faster at taking power from the wheels than a human using a clutch.

Manual have traction control too.

If you have a capable system an automatic can be an advantage.

My car has several modes including Sand and Snow. Both modes will remap the transmission and provide more/less torque. In some modes it will even start in 2 so you don't spin your wheels and get stuck. The throttle response in the pedal will also be increase/decreased as well as the sensitivity of the steering wheel.

Let off the gas and steer where you want to go . . . it really is that simple. Letting off the accelerator is more-or-less equivalent to pushing in the clutch. I've never (well, hardly ever) had trouble recovering from a slide in an automatic, and I've never really practiced it except by accident. Anyway, if you are sliding regularly in snowy/icy conditions, you might be driving too aggressively or you might just need snow tires.

Pretty easy.

Take your foot off the gas. If you're still sliding, steer into the slide and correct. If necessary, rinse & repeat.

IMO, the only real advantage a manual has is the ability to do some engine braking.

Is "steer into the slide" the same thing as the above comment to "steer where you want to go"? I literally don't know what steering into the slide means. If my front end is sliding right and my back end is sliding left then I should steer which way?

"Steer into the slide" means if your car is rotating clockwise you steer left such that you reduce the friction on the front end (by turning the wheels so they roll instead of slide) and maintain the friction on the back end (given the wheels will not be pointing forward).

(edit: depending on how far you've already rotated, but I'm speaking as if the front of the car is still ahead of the back of the car)

Best explained by video. There are many on YouTube, this one happens to have a lot of views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAi0fes4OC4

If you're on an icy road (or other low traction surface like oiled stone or gravel) and your car starts pointing/moving/spinning to the left, you want to turn left to keep the front wheels moving and regain control and dump as much speed as possible without locking the wheels. Don't touch the brakes until you have traction!

That's counter-intuitive for many people as typically you want to actually go right.

If you have a manual transmission and you know what you're doing, in some situations you can downshift and use the engine to slow you down more. But in my experience, it's a "nice to have" vs a must for passenger vehicles. (different story for big trucks)

Apply throttle, point wheel, let whatever the manufacturer brands their dynamic control do it's thing. I grew up driving a manual on northern New England backroads in show and ice, and I'm quite proficient at it. My 328 wagon is far, far, better than me. This shouldn't be surprising, as it has a much higher-dimensional control space to work with, and much finer grained sensor data coming in.

It's also much easier to get unstuck in the snow with a manual because you can rock the car back and forth between 1st and reverse.

Also you have the option to start in 2nd gear to prevent spinning tires and sliding when starting from a dead stop.

Holy crap, I didn't realise it was quite like that. I knew it was rare for people to know manual transmissions but why such a preference for automatic?

In Australia pretty much everyone I know can drive manual, most cars come with the option and most cheaper cars are manual. It was somewhat of a masculinity thing too, and still is according to my younger siblings.

To be honest I'm surprised the most that America doesn't have that same psuedo masculinity requirement thing happening. I am not saying it's good to have, just that I am surprised it's not there.

As far as myself, I have always much preferred manual and find myself utterly disillusioned with automatics. No engine braking so you're constantly between pedals, gearbox never in the best gear because it can't predict your actions, and they make even the nicest motors sound like droning slugs.

Even if you don't intend to go racing, a manual is just a bit more interesting and keeps you paying attention the whole trip, in my experience at least.

I think part of the masculinity thing might be down to the fact that for the really powerful muscle cars you really want auto again.

The US has no big tradition of sports cars (in another sense than muscle cars). On the other hand, Aussie car tradition is pretty Similar to the American one in terms of big engines etc so I can only explain the difference between Europe and the US, not between Australia and the US.

> No engine braking

The DSG [1] is quite nice to drive and uses engine braking.

Careful feel for the throttle is required, but the same applies to operating clutch...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-shift_gearbox

Agreed. And while using the sequential shifter or paddles is engaging for performance driving or screwing around, I've also found that modern TCUs are scary efficient even in automatic mode, able to respond appropriately (fuel-saving in eco mode for example) to hill grade, corner exits, overtakes, red-light crawls from what I'm guessing are the use of accelerometers on top of existing drivetrain telemetry and just some good heuristics.

> To be honest I'm surprised the most that America doesn't have that same psuedo masculinity requirement thing happening. I am not saying it's good to have, just that I am surprised it's not there.

Oh there's plenty of masculinity things in the USA. It's just that not every culture/society has the same rules for masculinity stuff.

> Even if you don't intend to go racing, a manual is just a bit more interesting and keeps you paying attention the whole trip, in my experience at least.

I drive an E36 M3, a car almost 20 years old.

It's a musical instrument, and the driving manual is how you play it.

Learning to use a clutch is like riding a bike: at first it's frustrating and you stall a lot, but you learn quickly. Once you've mastered it, it's effortless and fun.

I got it for less than $10k.

It is basically open hardware: you can take most of it apart with standard tools, and there's a robust aftermarket for parts.

Old manuals break down less, and have cheaper failure modes than old automatics.

My car has no embedded sim card, no infotainment dashboard ipad, no nothing.

That gives me confidence that it will never be remotely hacked, letting some 4chan troll a thousand miles away disable my brakes[1]. Nor is the manufacturer collecting a detailed database of GPS coordinates, a log of where I go.

Buy a simple car. Learn manual. Enjoy the speed and control. Be the 3%!

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...

E36 BMWs are a dream to drive in manual. Its a shame they are getting increasingly rare to buy in Melbourne.

The same is true of other older BMWs. I've owned four, and my E30 was still the best.

My daily driver is an 06 mini Cooper S (6 speed), but my weekend car is my old e30. My son will be 16 next May. I've offered him the mini, but he wants the e30. I don't know if I can let go of it!

Yes, people talk about fuel efficiency but the differences are effectively negligible and more dependent on driving style than manual vs automatic transmission.

The reason lots of people drive manual by choice is simply because of the way it FEELS. The driving experience is more engaging and stimulating. I think people driving manual in the city pay more attention simply because they have to.

> I knew it was rare for people to know manual transmissions, but why such a preference for automatic?

I think this is twofold. First off, most drivers education doesn't teach a manual transmission anymore, nor is drivers education a requirement. While my parents learned on a simulator in school, I learned it from experience (and so happy I did) - my first car was a manual.

But the second part of this is that there tends to be a very small number of cars that even offer a manual transmission: Generally small cars, pickup trucks, and "sporty" cars. I live in Norway now, and have a smallish 4-door sedan with a manual transmission: The same sort of car is difficult to find in the US.

The masculinity still happens, but I think it is simply plays out differently. In a lot of areas, you are just as masculine in a pickup truck as a vehicle.

Sidenote: I am with you with preferring a manual transmission. In fact, knowing how to drive one and understanding the gears helped me with an automatic once.

> nor is drivers education a requirement

This is it really. Americans aren't very good at driving. In the UK we are taught that it's one of the most dangerous things you'll do in your life, which it is. In America it's just like learning to walk. You have to do it and it doesn't matter how you learn.

Check out the road safety stats. USA is pretty much an outlier amongst first world countries by most metrics.

The key figure, I think, is number of fatalities per billion vehicle Kilometers. For the USA that is 7.1. Unfortunately, Americans drive A LOT MORE than most other countries, so raw annual fatality count is very high (~34K). By comparison UK has 3.6 fatalities/billion KM and fatality count of 1.8K. Population ratio is ~6:1 US:UK. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...)

There are other countries where fatalities are much higher.

It seems that the fatalities per billion vehicle kilometres will be skewed simply by the average trip length being longer in the US. Fatalities per number of trips is probably a better metric since longer trips tend to use safer roads like motorways. It's just not possible to rack up that many "safe" miles somewhere like the UK, while the number of more high risk miles, ie. towns and country roads, is probably more similar. As suspected, that metric is the one the US does the best on in the article linked.

The best metric is probably fatalities per capita. It's not fair to take into account only the number vehicles because the whole population is at risk when it comes to cars. And it's not fair to take into account number of miles travelled due to the difference in trip lengths.

> It seems that the fatalities per billion vehicle kilometres will be skewed simply by the average trip length being longer in the US.

Trip length figures into the denominator (deaths/billion kilometers), so everything else being the same, longer trip lengths won't skew the statistic.

Not that the statistic will be skewed with respect to itself. But that it will be skewed against what really matters. It might be the wrong decision to factor out distance.

> nor is drivers education a requirement

Not sure what state they're referring to, but it's a requirement in every place I know of.

The general process when you're 15-16 typically includes:

- A number of Driver's ed classes that typically end with behind the wheel training

- Learners permit granted that only allows you to drive with an adult (21+) in the car.

- Drive without incident for a certain period of time

- Pass a written test

- Pass a full road course

- Full license granted

I went to HS in rural PA in 00-04 and the only "drivers ed" we got was one class a week for a month or two where we just went over the DMV handbook. No practical training or testing, it was expected that your parents taught you how to actually drive.

I'm originally from Indiana. All that is actually required is that you hold a learner's permit for a set time and pass the driving and written test.

To actually learn to drive, you just gotta have an adult in the car. In theory, this is to teach you how to drive.

Outside of that, there are a few restrictions on the license after you start driving, mostly on passengers from what I can remember.

Some folks do take drivers ed, which is usually offered at the high school after school or during the summer. When folks do this, they can get their learners permit at a younger age. It is quite common in the rural areas for kids to learn to drive tractors when they are 13/14 or younger.

>nor is drivers education a requirement

This was probably the case when you learned to drive (it was when I did) but many (most?) US States are starting to crack down on this and require formal driver's ed in some cases. There's also a lot more restrictions on young drivers than there was when I was a young driver.

For the non-Americans, in the US each State licenses their drivers and they all have different requirements.

It has been more than 20 years since I learned to drive and admittedly I'm only really familiar with Indiana laws, save for the last 3-4 years. And you are right, there are some vast improvements in the area, some a little ill-thought out. Most of these I've seen were increases in driving age, Requiring a longer permit holding time, more indepth written tests, and restrictions on either new license holders or teenage license holders.

That said, I wasn't aware of cases where drivers ed was a requirement at all. Everywhere else it doesn't matter so long as one can pass the both the written and driving test.

Norway is (probably) still a manual transmission holdout, potentially in part because you'll most likely end up being taught driving a manual as there's restrictions attached to your license. If you do your practical on an automatic, you're restricted to automatic, if you do it on a manual you get to drive both manual/automatic.

Anecdotally - early automatic transmissions weren't all that great on the windy mountain roads. My dad had two primary complaints (after having had an automatic rental). Tricking the car into downshifting to maintain speed or accelerate on steep ascents, and passing people on steep ascents, usually involved slamming on the brakes to trick the car into downshifting. (This were in the mid-90ies). My dad held onto the manual transmission until probably 2012-2013.

The restriction bit is absolutely correct. I'd guess that a good number of folks that learn on an automatic or take the tests in an automatic do so by choice or physical need, however. Folks have to take courses from a driving school, which supplies the car for both the training and the actual test.

I completely understand why it is a manual transmission holdout. Your anecdote confirms the attitude from my spouse (the native Norwegian) and others. A manual is just safer, both because of the mountains and the snow.

I would posit that in the US, new drivers are "grand-fathered" in to automatics. There is no driving license restriction in the US for transmission types, so there is little value in learning to drive a manual before your test (you could always learn later if you wanted to). Couple that with the fact that often a new driver's first car is second hand from a more sensible parent or family member who wanted the ease of use of an automatic, repeat for a generation or two, and suddenly you have very few new drivers who even have an opportunitty to learn how to drive a manual.

> To be honest I'm surprised the most that America doesn't have that same psuedo masculinity requirement thing happening.

They have guns.

> Even if you don't intend to go racing, a manual is just a bit more interesting and keeps you paying attention the whole trip

I'd rather pay attention to my surroundings than to the clutch. This goes for both day to day stuff (where it's better for safety), and pleasure road trips (where this lets you enjoy the scenery).

For the most part, the automatic is simply "good enough". And in US there's no peer pressure to drive the stick. Between those two things, it ends up being something reserved for people who really want that extra oomph - and they usually do it in cars specifically designed for it. Well, and immigrants.

> I'd rather pay attention to my surroundings than to the clutch.

Me too, but I've been driving stick for over a decade now and 99% of the time I'm not even aware of the clutch, it's just muscle memory at this point.

I think that is part of the issue though. The scenery really isn't where your mind should be while driving, simply looking to the side for 5 seconds is enough distraction to cause an accident.

http://www.distraction.gov/stats-research-laws/facts-and-sta...

I think for an already attentive driver it might be okay, but I would argue that a manual transmission would force people who are in the habit of being distracted to pay more attention. For one, you can't hold a phone very well while changing gears from a stop.

Related: "Manual Transmission Enhances Attention and Driving Performance of ADHD Adolescent Males" http://jad.sagepub.com/content/10/2/212.abstract

Pay more attention to what, though? The road? Or the car controls?

You eventually don't pay attention to the controls, just like you don't think much about the actual steering wheel. But you do have to be constantly aware of the situation you are in order to have the data to tell your subconcious to select the right gear, or to coast and such. You are constantly paying attention to stop lights for example, because if you don't you won't be in gear and you will get a toot for taking too long to react. The same applies for more complex situations like driving in thick traffic. You can't rely on a quick glance to know to slow down, you have to know ahead of time which gear to be in so you tend to watch what's happening more closely.

I have no studies to link unfortunately so this is of course just an anecdote..

I feel like most of the discussion on this topic is anecdotes, spiced up by cultural stereotypes.

I'm originally from a European country where the stick is prevalent, and pretty much had to learn to drive it (and hated it) - while driving exam could be passed with automatic in theory, there were simply no cars available (and you couldn't supply your own).

That said, people there weren't really particularly opinionated about it one way or another. There was some mild form of sexism, along the lines of "auto is for girls", but I think it was more an extension of the general car-related sexism in that country.

I then lived in New Zealand, Canada and US for a while. All of them have autos dominate - less so in NZ, more in Canada and especially US. But no-one really makes a big deal of it. If you drive the stick, no-one will taunt you for showing off, for example, the way people do with other stuff. It's just a slightly unusual choice.

On the other hand, I noticed that many European immigrants have a decidedly snobby attitude towards auto. They don't just prefer the stick - they're like vegetarians who have to make a point of some innate superiority of their choice, and disparage the other option - not even rationally, but on the level of, "Americans are just too dumb to learn this stuff".

And I think that this, more than anything else, kinda muddies up meaningful discussion (with studies etc) on this subject. It's such a strong part of cultural identity for some, that even starting a conversation on it is inviting flame. Note how my first post in this thread is at 0, even though it was purely about sharing my personal experience as a data point, and not saying that it applies to other people.

For the most part, I think people should just choose what they feel makes most sense for them, and refrain from judging the choices of others. The differences really aren't that big or that important beyond subjective personal experience.

There used to be a similar theme in the US, but it slowly disappeared from 1990-2010. Primarily because they are so rare they are now more of a quaint oddity more than a sign of driving competence.

The game theory on why manuals are disappearing is obvious. Drivers who can drive MT can also drive AT, but the reverse is not true.

I love MTs, but buying one means dealing with the following hassles:

1. Finding a dealership that actually has any MT cars. Let alone with the options I want. Often MTs are only available on stripped models or 60k sports cars. There are entire segments of vehicles where manuals are no longer offered. Full size truck with a manual? Nope.

2. Owning a car that only I can drive without becoming a driving instructor to whoever needs to borrow it.

3. Reselling the car when my needs change. I.E. Find someone who both wants the specific car I have, and also can drive an MT.

Ah, but when you're young and have many carless friends, #2 can be a very good thing!

The Dodge Ram is still available in manual.

> but why such a preference for automatic?

American here. From experience driving both, automatic is just so much.. easier. This is especially true on steep grades; since you can keep one foot on the brake and one of the gas, you avoid any risk of lurching backwards from a stop and parallel parking becomes vastly easier.

Even if you don't intend to go racing, a manual is just a bit more interesting and keeps you paying attention the whole trip, in my experience at least.

I'm confident that the same thing was said about manual spark advance in the 1930s when mechanical and vacuum advance became more common. No one today would argue that we need a lever on the steering column to advance and retard the ignition.

If my options are:

1.) I need a car to get around town. First I need to learn how to drive a car

- or -

2.) I need a car to get around town. First I need to learn how to drive a car. I also need to learn how to do the stick-shift part as well

It's obvious why people no longer do manual transmission. It's one more thing to learn that doesn't help me with my end goal of needing to drive around town.

> To be honest I'm surprised the most that America doesn't have that same psuedo masculinity requirement thing happening

Thanks for the negative stereotyping!

A few years ago I had to learn stick shift because there was a good deal on a car I liked and decided to see if it's worth it. Ever since, all my cars are standard transmission and I wouldn't have it any other way. They're definitely going away, but I'll keep buying as long as they're available.

There is something very satisfying about the mechanical nature of a stick shift car. Mind you, I drive in traffic heavy Los Angeles and still prefer it over an automatic transmission.

I delivered pizza one summer in a manual. I can't ever go back. :D I really think that driving manual requires you to be more attentive... and I should look to see if traffic accidents data backs me up.

Not sure if that's the case. While I love manual transmission, I would rather argue that it is more dangerous as you're often forced to have one hand away from the steering wheel, which makes it harder to react quickly.

How many people keep both hands on the steering wheel at all times (not counting smokers or idiots on their cellphones)? Also quick reactions are usually done with your right foot on the brake, not by swerving wildly around.

If I'm driving on slippery roads, both hands are on the wheel so I can counter-steer immediately if I need to. If I have to take my hand off the wheel to shift, I've just decreased my ability to quickly counter-steer, which is especially important if I make a mistake with the shift and accidentally apply too much power to the wheels.

I would be very interested to know the accident rates of manual transmission vehicles in North America, compared to the average. I agree that all else being equal, the added difficulty in driving them should result in a higher rate. But the added attention/engagement required could be an opposing factor. It's also possible that people inclined to buy manual transmission cars are better drivers on average. (I suppose it's also possible they're more aggressive, worse drivers on average too, although I would expect the former.)

Number of hands on the steering wheel has nothing to do with reaction time.

No, but it determines how well you can steer. Especially in sharp turns you usually have to shift down/up. If there's an obstacle (perhaps a person), both hands on the wheel will give you more room to steer in both directions. You'll be much more limited with one hand.

You don't shift up/down in turns, but before and in the exit path out of them.

I (and many others) do. After a traffic light on a large intersection you will have to (or at least should) shift to second gear with most cars before you're clear of the intersection.

It really depends on how you one-hand: arms locked at 12 o'clock, leaning toward the center is a terrible position, but left hand at 9/right hand at 3 (for RHD cars) is perfectly fine for steering response.

This is truly a non-issue once you actually learn how to drive a manual transmission well. It isn't like people keep both hands on the wheel anyway. I'd even argue that people with a manual transmission might react more quickly since they are used to at least keeping both hands readily available anyway. If it is that urgent, you forgo shifting the car.

I've always driven manual transmission and still think that. I often find myself steering with one hand through corners to shift up in time. And I could observe the same with others.

Of course it doesn't feel dangerous if you always do it that way. But that doesn't mean that it isn't. But as there are probably no studies for that it's just speculation.

Once you're done shifting you put your hand back on the wheel.

Driving around constantly holding onto the stick is a bad habit

It should be reflected in your insurance rates.

> They're definitely going away

... in USA. Many other countries which drive on the right sell lots of manual transmission cars. So they'll keep making them.

> They're definitely going away

Stick is the default and overwhelming majority in Europe.

Not as overwhelming as it used to be though.... maybe 75/25, versus the 90/10 it was in ~1990.

I have a license for manual transmission as that's the default in Germany. My US license is expired now* but I only drove automatics there. I always thought it was curious that the default in the US is automatic and in most other countries I've been to it is manual...in fact there's an ego thing at play here, too. A lot of people in Germany think automatics are for people who can't drive properly.

My next car will be an automatic, the convenience is nice and I doubt that I can get any extra performance out of my mediocre shifting habits. Automated or semi-automated driving (lane control and whatnot) is also a lot nicer with automatics (I've seen a manual that had the features and it was a usability nightmare).

There's a couple of use cases for manuals most notably driving on icy roads and possibly mountain regions but that's rare here. For everything else I'm assuming automatics are optimized beyound my abilities (saving gas by motor-breaking etc.)

*Random sidenote: German licenses don't expire. Not sure if it's different by state in the US but I could renew my US license by paying some money, there's no renewal test AFAIK

> German licenses don't expire.

It's effectively this in the U.K. (mine will expire in 50 years), but in Italy they do expire - so it's not an EU wide thing.

Except that you will be fined if you don't renew your photocard every 10 years in the UK - so for anyone with that style license, it does effectively expire.

> but in Italy they do expire

They do expire but you don't have to take a new drive test. It's more about periodically checking you're still physically fit to drive (e.g. you need to take a mandatory eyesight test every few years).

Ego thing? Maybe, but for me it's more of a fun thing. I currently drive an automatic and would love to go back.

Random addendum: German licenses do expire for larger classes - I have a license for BCE (aka 'up to 40t/max') that expired a while ago. Legacy licenses in that class expire at the age of 60 I think, current licenses expire every 5 years from the day you got one.

And of course there's the whole public transportation license thing (cab, bus).

Just take a look at some of the replies in this thread and you can see that for a lot of people, it's an ego thing. "You can't drive properly on dirt roads with an automatic". "You can't drive in the snow with an automatic." "You can't adjust weight distribution with an automatic."

Nearly everyone in this thread fancies themselves a proper rally car driver because they have a stick-shift Vauxhall Astra diesel.

Right. I cannot even comment on the whole 'stick is better for rally cars' debate, because I don't care about that sport and certainly don't qualify as a driver.

For me it feels closer, more direct, more fun. And .. that's about it. If someone provides convincing evidence that it's less fuel efficient (maybe?) and that automatic transmissions accelerate faster (a given?) then I shrug and say .. "But this is fun!".

On the other hand: Given that I drove manual most of my life and only drove really crappy automatics so far (Smart occasionally, Prius now) I might be biased twice. Both because manual's the norm and everything else feels off by default and because probably not every automatic transmission is created equal.

(Advanced challenge: Drive a Citroën 2CV - still one of the cars I love the most. 4 gears, unusual layout, weird stick position)

German licenses also have an expiry date, at least since 2013. Your license without expiry date will also need to be replaced in 2033: https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/adac-im-einsatz/motorwelt/be...

Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware of it. Seems like it'll be a simple 24 Euro payment in 2033.

> A lot of people in Germany think automatics are for people who can't drive properly.

In a country that overwhelmingly drives manual that is a reasonable assumption.

Many Americans seem to get quite defensive about driving automatic. In America, driving manual is a choice, and a weird thing to do. Therefore driving manual there has many value judgements associated with it. It is "macho" or something for driving elitists and gearheads to do.

In overwhelmingly manual countries, this is not the case. Here in the UK, your 85yo grandmother drives a manual. Your 16yo daughter drives one. Everybody but everybody drives a manual, nobody goes around thinking that driving a manual is novel or macho or in any way notable.

The very few people that I have ever known who drive automatic were truly awful drivers. They took the easier automatic-only test because they kept failing the manual one. It is not an unreasonable assumption to think that someone driving an automatic who chooses to do so, is a poor driver - but only in a country that is strongly manual.

Just got back from another trip to Europe where I encountered the slightly odd European preference for manuals. I can kind of see why, the car culture is quite different from the States -- where most cars are two or three generations beyond the kind of automatics most Europeans associate with the transmission type. The inverse is that most European diesels are two or three generations beyond what most Americans associate with the type.

The cars in Europe seem to be sharply divided between small, efficient feeling manual hatchbacks and powerful autobahn chewing rear wheel drive German luxury/sport sedans that will pass you on the inside lane like you're standing still when you're already going 140kph.

I think because Europeans simply don't see most advanced American, Japanese and Korean cars they simply have no idea what we're getting on about and they have virtually no experience with the state of the art in modern transmissions. Having just spent a few weeks driving around in a manual again, it felt pretty absurd and old timey to be honest.

For example, the absurdly tiny golfcart/hatchback I was touring around in claimed around 17km/l fuel efficiency, I don't think I ever quite hit that, I was more in the 15-16 km/l range. It was so small, I couldn't fit both my luggage and my friends in it, and it struggled to maintain speed on hills with the aircon on.

Coming back home, my very modern, full sized Japanese sedan hits around 19km/l on most daily drives. Plus I can actually put both people and luggage in it at the same time, and it hits highway speeds with absolutely no drama. Most new full-sized cars in the U.S. are getting somewhere around that fuel efficiency, and the cars are closer in size to the autobahn chewers than the econohatches.

I couldn't really find any particular advantage to driving a manual, and I drove it for about 3,000km just on this trip. But there were tons of disadvantages. When I asked my friends why the preference, all I got back where vague statements about "being more in touch with the car" and a bunch of outdated old-wives tales about fuel efficiency.

The "German luxury/sport sedans" overtaking you will almost certainly be automatic.

Having lived in the US, Canada and Europe, I have spent a lot of time driving both manual and automatic transmissions. I would say that the answer "being more in touch with the car" is not far fetched. I enjoy driving, different cars give me a different experience. But I find driving automatic cars very boring, and that's about the only reason (might be a bad reason, but still valid). I can drive both just as well, I never really thought about the fuel efficiency (I have a motorbike for driving around city that will take care of that) nor have I ever heard anyone mentioning that - I have heard that they were more expensive, but I've never tried to buy one in Europe.

Regarding the size of the cars. US cities have been well planned and designed for cars, while a lot of European cities haven't really been planned for cars back then. So, when you live in a city like London, most people will go for a smaller sized car rather than an SUV (or other types of big cars common in the US), otherwise going through those small two-way traffic street and find parking can be annoying. Otherwise, I might not mind as much having a big comfortable automatic car.

It isn't an "odd European preference". In this case, it is the USA that is the outlier, with most of the rest of the world preferring manuals.

Fuel efficiency is not a wife's tale but rather a statistical fact, except perhaps for very new, very expensive high end luxury cars where an automatic can have a slight edge under somewhat dodgy laboratory conditions.

And "being more in control" is also a fact. You cannot be more in control of a mechanical device when your control of that device is mediated by a complicated technology that behaves in ways you can't easily predict. If you want to precisely control torque and engine behaviour yourself, which can be useful in many situations from the mundane to icy or snowy conditions, a manual is superior.

It simply is a non-debate in most of the world. Americans seem to get quite defensive about it for some reason, perhaps because they associate manuals with being "macho" or an elitist gearhead or something. There's nothing weird abotu driving a manual.

No, there's nothing weird about it, but the stories about why they are better are pretty much entirely down to "well I like it better." Okay, that's fine.

But statistically, CAFE standards aren't being met by manuals, but by automatics and other advanced drivetrains. People can yell "but physics!" all they want, but the aggregate data is showing clearly that manual drivetrains are not the path towards increased efficiency. So clearly physics are favoring non-manuals.

As I said, high end automatics can outperform manuals in lab conditions. This is because obviously they can choose to perfectly and optimally shit up and down gears in a lab better than a human can.

That does not mean that they can do so in real life. A human knows what conditions they are driving in. A human knows if they need to stop in 50ft, a human has all kinds of intelligence about upcoming torque requirements that a gear box simply doesn't. So I am highly doubtful that "physics are favouring non-manuals" because an automatic is not a magical device that can somehow know these things.

I'm surprised that people are suddenly treating emission labs as sources of factual accuracy considering recent events.

So that's efficiency. You can dismiss the superiority of manual for driving on gravel, snow, ice or anywhere as "I like it better" but frankly it is consensus that driving on a manual gives more control.

Consider that if an automatic gave better control, then in situations where control is very important, such as, I don't know, rally driving, people would use automatics. But they don't. Because it doesn't. This isn't "I like it better" - if automatics were better there would be a huge competitive advantage to using them and manual drivers would be outcompeted and swiftly become history.

Having more control isn't something everyone values: some people would rather focus on where they are going than the process of getting there. By that metric automatics are far better.

Absolutely. I'm not saying manuals are better. Like any technology choice there's a trade-off. In this case the trade-off is it makes driving a car less complex, which is good, at the cost of some other things.

I just find it curious the notion from some Americans that driving a manual is inherently old fashioned and thus inferior in every way. Maybe it is a technology bubble thing as well.

If you are being passed on the inside lane you* are in the wrong lane no matter what speed you are travelling.

Are you seriously saying a modern full sized automatic sedan is more efficient than a modern compact car? Or are you actually comparing a modern sedan to an old compact?

Those turbocharged <1L little hatchbacks would absolutely trounce your big car for efficiency. And for a lot of people, whose primary use of a car is taking themselves to work, it makes an awful lot of sense.

Yes, and I actually provided the economy figures in my comment. It's crazy, but modern drivetrains in big cars can make the big cars more efficient than small hatchbacks.

"Those turbocharged <1L little hatchbacks would absolutely trounce your big car for efficiency."

Only if you drive them like in the lab tests. If you drive them normally, expect a very big discrepancy between the lab tests and real driving mileage. Much bigger than for normal cars with big engines.

The whole reasoning behind downsizing goes like this:

1. small engines are lighter than big engines, so they offer better mileage in city driving because there is less mass to accelerate

2. small engines have lower internal friction than big engines, and they need less fuel when idling, or near-idling, which you often do in city conditions

3. most of the time, most drivers don't need much power, particularly for city driving or when cruising at a constant speed

This leads to a conclusion that to maximize fuel efficiency, you need a small, low-powered engine for daily use with a strong turbocharger to help get more power in very rare events when you need it (like passing over).

However, there are a few caveats with this line of reasoning, and I guess some (Japanese) car manufacturers already noticed it and refuse to put downsized engines into their cars:

1. A turbocharged engine is much less efficient at full throttle than an NA engine of the same power (couple of reasons for this: lower compression-ratio, higher lambda to cool down a very small engine so it doesn't melt, losses of energy in the compressor / turbocharger).

2. If you downsize too much, normal driving will require to run the engine near the top of its power and make use of turbocharging very often.

3. The longevity of the engine is negatively affected and there are more components that can break. And modern designs that tend to reduce turbo-lag are complex and expensive to repair (dual compressor/turbocharger designs, variable geometry turbochargers).

And it isn't all because people don't want to buy them, according to a VP at Subaru it is the cost of taking the car with a manual transmission through the California emissions qualification process, and maintaining records for a car that only 10% of the customers will buy. And they don't offer a non-California model because people were upset about moving to California with a car and then having the state DMV reject it as not qualified!

I'm seriously trying to figure out if I can import a car from Germany (where they appreciate a fine manual transmission) and get it licensed here in California.

Similarly, California's laws on furniture flammability generally mean that upholstery is soaked in carcinogens in an attempt to make it burn slower-- but it doesn't actually have any benefits in a fire.

What's the similarity, other than this is also a California regulation?

Sitting on carcinogenic furniture because of a misguided upholstery safety regulation isn't really the same as being "forced" into driving an automatic because of a "misguided" (if you'd call it that) environmental regulation. The potential harm isn't comparable.

(Also, FWIW, I drive a legal CA car with a stick shift.)

Canada might also be an option, depending on the model.

All of mine are manual. Live on a gravel road - can't properly drive on loose gravel with an automatic. Then you have to creep along at 10mph. I can do 55 in my Subaru.

Another downside of auto - they have all sorts of 'traction control features' that take over the accelerator. What that really means is, when driving on loose gravel they start to vibrate like one of those old vibrating-football-game toys and the car then drifts uncontrollably in a random direction. Totally dangerous.

With a manual I can do a controlled four-wheel drift onto a snow-covered road and end up aligned in any desired lane. Try to do that in an automatic.

I don't think most of us normal people would do that.

> they have all sorts of 'traction control features' that take over the accelerator.

That's not exclusive to automatics, both of my manual cars will take over a bit if I start to lose traction.

Isn't doing 55 on gravel going to destroy your paint?

Traction Control, on paved roads, is extremely beneficial, and one of the best safety innovations since seatbelts.

On smooth dry paved roads anyway. I live up here in the Arctic Zone (as my OK brother-in-law calls it) and we have weather. And gravel.

For the rest of us who have to deal with traffic, manuals suck. First gear, second gear, first gear is not fun.

I grew up in a rural area with gravel roads. You can totally drive 55 mph with an automatic. I will agree with you on the traction control features; they are not very helpful when they engage on gravel or in any significant accumulation of snow. However, if the traction control is engaging regularly, you might be driving a bit too aggressively.

Don't most traction control equipped cars have a button to turn it off? Mine (Lexus LS600h L) does.

> Try to do that in an automatic.

I did that in my car with TC disabled with no problems.

I drive an old automatic Subaru, haven't had any problems on the gravel roads. I just put it shift lock and keep it in second gear and keep those wheels spinning.

I mean, most automatics have a sort of semi-auto mode that allow you to lock it in the gear of your choice. But obviously a manual has far more control.

Quote: "And it takes a really patient instructor to teach it."

That is bullshit.

It is not that hard, everybody can learn it with little guidance and practice.

The law here in some parts of Europe (e.g. Slovenia) states, that if you make licence with automatic, then you are licensed only to drive automatic, but if you make it with manual, you can drive everything.

So literally everybody here learns manual. Most of them are 18 years old when they start.

Most of the cars are manuals here anyway. But trend goes in favour of automatics for high end cars,

I learned to drive manual when I bought a manual transmission car and had to drive it home from the previous owner's house. It's really not a difficult skill. But people look at me as though I'm a wizard when I'm driving my own car. It's kind of crazy.

It can be picked up rather easily in a modern car, sure, but I'd like to note that not all manual transmissions are the same. As in, to drive many of them well, it does take a patient instructor and diligent student to understand the fundamentals, timing, muscle coordination, etc. To your point, yes, everybody can probably do it, but can they do it well?

The test I grew up with was a 1991 Ford Ranger, V6, 5 speed manual. The clutch engagement was extremely narrow and the V6 was kind of underpowered, especially with the A/C on in Texas, so learning how to make smooth take-offs was very difficult. I wasn't allowed to take that truck out on my own until I could drive around a passenger with a cup of coffee, not to the brim but definitely there, and not be rough to cause a spill. It was a high bar in my opinion.

Years later, my VW GTi 5 speed and clutch felt like an absolute dream, buttery, easy. Learning on the much harder transmission, in my opinion, was beneficial.

Yes some older cars are I imagine were rely hard.

My mom is totaly non car person, but in old days she had a car with non Non-synchronous 1-st and 2-nd gear. And she managed to figure it out and drive it.

This sounds hard to me :)

It's not hard if the car has plenty of low end torque (e.g. turbodiesel) but yeah, learning in a peaky naturally aspirated sports car can be a handful.

It's not the torque, tiny euro TDs make no power under 2k, where you'd be lifting off the clutch, but they have absolutely massive flywheels and vague clutches that make "just kind of dump it" a viable strategy.

I'll take driving my 8000rpm sports car over my old TDI any day.

I switched to automatic a year ago and I'm glad I did. Stick shift feels ancient already, and besides it's just annoying once you realize it can be done automatically. I'm from The Netherlands though, so most of my colleagues and friends call me "grandpa" now, because automatic is, as they say, for old people; almost everyone here drives stick shift.

I rented a car at Schiphol last month and the automatic was cheaper than a stick. I drive a stick in the US, I was expecting a stick there, but I was A OK with an automatic

I don't feel it's annoying. If you have a shifter it feels like you're actually driving.

People will long for manuals as we move more and more into autopilot.

Manual transmission. Double edge razor. Smoker grill. Get off my lawn. It's kind of beautiful.

I use a straight razor, and would love a man tran. But I can't really afford a car and I got this 20-year-old automatic for free so it's what I live with.

Driving manual in heavy traffic is a pain in the ass. RIP your calves.

I've driven manual in Bolivia since I learned how to drive, but when I moved back to the States I picked automatic because I would kill myself having to press the clutch every 40cm during heavy traffic.

People have this romanticized view of manual driving, going through empty hills, warm sun beating on your raybans. In reality you'll be stuck in traffic for 30-50 minutes per day for your commute.

It's a shame though, because manual transmissions are much easier to repair than automatics - according to my mechanic "Come Gato", back in Santa Cruz.

It's physically weird. Manual drivers must have left leg bigger than right.

Well, speaking of legs, automatic drivers don't use their left one at all...

Haha I've certainly gotten stuck behind left-foot-braking drivers.

> It's a shame though, because manual transmissions are much easier to repair than automatics - according to my mechanic "Come Gato", back in Santa Cruz.

-I believe that to be correct based on anecdotal experience. However, from what I've been told time and time again - in the long run, autos are much more reliable than manuals; flush the gearbox every now and then and it is just about ever-lasting.

So - it is arguably a trade-off. Chances are it will be simpler to find a mechanic who can bring a manual gearbox back up to speed in a faraway location - but having an auto makes it less likely you'll need to find said mechanic in the first place.

Then you have been "told" by clueless people.

Feel free to elaborate. I keep being told this by professional mechanics, it appears to be the firm conviction of more than one reputable 4x4 magazine - and an experienced overland explorer like Tom Sheppard swear by them.

I am open to arguments to the contrary, but simply saying that those of a differing opinion are clueless is hardly an argument.

I've never found driving a manual hard on my calves... even a little bit. Maybe just me? Or something you get used to if you drive a manual all of the time?

Drive a car with a very stiff and/or difficult clutch.

The difference between a Honda Civic or Miata clutch and something like a Jeep is pretty wide. I've only driven a handful of manuals but I have pulled a muscle in my left leg from driving an YJ Jeep. Stop and go will wear down your leg real fast in that. Not a great feeling to be limping around a bit the rest of the next day or two.

Only happened once in the 10k I drove it but my leg frequently got very tired after crawling traffic.

just to add: a heavy clutch can require 50+ pounds of pressure in a sports car or a jeep/truck/etc.

i would be surprised if even 5% of manual-drivers have driven a vehicle like that even once in their life.

I ride my bike to work three days a week. Driving my car (manual) the other two is my calf relaxation.

I'm in US, and am always struggling to find new cars when I'm ready to buy because of this probably. Just recently I visited a dealership where the sales guy told me flat out "manual transmissions are extremely rare anymore".

It may be a diagnose-able issue :) but I was a wreck (literally) when I first started driving because I would lose focus on the road.

Manual transmission, it seems to me, gives me a far better "feel" for the current state of the car. How fast I'm going, and because I have to change gears it keeps me more focused on the monotony of driving.

So far in my recent search I've been reluctant to even consider an automatic transmission because of what may or may not be just a psychological crutch.

Have you tried a car with paddle shifters? There is no clutch, but you still select gears.

Now they don't provide every advantage of a manual transmission, but you can for example downshift to avoid excessive breaking.

Don't they provide none of the advantages of an automatic (ease of mind in traffic), and all the disadvantages (less mechanical and power efficiency, etc..)

As far as I know, they're pretty much only useful in racing

It depends on the technology.

Double clutch automatic transmissions are manual transmissions with a robot that changes gears. The double clutch allows for the car to switch gears using clutches, so there is no jerky behavior. They give you as much control as a manual transmission, but only when you want to. Best of both worlds.

Some paddle shifters are automatic transmissions and the paddles actuate the torque converter. The worst of both worlds.

I've tried them on rental cars, and never found them remotely satisfying. If I had no other option, maybe, but fortunately I prefer Jeep Wranglers and there are still many, many manuals out there.

I've tried to force myself to use paddle shifters but I just hate it. It's not remotely enjoyable, and you just ask why you're pushing plastic buttons when the car could just shift itself. Even after forcing myself to do every shift with the paddles or a day or two, I get bored and go back to automatic mode.

.. and then you still don't get the enjoyment of driving a manual, and you STILL have that thing where 10% of the time the car is in the wrong gear.

I'd rather just be "forced" to drive a manual that is zero disadvantage to me (yes, even in traffic) and guarantees I am always in the gear I want to be.

Are there a lot of cars on the market with paddle shifters? I am not much of a "car enthusiast", so I'm somewhat ignorant in this area. Just need one to get from point A to point B.

So what if you get to drive an electric car?

I wonder if there was a point where manual cars were super cheap because they had them but nobody wanted to buy.

I'm always in the same situation. I have only driven manual transmission cars and trucks my entire life. I grew up in the mountains and with a lot of snow, so it was the preferred transmission for almost everyone. Now I live in sunny Florida, but I still prefer it for the feeling of being more connected to the car, more control, more enjoyable for me, and just really as a car guy I'm a bit of a purist.

What I've resorted to now that I don't live in a state where they're as common, is to buy all my cars via Autotrader/similar. It opens the market up to much more variety and choice as well as I usually find a better deal than I would locally.

Give it a try. It's scary to buy a vehicle long distance, but even with the cost of flying out and driving it back, I usually save money and always get exactly what I want. Just make sure before you go out yourself to ask a ton of questions and get a local mechanic to go take a look.

VW and BMW are still pretty good about offering manual options in the US.

Manual shifting is neither possible nor even relevant in electric cars or cvt (continuous variable transmission) cars.

Their rise will be the true end of the stick shift.

Well, there was the Lotus Evora electric, in 2013.[1] This was a high-performance electric sports car with a fake manual shift and fake engine noises. This feature could be disabled, and was not seen again in later models.

[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1081736_fake-shifting-fo...

Why would it not be possible? An electric motor can be hooked up to a normal transmission without any problem - the thing is, that there's no real reason to do that, but it's definitely not impossible.

Actually most Formula E cars do use gears and manual shifting. This is why

[1] http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2015/november/boxing-clev...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/FormulaE/comments/2gbika/why_do_for...

None of that probably matters for road cars. I'm using a car sharing service's single gear electric cars. They have great acceleration and are easy to drive. Better than automatic transmission cars.

For this year, the regulations of Formula E were changed to be more flexible and there's more diversity in the drive train.

Now there are cars with no transmission and cars with 4 or 5 forward gears. The engines are slightly different to compensate.

It's possible if an electric car had a manual transmission, but no company had yet built one because electric motors cam regulate revolutions per minute with amperage and voltage. However, no studies that I'm aware of to determine whether the battery range could be extended with gear ratios have been performed.

Best evidence you might find is the logic in formula-e. quickly found a subreddit thread with the question https://www.reddit.com/r/FormulaE/comments/2gbika/why_do_for...

The Rimac Concept_One is a fully electric car that has two gears (DCT though). I'm not sure any one has tested as to whether the range is extended in one gear vs the other. I would assume it would.

The main issue is that the efficiency curve of a electric motor is fairly flat once it gets >60% load[0]. There is a small hump typically around 60-80% output that is most efficient, but its only a few percent at best, so not worth the cost of a high torque transmission as adding a few extra batteries to cover the loss at slow speeds is much cheaper.

When cost is no object (eg: racing) you see transmissions so they can get peak power for longer.

Even in a application that I was involved in where power was ~$200/Watt, fixed gearing was chosen as the extra weight of the transmission made the whole system less efficient than what was gained by the transmission.

[0]: http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... (Its for Irrigation pumps, but still in the same class of power output as cars)

That is completely dependent on the design of the engine. There is no reason that an electric motor cannot be hooked to a transmission. It just doesn't need it as badly because they can handle sustained high RPMs, and in many cases, are specifically designed for high RPM operations. So it makes sense to keep things simple, and leave out the transmission, and that is what we are seeing right now.

But as electric cars become more common, they will need to be able to handle all types of driving, including steep slopes, which is a very common reason to stay in a lower gear. There will be demand for such a function, even if not in every vehicle.

> But as electric cars become more common, they will need to be able to handle all types of driving, including steep slopes, which is a very common reason to stay in a lower gear. There will be demand for such a function, even if not in every vehicle.

There's no need to add a transmission for this: many electric cars automatically apply regenerative braking when you let up on the accelerator, which provides similar benefits. It actually provides a really similar feel to driving a manual in low gear already.

Bullshit.

Initial models of the Tesla Roadster used a transmission with two gears because the motor wasn't flexible enough when direct driven.

And the final model continued to use a final gear reduction.

One of the things HN always harps on is automation of work and effort that humans do as to free us up time to work on stuff that we really want to do ( creative efforts, time with family etc).

But if in the process of automating everything in life we remove the simple joys that many get out of things like driving then we are moving in the wrong direction.

If I didn't have to do the dishes or grocery shop I would probably fill that time driving my various cars because they give me great joy rowing through the gears and connecting with the machinery of the car. We should be hesitant trying to make life too efficient and removing the things people enjoy doing.

For me this is an emotional topic. I want everybody else to use it, but I myself do not want an electric car, an automatic car or a general speed limit. Arguing about stuff like this with (some) Germans is like arguing about guns with (some) Americans. Sure, there is a reasonable position, which is better for society. I don't care, don't take away my [insert toy here]!

How would it be better for society if everybody had automatic transmission?

I would call myself a "car enthusiast" and I drive an automatic - I feel like even in dangerous situations, I have full control of the car. Whether it's sudden need to stop or accelerate, I have full control. In a manual car I've had a few near-accidents where the car just stalled because I was so concentrated on braking and avoiding the obstacle - Which was great, except that I found myself in a middle of a dual carriageway, sideways, with my engine off, stressed to hell, so actually moving out of the way was a huge effort. I had a similar situation in an automatic and there's no such problem - you need to brake, you brake. You need to accelerate - you accelerate. I just think that an automatic transmission allows you to concentrate much more on what's going on around you, without having to worry about being in correct gear and using the clutch.

Never experienced that but you have way more control in a manual excluding powerful electric cars.

You need to stop fast, well you have gears to utilize quickly in a manual. Need a pop to get out of a sticky situation? Drop the gear to get in the power band and pull away. I don't understand your argument other than manuals being more error prone.

Certainly you could stall it in an intersection if you aren't experienced as an example.

I haven't seen a report on this but I'd wager manuals were safer in practice before the smartphone and became even safer after. You can't be messing around with distractions nearly as much in a manual.

Sure, but in a manual some percentage of my brain is always dedicated to thinking about which gear I'm in. In an automatic I have 100% attention on the road.

And when I said "stop quickly" I meant "a person steps out on the road in front of you". Gears won't help you here, because I don't believe anyone can downshift in the 2 seconds left to impact - the best you can do is press the brake as hard as you can. The difference is that in a manual every time I had to do that I was left with a stalled car because I didn't press the clutch in time, while with an automatic I could move out of the way very quickly.

I don't know man, I've been driving manuals for the past 7 years, and I bought an AMG car this year - which only comes with a 7-speed DCT transmission. I would never ever go back to a manual, unless it was like a Miata, or GT86 - those cars I want to drive with a manual, because they are super fun on a back road with a manual. But daily drive + almost 400 bhp? Only an automatic.

Edit: also, you are saying that in a sticky situation you can just drop a gear to get in the power band, like you can't do it in an automatic - in an automatic, you just press the throttle down and it drops as many gears as needed. Want full maximum acceleration that the car can technically offer at the moment? Press it fully. Want to accelerate quickly but without dropping 3 gears down? Press it half way. I feel like that's tons more control than in a manual.

When you have to stop to not hit a child, a running engine is not your biggest concern. In other situations (still rolling), you can downshift afterwards. You are used to use both feet together anyway, so the reflex would be to kick both pedals into the ground.

Indeed. Part of the driving test in the UK (which the instructor may or may not choose to ask you to do) is to behave as if a little child just ran out into the road in front of you. You just mash the brake and clutch at the same time and sort it out afterwards. It's quite a natural action.

Most automatic transmissions that people have are crap and are geared much differently. If you took the avg auto, I think youd agree on the sluggishness of getting in the power band on demand.

You might have 100% attention to the road in an auto because you're a good driver but I just saw a report on the number of deaths smartphones cause and it's crazy.

> in a manual every time I had to do that I was left with a stalled car because I didn't press the clutch in time, while with an automatic I could move out of the way very quickly.

I can see it happening, and I've observed it with people who have learnt to drive on auto, but that's just a reflex problem due to inexperience.

If you're used to driving manual, just don't have to think about disengaging the clutch when braking hard, but you still do it, and you don't stall.

As for "pressing the throttle down and it drops as many gears as needed", in my experience it takes a noticeable amount of time until the car understands it has to drop gears. It's just not really rational to argue that an auto car gives you as much control as a manual.

Well, I come from a country where automatics are almost non-existent and very much frowned upon(Poland). I've only learned in a manual, and I haven't driven an automatic until after I already had 5 years of experience in a manual, and then drove a manual for another few years anyway. Had a selection of both sports and off-road vehicles, all in manual - yet I never had the reflex to press both clutch and brake in an emergency situation - it was always full brake first, clutch second.

In my experience, with all the autos I've driven, the transmission downshifts much quicker, smoother, and more intuitively than I ever could. Maybe I've only ever driven top-tier automatics, and a normal auto box is poor in that regard. No idea.

I don't think the parent has the same idea, but from my personal experience, it is almost impossible to not break speed limits in a stick shift car.

Same is not true in my case for automatic. Better have other drivers be safe and eco conscious.

What? How? That's like saying because the car has a V8 instead of a four-cylinder it breaks speed limits. What are you doing with a stick shift that requires you to speed?

It is way more fun to drive, weave through traffic and to take turns at higher speed because of heel-toe downshifting than driving the same car with automatic. You feel like you are one with the car sometimes. You feel like you are in control. You hear the engine obey your every command. In an automatic car (only extensive experience with Subaru and Hondas) you feel like you are in a bus. It feels completely irresponsible to break rules.

And the best part is that it doesn't have to be a fast car. My favorite was a Honda.

I got too many speeding tickets in a manual so had to switch to automatic. But every time I go to Europe, where the rental cars are manual and roads are curvy, staying reasonable and safe requires too much self control.

Regarding V8 vs 4-cyl, I think controlling myself in a 4-cyl is much harder than in the 8-cyls I've driven. The reason is that 4-cyls (obviously not true for all of them and one can tune the power band to be of any shape on any car) require you to raise the RPM since they don't have that much torque down low. That engine noise gives you that initial boost of adrenaline that starts the whole thing. This may not be true for all cars though since I've only driven Ford Mustang and Lexus V8s and mostly Hondas and Subarus 4-cyl.

> staying reasonable and safe requires too much self control.

I wouldn't say manual transmission is the main problem here.

I'm able to not break law when driving, and apparently most people in Europe are, even though we are mostly driving manual.

I really hated driving automatics though, especially since my only experience with them was in the mountains of Taiwan and Japan. You just have so little control, and you feel the car struggle when you know it should just shift gears already, or shouldn't shift at all because you're going to slow down in 5 seconds.

Well, that mismanagement of the powerband is so frustrating to me that I lose interest in driving altogether thus making it safer.

I might be an anomaly though.

I'm from Europe and learnt to drive with manual, but after getting used to my Prius' CVT, would never buy a car with manual for daily use. (Besides, my next car won't have an ICE.)

If you occasionally like "sporty" driving with manual shifting, modern automatics will paddle-shift quicker than most people with a real stick & clutch. Manual gearbox is just an artifact from ICE's very limited torque curve.

Paddle shifting is in no way equivalent to the level of torque and engine control a manual transmission provides. I drive a car with paddle shifters, coming from a manual, and it's just night and day different. The connection is entirely missing without the feedback provided by the physical linkage of the clutch pedal.

Try a PDK.

The idea that it's so important to be able to uncouple the driveline as to warrant a dedicated pedal just for that purpose is completely silly.

I actually daily drive a dual clutch gearbox. It's definitely not the same.

> Prius' CVT

It should be noted the transmission in a Prius isn't really a CVT. A traditional mechanical-CVT can be slow to respond as it still requires the transmission to mechanically move which means it can feel 'soft'. In the Prius' 'e-CVT' there is no mechanical linkage that needs to move, so it responds instantly.

The electric motors can provide their full torque while the ICE is at 0 RPM, so when you push your foot down, you get a good amount of power without waiting for the engine to spin up to higher RPMs, as with a traditional automatic transmission (vs a mechanical transmission, where you can run the engine faster and use the clutch to limit the amount of power delivered to the wheels). This is why the Telsa's ludicrous mode is a thing - unlike an ICE, electric motors provide the highest torque from 0 RPM.

Agree, calling Prius transimission a "CVT" is understatement, "electro-mechanical torque converter" would be more accurate term. Despite the Prius drivers having a reputation of being slow, the car is pretty quick, especially from red light start. Actually it makes you feel that other cars accelerate annoyingly slowly.

I highly recommend everyone learns to drive a manual before it becomes a dead art, it's truly a lot more fun and engaging experience.

That being said there's obvious cause for the shift to all-automatic, just like we'll all be using self-driving cars not long in the future.

However what concerns me is that automatic transmissions are not only more expensive in general, but harder to maintain / less reliable. That a trend of laziness has created this demand, to the point where 97% of US consumers choose to pay more to automate the process I find so enjoyable.

To be fair a majority use case for driving is daily commute, and it's not nearly as fun to drive a manual in heavy traffic as it is to cruise windy roads on the weekend.

> but harder to maintain

I'd have to dispute that--ATF change intervals are about the same as clutch change intervals (disregarding the "lifetime ATF" crap that manufacturers peddle) but cost far less, and otherwise automatic transmissions today last the lifetime of the car.

I think what he was getting at is:

if so inclined, you can repair or replace your own clutch (as a hobbyist or someone who is mechanically inclined), but doing the same to a hydraulic-based automatic transmission or a CVT is a tall order unless you are professionally trained.

ATF change - 30,000 miles. Clutch service - maybe 300,000 miles if your car body lasts that long before rusting to hell. That's if you know how to drive.

The service schedule for a VW DSG is fluid change every 40k and there's also a filter which needs replacing too.

Automatic transmissions are way more reliable, with the computer shifting gears at perfect timing each time. None of my automatic transmission cars (1st hand, sold after 4-8 years) ever need to have its gear box repaired. Manual transmission, on the other hand, more than 1 thing would break for sure after 4 years (right after the warranty expires of course) for sure. Gearbox, clutch cables, ...

Cars with auto transmission costs and extra thousand but you get it back when you sell the car, plus you won't rack up expensive repairs and towing.

Not true at all, I am not sure what you are even talking about. Automatics are way more complicated and error prone, a stick is literally just gears, synchronizers and some torque shafts. Also manual transmissions having problems with "Gearbox"? What does that even mean?

Wait, you're suggesting that manual transmissions have more points of failure than automatic transmissions?

Not only are automatic transmissions significantly more complicated, they also fail catastrophically.

Your clutch is a consumable part. Consider it a writeoff. You might replace it once in your time owning the car if you hold on to it forever, and you still haven't made up the $2k difference in MSRP/whatever the difference may be on the used market.

Obviously you don't drive VWs!

> it's truly a lot more fun and engaging experience.

No it isn't.

well, here's the ultimate theft protection for ya.

Of course driving manual in traffic is pain in the ass, but I would prefer to skip heavy traffic anyways, instead of trying to make it somewhat more bearable.

Had some experience driving automatic in Cyprus, which is very mountainous. It was impossible to keep constant speed, as car was constantly trying to find "optimal" gear for every hill and slope, instead of finding optimal gear for the whole trip. Ended up using sport mode, which just kept the engine working at higher RPMs. Not optimal in any way.

I'm sure there are great automatics, but unfortunately not in my price range. There's a difference between automatic ferarri and automatic hyundai.

I live in an area (in USA) with a lot of car theft. A police officer said the easiest theft prevention is to buy a stick because the thieves can't drive them. He said they had a really nice bait car, but because it was a stick nobody stole it.

That is a bonus!

Similar story: My father (and now, my brother) had a 1963 pickup truck that he always left unlocked. He said he never worried about anyone stealing it because he figured most folks couldn't drive it. Not only was it a manual, but it was a 3-speed manual you shifted from the column, so it looked like an automatic inside but yet very much wasn't.

this is called a three-on-the-tree car. as opposed to a four-on-the-floor.

Yeah, I know, I just wasn't sure how many people would recognize the term. :)

Because you can't actually buy them. I bought a car a few years ago, the option was base trim with manual or all other trims in automatic. It was very frustrating.

If the choice is between automatic windows, dual climate control, heated seats, etc or a manual, you'd be a fool to choose the manual no matter how much you prefer it over an automatic. Then of course, the "sales data" feeds back to the manufacturer and everyone keeps buying into the notion that no one wants manuals.

Exactly this. Plus dealers don't ever stock any, either, so you have to special order as well. I'd be fine special ordering, but seems most people are not willing to wait.

I'm a diehard manual enthusiast, but nearly all of the few remaining models out there that even offer a manual transmission only offer it on the base stripped-down model. They seem to think that the manual is the "frugal jerk" option, and only offer it in the trim levels that hardly anyone even buys in the first place regardless of transmission.

My current car is a 2004 BMW 330 with a 6-speed manual, but it also has all the options. Leather, power everything, adaptive xenon lights, moonroof, heated seats, etc., etc.

Every time I get the urge to buy a new car I'd have to give up most of those nice features to get a manual transmission because you can't option it with the fully loaded packages or engine/drivetrain combos.

BMW, for the moment, continues to be the exception by offering manuals in nearly all configurations of the 2/3/4 series, but man the prices on them these days has really gotten up there, plus all the new turbo and electronic stuff likely isn't going to hold up as well as the old N/A straight sixes.

I recently purchased a Fiesta ST, which (along with the Focus ST) bucks this trend. The Fiesta is a cheap car, but the highest trim package, ST, is exclusively available as a manual and adds 70 HP. The Focus ST is the same, with an even bigger HP bump.

Hopefully somebody else decides to compete with Ford for the budget enthusiast market, and we get a bunch of fun manuals :)

I also own a 2015 Fiesta ST as my daily driver. It's the most fun I've ever had in a car.

Did you do the driving class, Octane Academy? It's not well publicized, but the ST comes with a free driving class in Utah (you pay for travel and accommodations), but it's only valid within a year of buying it.

I haven't driven the new Focus/Fiesta ST/RS, but I test drove the previous gen manual Mustang GT. Ford took all of the feel and feedback out of the gearbox, clutch, and steering of that car. I think that they were trying to hit a broader demographic by making things feel smooth and approachable, but I hated it.

Do you feel like the Fiesta is similar?

In my experience automatic is ok if driving in city traffic or on a highway, much more comfortable than manual. On a highway one is always in 5th anyway, or driving stop and go in a traffic jam.

When I drive on some hill or mountain road, I feel safer on manual because I know how much the car can hold the road in a turn given the gear I'm using and the speed I'm carrying into the turn. With an automatic gear it usually feels like it's using a higher gear then it should, so I have to drive unnecessarily slower and use brakes more, which can't be good for them.

Anyway, cars with both sequential shifting and automatic transmission are becoming common so one can have both manual and automatic. If I have to buy a car again I'll go with something like that. Some high end cars have paddles on the steering wheel to shift gears up and down, like in Formula 1.

In my country (Kazakhstan, and Russia, AFAIK) manual transmissions are popular with cheap cars, where $500 is a huge difference for buyer. With more expensive cars manual transmission are extremely rare (only BMW have them, AFAIK). So it's basically a choice between cheap and expensive options.

I personally like manual transmission. It cheaper, it's not hard to use, it's significantly cheaper to repair, car with manual transmission could be towed or could tow another car, etc. So for me is a bit of convenience does not outweight drawbacks and extra cost.

I recently went to the ends of the earth to get a 2016 manual VW sportwagen in the US -- but it was possible after going to dealerships looking at me like I was insane.

Shifting around in my BMW e36 5 speed will always be one of my greatest pleasures <3 -- nothing gets me up better for work than knowing I can speed around like an asshole on the way :)

People complain about traffic, but I feel the opposite. I mean, in an auto if you see a spot to cut into you are forced to floor it to force the car in a low enough gear -- it feels like the car is suffering vrrrAHHHHHHHHER

I also find it funny that people prefer autos for stop-start traffic. But every single car I've ever owned can be moved using the clutch alone, zero throttle input, so moving in stop start traffic is easy.

That's only because some manual cars have acceleration on their clutch but many others don't. I've driven some that don't have it and if you don't know how to do it, your engine will stop and you'll have to reignite it (with the annoyance of people honking at you).

It's also an annoyance when the traffic moves at different pace in a traffic jam because you have to stop, switch to first gear, move slowly, if the cars are moving fast enough switch to second gear, if they stop back again to first gear... If you are lucky enough and you are in a slope road, you can go without any gear selected and just use the brakes.

I also find it more comfortable to hold a clutch than the brake pedal. The ergonomics of brake pedals on cars are awful, they sit really high and they are right in the middle of floor well. Clutch pedals are designed to use your entire leg in a natural motion.

This is unfortunate given that manufacturers regularly game fuel mileage tests fof automatics to give buyers a sense of better gas mileage(to justify the higher price). Real world tests by consumer reports and others continue to show that manual transmissions get better gas mileage in real world conditions on top of being much more reliable.

And before someone mentions it, a clutch wearing out during the working life of a modern manual car is a joke. I've driven multiple manual cars to over 200k miles and never had to replace a clutch. If you wear out a clutch your car is defected or (more likely) you're utterly terrible at driving stick

Do you have any data to back up your statement?

Huge amount of different tests. Manual gearboxes are generally more efficient, but not in all situations, and the modern dual-clutch automatic boxes outperform manual transmission in many cases.

But overall, there are hydraulic losses in classic planetary automatic gearboxes, and they are also heavier.

For instance,

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/01/save-gas-and-mone...

Personal experience: I regretted buying a Renault Laguna with automatic box. Horrible fuel economy. Even the torque lock didn't help, also highway economy was quite bad which was very surprising. Other than that, a nice car.

> a clutch wearing out during the working life of a modern manual car is a joke

Could use a reference. The wear will depend a lot on your area - mountain roads will kill it faster than suburban commute. But either way, I tried to find anything more authoritative than a forum post (which say anything between 100k and 300k), and it's pretty hard to do. Have you got a link with an actual survey or producer stats?

I can't find anything official either. Most of the guys I know also drive stick and none of them have worn out a clutch unless they take their car to the track. Seems to be a pretty well known among stick drivers that manufacturers build them to last the life of the car these days. Can anyone from Europe chime in on this?

European here, only ever owned manual cars, had about eight cars in my lifetime. Never needed to replace a clutch, mostly a mix of urban and rural driving. My yearly mileage has varied from 25,000 miles a year to around 8,000 now.

It helps that I actually know how to drive and not burn the fuck out of a clutch too I'd imagine. You see very dumb people in my country using their clutch to hold their car stationary on a hill, what the hell that is all about I'll never know.

Correct. It is very possible to burn out a clutch in less than 3000 miles if you are clueless, but if you are a good driver, 300,000+ miles is not unusual.

Outside of the US/Canada this stat is most likely the inverse.

Certainly the case in the UK, Australia is probably 60/40 Manual to Auto

True. I guess in germany it's at least 80% manual. Apart from the more luxury cars (Mercedes E/S-class, ...) which are typically also only built and sold with automatic transmission.

I have my eighth car right now and for it's the first one with automatic transmission. I mainly picked this because in combination with the newer assistance systems (ACC) it provides a better experience. However I now also have to admit that the VW DSG that I have feels generally very good.

An unusual use of a manual transmission (in a motorcycle) is Brammo's Empulse R, which is fully electric, but has a 6 speed manual transmission just to give it a classic ICE motorcycle manual-shifting experience, and to give it a tiny bit more acceleration from a dead stop.

This review comparing it to Zero's single-speed electric motorcycle seems to suggest it's mostly not worth the added complexity:

http://www.cycleworld.com/2013/10/31/brammo-empulse-r-vs-zer...

EDIT: apparenly Brammo sold their motorycle business to Victory: http://www.victorymotorcycles.com/en-us/electric/empulse-tt-...

I think it's fair to say at this point that people aren't buying manual for the fuel economy, but for the fun and control provided by the interface. I think if you take a look at cars that come only in manual in 2015, they take a distinctly sporty direction: http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/g6415/13-manual-only...

I got to San Francisco last October and was due to pickup my "top class" rental car from AVIS. I got to the parked car and noticed it was automatic. I straight away thought this was a mistake and ran upstairs to ask for a manual transmission car. The two ladies before the counter looked all confused and said I would be very lucky to find such car...something like a sports car.

So I spent the next 20 minutes inside the car trying to figure out how I'm going to operate a saloon, automtic (I havent driven before), wrong side of the road on a busy motorway (san fransciso airport is next to the highway)...

By the end of my "training" week...I loved the automatic transmission...It even allowed me to roll my window down, hang my arm out while playing California love by Tupac&DR Dre....American dream?

You mean right side of the road? (left side being wrong)

I always feel the urge to play California Love while rolling out of LAX onto 405

It's harder for a manufacturer to implement an effective stability control system in a manual. The federal mandate of safety features after the Explorer/Firestone problems included that all cars have stability control and TPS. The tire systems are easy, but stability control usually combines ABS with engine cutoff. In order for engine cutoff to work, the transmission must be engaged. This is also why automatics stay in gear when you're going downhill They call a feature "Downhill Assist" where the car attempts to maintain a stable speed relative to the pressure on the accelerator pedal. Combined with uphill assist, this makes for a more consistent driving experience.

I think anyone who drives off-road in the mountains knows how much better sticks are then automatics. It's extremely frustrating to take automatic trucks on steep off road terrain.

Actually, it seems that the recent trend for off roading is embracing normal automatics, because you literally can't burn a hydrokinetic clutch. No matter what the terrain - you add some gas, and you move. I think anyone who has driven a modern LR Discovery off road will agree here.

-I beg to differ. My current 4x4 fun vehicle is an old Land Cruiser with an auto box. I do not miss manual shift at all. Low 2nd and off I go, for the most part.

No need to work my left foot like a drummer in a speed metal band.

Having some sort of terrain response system like just about any current 4x4 does makes it even simpler.

> how much better sticks are then automatics

How much better for what? You missed a qualifier there. For exact control over torque-vs-speed - Yes. For the comfort of driving - No.

Off-topic, but I opened this page without any tracking or ad-blocking & after about 30 seconds of reading, was treated to two video adverts which were off-screen but playing audio at the same time. One would have been obnoxious enough, but 2 simultaneously was just awful.

Online ads do the marketing for ad-blocking all by themselves don't they?

My most recent car purchase was a manual transmission Subaru Impreza. Technically, it is the bottom end car that Subaru sell in the USA.

I had to get on a wait list and put a deposit on it because of how few were available.

I suspect there is higher demand for manual transmission cars in the USA but the distribution costs of them make it just simpler to not drive one.

To be fair, Subaru has amazing CVT technology which probably skews the stats even more again manual.

I always want a manual transmission, but they're so hard to find. My most recent vehicle purchase was a truck (a big diesel pickup for hauling a travel trailer). They simply don't make big pickup trucks with a manual transmission, anymore, which is a damned shame.

My vehicle before that (a Nissan 350Z) had a manual transmission, but I had to insist on it, and wait for it to arrive from another dealer across the state.

It makes me sad, because the fun of driving for me is dramatically reduced by an automatic transmission. But, I guess we won't be driving ourselves for too much longer, anyway.

20 years ago automatics were 1) much more expensive 2) had worse gas mileage 3) were slow shifting 4) did not have fast up/down shift controls 5) had sloppy throttle response

thanks to economies of scale and new technology, car makers have bridged the gap on all fronts. So while I personally prefer manuals I can see why most people just get automatics, given the high cost of learning manual.

teaching people to stop-start manual on steep hills is extremely hard and frustrating for all parties. it's hard on the car too.

Newer cars (even manual ones) have hill assist which avoids your car rolling back on the hill.

A stick is the only way to go for a muscle car. My first muscle car was a '67 Mustang, which had a problematic transmission. The first thing I did was convert it to a 4 speed manual.

My '72 Dodge has a Tremec 5 speed manual heavy duty. It's a sweet shifter, indeed.

Former 2004 Holden Monaro / Pontiac GTO driver here. Six speed manual transmission, 5.7L LS1 engine. 2nd gear lockout disabled, high RPM range cam.

One of the best driving experiences of my life: a V8 and a manual transmission is a match made in heaven.

Yeah, not much feels as good as running up through the gears with a strong V8! I'll be sad when they finally ban those cars from the road.

Meanwhile in Eastern Europe people still can't afford a car with automatic transmission...

Don't be misled; many in America can't afford any kind of car. Even many who have them go into perpetual debt to do so.

8 year (96 month) car loans are becoming a "thing" in America. Sure, a car that's cost more than your yearly salary looks "affordable" if you only look at the monthly payments and you can manipulate those payments by stretching out the loan forever. I believe 30 year mortgages being "standard" are also kinda a scam[1] for this reason.

Basically the idea everyone having many monthly payments is acceptable.

When I bought my car I did finance it but on my own payment schedule because apparently the dealer didn't offer 12 month financing.

[1] I'm using "scam" broadly I don't think it's a real scam in the literal sense of the word but I can't think of another word. Misleading?

The difference is that you can get an honest 3.5% fixed APR on a 30 year mortgage, but nothing close to that for a car loan, unless it is a subsidized scam.

Where? In the United States if you have great credit you can get a car loan for under 2% APR in the US for a new car. Under 4% for a used car.

> Radio host Adam Carolla, who collects and races vintage cars, said with a stick shift, drivers can’t “just lean back and go into autopilot mode.”

I think this is an overlooked advantage. Modern cars are ridiculously powerful, yet modern drivers are more less attentive than ever. I feel like the roads would be safer if everyone wasn't just mashing the Go pedal as soon as the light turns green. A manual transmission promotes more mindful driving.

I intuitively agree, but this is based on my own feelings. I'd love to see an actual scientific study demonstrating the effect.

Porsche is actually bringing back 911 GT3 in manual thanks to popular demand (after their older manual models went up in price). Can't wait for that #MAGA check so I can finally buy one

http://www.autoblog.com/2016/03/04/porsche-911-gt3-manual-re...

In late 90s, when I was young and beautiful :-), I was joking about americans being too unskilful to drive car with manual, so they need automatic. But honestly, now I thing we europeans were just too stubborn not accepting auto transmission and thinking we're kind of superior because of it. And nowadays automatic transmission is becoming so popular, my 65y old dad is willing to have it.

Logic tells me that if I can do A and B because of A, whereas I can only do B because of B, I'm superior in the A, B data set compared to someone who is in just the B subset, where A, B set is driving.

don't try to find logic in it. :-) there is none. just high ego.

It might not just be stubbornness if you take into account the general difference in petrol prices (especially back then with more primitive automatics).

I favour automatic transmission, but still usually drive stick because of the mileage.

Ah yes, 1997. I was a mere lad of 50, driving a 5-speed sports coupe. Funny how at 69 my idea of driving is now a diesel econocar with an automatic transmission.

In Italy the percentage of automatic cars is very small, I've no exact idea but it's like the reverse of U.S. numbers, maybe 5% or 10% are automatic, even if I bet this number is raising. Because of that I always used manual cars in my life, but recently because of family and the realization I mostly drive in city traffic, I got a SUV (that is normally not my preferred car) with automatic transmission. Well... it's a lot less stress honestly if most of your drive happens inside a city. However interestingly, from time to time I use my wife's car which has manual transmission, and for a few minutes is definitely a lot more fun. You also really never lose your practice driving manual cars, even if you don't touch one for many months, it's like driving a bike. So manual is cool but I would suggest people approaching driving cars to learn the manual way to a have a more complete understanding of how a car works and be able to use a manual car in an emergency.

I just love it how Americans are so proud if they can "drive a stick". :D Anyway I have a Toyota Auris Hybrid and it's pretty awesome. It's really pleasant to drive. I guess I'm lucky to be able to drive both: automatic & manual because at least in Europe the automatic prices are way higher in rental cars.

Where I live manual is the norm, but those I know that did switch to auto all to prefer it. It apparently makes the drudgery of sitting in traffic more bearable.

However, as one friend noted, once that fancy automatic gearbox goes legs up(and your car also happens to be out of warranty), the virtues of a manual comes calling again.

I honestly don't see the problem of using a standard transmission in traffic. Once you've learned how to drive with it the whole thing becomes instinct and you don't even consciously notice.

I do. I've been driving stick shift for most my life and moving to automatic made a huge difference.

I'm sure it's different for everyone, but I know a lot of people where manual is so ingrained they don't even need to think about it. It's no more difficult than walking on two legs.

Much like breathing, it is fun when racing but quite annoying, when you have to do it under load, you did not want to be in in the first place.

When racing you'll be paying exacting attention to your shifts, you'll need to time them properly if you're working on shaving time off your laps. When driving normally it's not a big deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

It's an instinct / not a problem as long as you don't know a better option. If you didn't have a running water, the trip to the well would also be something completely normal.

(I'm not saying that one option is universally better - just that it's easy to justify the other position as "I've always done it this way and it's super simple")

I'm saying I literally don't notice that I'm driving a manual car. I just drive.

When I'm in an automatic it's all "okay, it's like I'm driving an Xbox now."

There is also a piloted gearbox which is a manual gearbox with some automation added.

Interesting, here in Poland having automatic transmission is something unique and preferred by weaker drivers (and richer ones), some cares even don't have option of automatic transmission (not to mention that you usually have less engine options with automatic).

This is so sad to me. Manual transmissions are just more fun, no matter which car you have. I have a 10 year old Subaru Outback and even that (top) heavy PoS gives me joy on a curvy road.

Of course I know that a modern auto is _way_ faster than a human, but I don't care in the slightest. My father in law has a Mercedes C63s and holy shit is it fast, but it would be 10x better with a stick. Spending a ton of money on a Porsche 911 but getting an automatic is baffling to me—unless you actually race it.

Life is too short, find fun where you can. Don't let the robots win.

> Life is too short, find fun where you can. Don't let the robots win.

Well, the thing is, you've found fun in how ICEs suck. You (like everyone saying the manual is better) have turned a bug into a feature ;). Personally I hope electric cars will win, and there's no manual transmission for electric cars, because electric engines have flat(ter) efficiency curve and don't need gears.

I grew up in Brazil where most cars are manual. After my first automatic car, I really missed switching gears... and I ended up going back to manual. Some friends ask if I don't ever get tired switching gears, but after you've done it for so long, it becomes second nature, you don't have to think about it. Whether true or false, I feel like I have more control of the car when I'm in control of the gear... specially when going up/down a steep hill, or going through terrains other than asphalt.

I've only owned manual transmission cars since I was old enough to buy my own, including my most recent car, a 2016 Golf R. In fact, I specifically bought the Golf instead of the BMW I wanted to buy, because BMW dropped the manual transmission choice.

I enjoy shifting, and even in bay area traffic, I simply don't get what's "hard'" about changing gears. I'm already sitting there in front of the controls. It really takes no additional effort or brainpower, it's second nature. It's like complaining it's too much work to press the brake to avoid colliding with the car in front of you. It's driving.

It's an interesting discussion. I've driven both stick and automatic for 35+ years. The choice was usually whatever I could lay my hands on, such as various cast-off, used, and borrowed cars.

My family owned a full size Dodge van with a 3-speed automatic that was quite primitive, but we took it on vacations, and drove it under the most absurd conditions -- snow, ice, gravel, dirt, off-road, you name it. There were specialized vehicles for off-road use, but not a lot of people had them. It was before the era of the SUV.

I think if you drive an automatic car for a while, especially one as bad as that Dodge van, you develop a feel for when it's going to shift. You can nudge it up and down with the gas pedal. This is just a matter of being an attentive driver.

Today, I prefer automatic, but am not in a hurry to get rid of our one car with stick. I just like automation and convenience. Stepping on a pedal and pushing a lever back and forth hundreds of times, just to get from A to B in one piece, seems gratuitous. Hell, my wash machine chooses gears by itself, why shouldn't my car?

I definitely made sure my daughter learned to drive stick. She took her drivers test on it.

Is fuel economy important? Sure, but I save fuel in many ways: Driving a smaller car, combining / eliminating trips, riding my bike, carpooling, etc. When I see a giant SUV being used for daily commuting, I doubt the automatic tranny is the reason why it's a waste of fuel.

I wonder of anyone else here does this. I drive manual[1], but rarely use the clutch.

I use it to start moving in 1st gear then can shift between all tho other gears without it. You have to get to know the speed where the engine and drivetrain are matched. It's not that hard after a while. Shifting between 3-4th is easiest, 1st and 2nd the hardest.

I can even downshift too without clutch. You have to rev the engine a bit while in neutral to anticipate the higher RPM speed that the lower gear would require, then it slips in easily.

I never grind gears doing this.

I injured my left leg which made it hard to use the clutch and drove like this for a year.

[1] I prefer manuals because of the onboard computer, especially in Toyotas which are suspect to me due to the 'unintended acceleration'[2] problems from a few years back. Even if the computer pegs the gas due to a bug, I can disengage the transmission. Done. Apparently they reviewed the code as a result of the problems, and it is a horrible mass of spaghetti code with hundreds of global variables.

[2] The problem may not have been software and might have been driver error + statistical clustering. E.g.: the driver puts his foot on the gas thinking it's the brake, and due to the stress of the situation can't switch pedals because the urge to stop the car overrides any other thinking.

>I wonder of anyone else here does this.

I never use the clutch to put the car in neutral when coming to a stop. Blip the throttle and it will fall out of gear.

Clutchless shifting is a lot of fun, but hard to do truly properly. With synchromesh, you may not be audibly grinding the gears, but you are going to wear the synchros unless your rev-matching is very good.

Manual transmission is the best anti theft mechanism in the US.

True but it cuts both ways. Imagine you need someone else to drive your car for whatever reason...you could be stuck.

You'll know we're serious about climate change when this changes. Manual gets better gas mileage. Sure it might be a small difference but even just 3 miles per gallon is 10% on 30 mpg. Over hundreds of thousands of cars that adds up. But we can't be bothered. It's an inconvenience. You can't drink your soy latte and drive at the same time if the vehicle is manual. I guess you can say it's a matter of priorities.

> You can't drink your soy latte and drive at the same time..

This is simply not true once driving a manual becomes second nature. Cupholders work to hold it when you need both hands.

But in general, I agree that most folks (in the US) can't be bothered to drive one.

The problem is also congestion. Manual trasmission is great when there's not a lot of traffic, but it's a pain on your morning commute in LA/SF/NY/... In Europe you either live on the countryside or use public transport. Comparably few people are stuck every morning on the highway on their way to work (still a few though).

How can you make such a ridiculous and broad statement? I'm in the UK and I commute an hour to work down the motorway/highway. With traffic it's an hour and I drive a manual car like just about everyone else.

Most people I know still drive to work, even if the city where we live is pretty good for public transport with a lot of buses and trams available.

For many years I had a 70 minute commute, too, and it was a breeze in a 5-speed, even though it entailed a lot of through-town and traffic lights. On the whole I enjoyed it very much.

What wasn't any fun at all were all the 10-20 minute traffic jams when all the idiots were bumper-to-bumper, oscillating between 3 mph and zero every few seconds. First gear, neutral, first, neutral; accelerate, brake, accelerate brake. Especially on an upgrade. My clutch foot was killing me.

Depends how often you drive using a clutch. I've always driven using one so now even in long traffic jams I don't really notice my foot aching.. However when I first learned to drive it really used to ache.

I didn't look up data before, but the data seems to confirm my statement. In the UK, 68% of the working population commutes by car [1]. In the US, it's around 88% of commuters that commute by car [2]. In London, the share of commuters by public transport is as high as 50% [3].

An article I found on citylab also confirms my statement somehow (although it refers to Berlin). [4]

Now, that this influences automatic vs. manual transmission is very subjective, I can't back that up. I could be wrong there, but the rest of the statement is at least not "rediculous".

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

[2] https://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/files/2014/acs-32.pdf

[3] http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt...

[4] http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/how-london-and-berlin...

Oh I don't doubt more people commute by car in the US at all.

Your statement was "In Europe you either live on the countryside or use public transport.", your own sources show that 60% don't use public transport and I don't know how you can be so sure that the other 40% live in the countryside. Unless by countryside you mean "live outside of a city"?

Can you find me an example of a modern car that this is true for? I'm one of the few Americans (I guess) who can drive a manual transmission car; I just hate it. But if it were really better for the environment and better gas mileage I would consider it.

HN has spurred me to look into it, but the Honda Accord had 1 mpg better for manual, the Toyota Camry had exactly even, and the BMW I looked at had better gas mileage for an automatic.

So for now I'm chalking it up as HN'ers being irrationally in favor of manuals because that's their culture (since the U.S. hasn't really woken up yet).

There are a few comments in here which are claiming manual is better for fuel economy.

IMHO, the way to get better mileage is

- Drive slow

- Accelerate gently

- Look ahead and coast to slower speed instead of breaking when you need to reduce speed

- If on a motorway, trust your cruise control

- Check you tire pressure EVERY TIME you refuel.

I have an eight year old six speed auto shifter 2 litre petrol engine car.

On motorways, with hard compound tires I have regularly managed 44mpg. With softer tires I have managed 40 mpg. And I think it's down to my driving style rather than the type of gearbox.

If I had a more modern car with seven or eight speed box and modern ECU, I am sure I'd able to achieve even better mileage than stated above. Also, I'd be going mad if I had to manually chose and shift between eight ratios !!!

It seems that outside of U.S., there is some kind of social stigma attached with automatic cars. One is either a MANual shifter xor a WOMANual shifter.

Several of my friends are strong proponents of manual gearboxes. When I ask them why... I don't get to hear much stuff about gear ratios, clutch best practices, torque. It's a plain "I don't like automatic" without much real information. This preference is purely without logic or reason.

One of my such friends I noticed drives a for miles without going above third gear in situations I would have easily been turning the engine a lot slower in fifth gear.

I think drivers who have to deal with icy conditions may have a case for preferring manuals. We don't have much snow/ice where we are... just lots of rain and in that situation I am usually more paranoid about the state of my tires rather than feeling less masculine about letting my gearbox shift on it's own.

I think modern automatic shifters are better for fuel economy (and general peace of mind) than manual ones.

"Accelerate gently"

Nope. Absolutely incorrect. Best fuel economy is to accelerate rather strongly to cruising speed, getting into top gear quickly. BMW studied this when they brought out the 528e, and found something like 70% throttle is most efficient for this purpose. Upshift at moderate rpm, to be sure, but dawdling in the lower gears taking forever to reach top gear is a waste of fuel.

You don't waste fuel accelerating. Fuel is being converted into potential energy. You waste fuel every single time you touch the brakes. That is turning potential energy into heat.

All your other points are spot on. Most of all, drive way ahead! As soon as you see that light change to red far ahead, let off the accelerator and start coasting.

Tire pressure is important. People look at me cross-eyed when I tell them I run 40+ psi, but it makes a big difference, and my tires do not wear in the middle.

> Best fuel economy is to accelerate rather strongly to cruising speed, getting into top gear quickly

I have noticed that if I am accelerating strongly then up shifts happen between 2500 and 3000 rpm, otherwise the up shifts happen very much at 2000 rpm. Once I am in one of the upper gears then I tend to avoid heavy footing and accelerate gently.

I noticed if use a heavy foot, the box tends to down shift. This I have noticed in just the plain vanilla D mode and not Sport mode which tries to shift at top of the rev range. I don't regularly use the Sport mode.

On typical motorway driving, I keep at 70mph to 75mph between 2300rpm to 2500rpm. That is the rpm range and speed at which I have been able to get 40+ mpg.

I could try the "strong acceleration" theory and see if I get any better mileage... but I guess I won't see a massive improvement.

> People look at me cross-eyed when I tell them I run 40+ psi

Interesting. How far above the manufacturer spec is that :-)

My car is a touring/estate/wagon style and the due to the extra weight, the rear tires are rated at 2.5 bar / 36 psi ! Which I personally find to be very high. But I stick to the manufacturer specs.

Depending on how quickly you change your tires you may not notice the wear. I am too paranoid about driving on sub-par tires and so far have stuck to changing all four tires after 24 months.

Weird.

Passed my test in the UK a couple of weeks ago (I'm 30 years old) it was just assumed that I would be learning manual. In fact I had everybody I know tell me to learn manual (even the people that learned automatic) simply because it means I can drive both with a manual licence.

I'd say most cars in the UK are manuals, far fewer automatics. I don't have exact numbers to hand, but from googling I'm seeing ~20% of cars on the roads are automatics.

Unlike most other countries I'm aware of, in the US you're allowed to drive a manual car after taking the test in a car with an automatic transmission.

Automatics makes the driver hands free for texting,snapchatting,makeup. A recipe for accidents. No I don't have data to back this claim.

I only buy manual transmission cars. The reason is twofold. First it is dramatically cheaper to fix a manual. The transmission also lasts longer. The second reason is that it is more fun! Any time I want I can drop a couple gears and kick out the tail. Even a front wheel drive is more fun as a manual because it takes skill to accelerate fast.

Finally, I'm one of the three percent!

I bought my first manual transmission car at the end of 2009, a BMW 328. Learned how to drive manual right then and there in the parking lot next to the dealer shit. Been having fun ever since :) I will say, the BMW gearbox is WAAAAAAY easier to learn on then some of those other clunkers I've played with since.

Wooo! I am the 3%.

I purchased a 2015 Subaru WRX and it is a huge upgrade from a 1996 Dodge Neon when it comes to using a manual. It isn't jerky when you shift and has features to keep you from rolling back on a hill when you press in the clutch.

I learned to drive on a standard, and I feel like I have much more control over the car with a standard transmission.

In Germany more than 80% still buy cars with manual transmissions: https://presse.adac.de/meldungen/technik/maenner-fahren-auto...

In Germany you are even required to drive fast on the Autobahn while taking your drivers' test I heard. I can't find the hard numbers to back it up but probably up to 160 or 180Km/H.

This is very different from the sedated "keep your lane", slow speeds and wide roads everywhere traffic in the US.

I got my license in Germany and was never required to go that fast during any driving lessons or my test. My driving instructor told me to go roughly the recommended speed of 130km/h to practice some real-world Autobahn driving.

That said, I know of one person who was told to go fast on the Autobahn during their driving lessons by their instructor. Definitely not part of the official test though.

130km/h is still above much of the speed limits in the US.

The official test does not require you to go fast, it is more important to do the proper looks when going on/off the Autobahn and overturning other cars on it.

That being said, my instructor told me to "floor it" once in a driving lessons as well, just to see how it feels and how the car behaves.

[Edit: Grammar]

You have to exhibit the ability to drive at speeds that are expected of you. That means around 110–130 on the Autobahn, otherwise the examiner might consider you to be too scared to drive up to the speed limit. I did my driving test in a place where the next Autobahn is about 15–20 minutes away and the speed limit on the roads I had to take was at most 120 km/h. It's definitely not a requirement to drive up to 160 km/h, but going 80 on the Autobahn, or 60 on regional roads (without traffic dictating so) will raise an eyebrow behind you.

On the other hand, your instructor may very well encourage you to try out driving fast once, because having done that is much easier with someone next to you who can help or recover from dangerous situations.

That explains all the brake lights, then. In a manual, you have a lot more control and it is much less necessary to put your foot on the brake to merely slow down a little. When those brake lights fire off, it causes chain reaction braking.

The car sales environment makes it particularly hard to buy a manual car these days. Even for cars which are still made in manual like the BMW 340i and the Nissan Juke, it is impossible to find a manual version on a dealership lot. I don't know if it's because they acknowledge they're harder to sell, or because they don't like people test driving manuals, but either way you will be ordering your car if you want it as a stick. That generally corresponds to a 6-10 week wait for your car, which doesn't align well with an American public who want their car today.

I guess I am one of those Luddites then, I love manuals and inherited that from my mother of all people. Fortunately they haven't been displaced very much with motorcycles and they may be the last bastion of manual transmissions.

regardless of claims, I am very convinced that you can achieve the best mileage with a manual transmission and one reason for that is because you can predict your needs based on what you see and no automatic will do that.

of course with EVs this is all out the window but I am always curious as to why so many EVs focus on raw power instead of gearing a lower powered motor ?

I was looking for a nice AWD hatchback. Subaru cancelled the WRX and STI version. Focus RS sadly goes with a manual only.

Seems kind of silly to work so hard on performance/acceleration and then waste time on shifting.

Do any performance-focused vehicles use CVT?

Answer: No.

http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/why-you-wont-see-another-... (Sept 2015)

"Ferrari has emphatically ruled out offering a manual gearbox in its next generation of vehicles, for one simple reason: performance. Speaking at the Frankfurt motor show this week, stakeholders at Ferrari said the manual transmission had become obsolete in a performance sense because modern dual-clutch transmissions were much faster and effective in their shifts."

"We never say no, but today we say no," a spokesman said. "We are very convinced with our strategy about the automatic gearbox, it's the fastest gearbox in the market and this is a distinctive component for us. Right now we are not thinking about a manual because the performance is [less]."

Not a CVT, but a manual has no benefit. Either go CVT for efficiency or geared automatic for performance.

EDIT: astrodust: Let not split hairs; Formula 1 allowed the introduction of CVTs in 1993 and then banned them because they were too good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3UpBKXMRto

http://jalopnik.com/http-youtu-be-x3upbkxmrto-one-that-goes-...

That's a sequential shifter, which is a different beast than an automatic.

They've had paddle-driven shifting on their cars for over a decade now which just triggers gear shifts manually. It's not an automatic transmission in the classic sense, there are still gears. Classic automatic transmission systems use a fluid mechanism to transmit power which is where a lot of the power loss comes from.

paddle driven cars may not be an automatic transmission in the classic sense. Nor is it a manual transmission in the classic sense. Maybe clutchless is a better term

It's hard to define 'paddle driven' cars, since of course any automatic transmission car could have paddles that allow manual shifting.

I assume you're talking about the paddle-shifted transmissions found Ferraris, Lamborghinis, BMWs etc. in the recent past. These in fact are the opposite of 'clutchless'. They were basically manual transmissions electronically controlled and with the clutch and shifting actuated by hydraulics.

Nowadays they use some variety of dual-clutch transmission.

Sad to see someone getting beat up on for using the correct term. "Clutchless" does not refer to a missing clutch internally, but the lack of an operable clutch pedal.

They can go that way, because the technology is far enough. A traditional automatic is not suitable for sporty driving. Not only because it may choose the wrong gear at the wrong time. In racing, the balance of the car is highly important. Making an uncontrolled shift within a corner, can spin off the car because of the associated weight shift. You counter that in traditional transmissions with double clutching and heal-and-toe, where you get the rev in the transmission about right, to guarantie a smooth shift and a stable car. Ferrari and the like managed through timed automated gas bursts and other technologies to conquer the effect in automatic transmissions.

No, they use dual clutches.

They, being the computer, not the driver.

Subaru WRX is not a dual clutch, it's an (optional) CVT.

A 2017 Subaru WRX with a CVT and 268hp will deliver 5.9s 0-60. Certainly not a supercar but it fits the definition of 'performance-focused' for most people.

It is odd to see in action; accelerating from a stop using launch control causes the car to not simulate gear shifts for maximum performance; the engine quickly climbs to about 6700 and just hangs there while the speed increases. No shifting drama at all. Almost boring.

Well, it was banned in F1 over a decade ago

You can get better 0 to 60 time with manual.

Automatics are faster.

Cammisa, Jason. "Here's what's really killing the manual transmission." Road & Track. March 10, 2014. (April 10, 2015) http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a6308/whats-really-k...

Lachnit, Carroll. "Five Myths About Stick Shifts: Manual vs Automatic Transmissions." Edmunds. Sept. 26, 2013. (April 10, 2015) http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/five-myths-about-stick-s...

If you're not driving a stick, eating paleo, and listening to your music on vinyl with a 100% analog mastering process, then you're doing it wrong.

OK, but can stop doing cross-fit?

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.

It should be completely obvious that machines can be made to do things quicker, better, and more reliably than humans.

So why are Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Skoda, Volkswagen and such reporting slower zero to sixty times on automatic transmissions?

Just did a quick check on Mercedes' German website, tried to find some models that are still offered with manuals, and got this:

B160d - faster with automatic

B180 - faster with automatic

B200 - faster with automatic

C180 - slower with automatic

C200 - faster with automatic

C220d - faster with automatic

CLA180d - same

CLA180 - faster with automatic

CLA200 - faster with automatic

E200 - faster with automatic

I'm sorry, but you are wrong for at least one of the manufacturers you listed. I only found one Mercedes model where they reported a slower 0-100km/h time for the version with the automatic transmission.

I'm pretty sure the numbers for the other manufacturers are similar. Automatic transmissions have simply surpassed manuals. Yay, technology!

Did a quick check on Audi's German website:

https://www.audi.de/de/brand/de/neuwagen/a6/a6-limousine.htm...

The A6 2.0 TDI accelerates faster with an automatic transmission (8.2s vs. 8.4s), and is more fuel efficient (4.4l/km vs 4.5l/km)

They are? Not in the US:

BMW 340i: Auto 4.8s, Manual 4.9s http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/Vehicles/2017/3/340iS...

BMW M3: DCT 3.9s, Manual 4.1s http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/Vehicles/2017/M/M3Sed...

C&D review of the VW Golf R: "The manual loses to the automatic Golf R against the stopwatch. The 0.7-second deficit from zero to 60 mph, which takes 5.2 seconds, is almost fully attributable to the two shifts required to reach 60" http://www.caranddriver.com/volkswagen/golf-r#eztoc8578403_0...

I couldn't find a manual Mercedes on their website, Skoda isn't for sale here, and I couldn't find 0-60 numbers on VW's website so I quoted an automotive review instead.

The general consensus I've seen is that automatic transmission cars are faster than manual transmission cars 0-60.

The Golf R isn't really a fair comparison as it's a dual clutch, not a traditional automatic, and more importantly, it gets a (quite aggressive) launch control while the manual doesn't.

My argument was that machines can do simple things better than humans, the Golf R automatic transmission is a machine that does shifting better than a human, and you are complaining that the comparison is unfair because the machine is too good at what it does?!?

Come on.

I'm just saying it's not apples and apples... the launch control helps the time a lot more than the DSG does.

Spot-checked BMW as well:

http://www.bmw.de/de/neufahrzeuge/3er/limousine/2015/technis...

Innerorts in l/100 km: 5,2 [5,0] / 4,7 [4,6]

Außerorts in l/100 km: 3,8 [3,6] / 3,4 [3,3]

Kombiniert in l/100 km: 4,3 [4,1] / 3,9 [3,8]

Beschleunigung 0-100 km/h in s: 7,9 [7,8]

Numbers in brackets are with automatic transmission, and it outperforms the manual transmission in both fuel efficiency and acceleration.

Not gonna do Skoda and Volkswagen, feel free to prove me wrong though!

Seems like automatic transmissions have really evolved over years. I was wrong.

Certainly not. A modern DCT or even a regular torque converter (such as the ubiquitous ZF 8-Speed) will be faster to 60 than a manual with even the best driver by several tenths.

That's true. A good automatic transmission will be slightly faster. However I also get his point, as most of the last-gen cars with automatic transmission were slightly slower than their manual counterparts.

A shifter isn't just for acceleration. It's also for picking which gear you want to be in when anticipating something you're trying to do.

When racing you'll know exactly what gear to be in for what section of each corner. You'll have a plan going into the corner, coming out of the corner, and it'll be complicated enough that there's no way an automatic can keep up.

Unless you're going for quarter mile times, you'll eventually have to down-shift and performance there will be key.

Automatics are the same. Sporty cars usually have flappy paddles to control the automatic. So you can pick your gear for the next corner if you want. All the while enjoying better acceleration, faster shifts, and better mpg.

Can't push start the car when the battery dies though.

Yeah, unless you've tried them both extensively, you can't compare them that way.

The feedback provided by the clutch pedal is integral to the process of driving a manual car - it's not just 'engage' or 'disengage', it's a fully analog feedback mechanism about the state of the drivetrain linkage.

Especially the paddle shifters are like trying to tie a fly fishing lure while wearing welding gloves. No connection to the machine or feedback from the engine, no ability to change the engine state independent of the state of the drivetrain.

I miss manual transmissions every time I drive, and I drive a car with a really, really good paddle shift dual clutch transmission.

High-end sports cars with paddles use an automatically triggered manual transmission, it's a sequential shifter, not a classic automatic transmission.

There used to be a pretty wide divide between "manual" and "automatic", but now that gap has narrowed and the terminology overlaps.

This is an example of a what's inside a paddle driven engine: http://eng.kaps-transmissions.com/products-si-full-sequentia...

It's "clutchless manual", not automatic.

Most of the systems and network engineers I know drive a manual transmission car. Perhaps it should be an interview question :)

I specifically skipped the BMW I wanted to buy in order to buy a 2016 VW that had a manual.

"My" first 2 cars were automatics as they were hand-me-downs before I was an adult. All 5 cars and 2 motorcycles I've purchased have been manuals, and I don't see that changing.

I'll probably never buy an automatic transmission vehicle in my life. I'll go straight to electrics.

I simply hate the feeling of driving an automatic, even a paddle shift dual clutch. Not for me.

Very interesting. My Mrs asked me if most in the US drive manual after watching Gilmore Girls. Now we know!

In the UK, it's quite different. Most I know drive manual. Only 1 swears by auto. I've only ever driven a manual so it's hard to judge. At this point, manual is second nature so it's hard to imagine not doing it.

In fact, learning to drive in an auto is considered a fool's game. You are not allowed to drive a manual if so and since everyone pretty much drives manual, your options get limited, especially if buying a used car or driving someone elses.

I used to 100% drive manuals and it really was second-nature to think about changing gears - in fact the first few times I drove an automatic it was "interesting" as more than once I accidentally slammed the brakes on 100% with my left foot as my brain was on autopilot for where it was used to changing gears around the roads where I live.

The thought process/autopilot my brain was going through was something like "ok, get ready to change down a gear, full clutch please left leg <left leg presses a pedal down>... WHOA! WTF! WFT JUST HAPPENED?! DID I HIT SOMETHING?!" then the realisation that your left leg just stampted on the brake pedal not the clutch pedal :-)

I blame the super-wide brake pedals some automatics have! Luckily there were no one behind me, but it is quite an experience to get 100% brake application as a driver when you are NOT expecting it! I can only imagine that this experience will become more common with increasing automation/emergency braking in cars.

My daily-drive in the UK these days is a hybrid that is a CVT automatic. I actually really like driving it now around London as its just so so so so much easier and less stressful in traffic. I still keep a manual 2-seat rear-wheel drive car around for fun as I love the feeling of actually driving a car, but the ease of an auto just cannot be beaten. I am a total convert!

At least you didn't stall!

I am now petrified of using an auto. Takes a long time for my habits to adjust and I'll be slamming on for ages. Drivers round here like to drive with their noses up your arse...

Every single car or truck I have ever owned has had standard transmissions. Until recently. In the last 2 years, I have purchased a car and a truck and they have automatic transmissions simply because a manual transmission was not available. Like many (most?) people, I purchase used and had to take "stick shift" off of my list of requirements because the selection dropped to near zero. Definitely an end of an era.

Related: Though still available, it's getting harder and harder to find a pickup with a full-sized bed (8ft).

I live in a urban city in the US and when I tried to learn how to drive a manual I couldn't find a way. Most of my friends can't drive a manual or even have a car and none of them own a manual. When I contacted a few local driving schools for manual lessons, they replied they don't have any manuals on their fleet but they'll teach me if I somehow bring my own. I might just move on and just settle for a DCT on my next car since knowing how to drive at all will become a lost art in a few decades.

I would like to see the stats for UK and Ireland, I imagine only about 3% are automatic... The majority of cars are manual transmission here! And we drive on the left hand side of the road.

The worst part about driving a manual car is any place where someone else has to drive it (like say the mechanic's) they end up putting the seat like 2 inches away from the wheel.

As someone that bought a VW (in the US) and specifically wanted a manual (after having an automatic previously), this is sad. It was hard to find the car I wanted, I had to make a road trip of it.

I prefer my manual transmission to the automatic Volkswagen's. I think the DSG is just not quite ready for primetime. Especially in snow. Having a manual transmission, even on a car without 4WD, is a huge advantage in snow (the DSG won't let the car stall out, so it restricts how much you can downshift).

Over here (Belgium) manual transmission (4 forward +1 reverse gear) was the standard for decades. It still dominates the cheaper car bracket, but the luxury segment has gone almost 100% automatic. What is left there is optional manual shifting (by stick or F1 style steer paddles), but always with an automated clutch. This evolution has also gradually allowed increasing the number of gears, now not uncommonly 6, 7 or 9 gears forward. Modern automatics are in practice more fuel efficient

I got my first automatic here in China, mostly because it would be really hard to sell an manual transmission car later on.

Honestly, I cannot see the point in a manual anymore. It's a part of the mechanism of the car that I have no business dealing in and should be abstracted away. Like the choke in older cars. The idea that I'm somehow a more inattentive driver now because I don't have to worry about the gear I'm in is such complete nonsense.

I'm one of the holdouts (but I had to special order the car). It's just more fun to drive.

Hoping to skip the automatic gearbox and go straight to electric in a few years.

I drive a slightly modified 2016 WRX with CVT. I purchased the CVT version because I'm almost always stuck in a bumper-to-bumper traffic. However, I regret the decision every day. Every once in a while I throw it in manual and use paddle shifters just to experience what an awesome and fast car it is without the horribly slow CVT shifting in the way. It's been a year now and I can't wait to trade for the manual.

I was living San Francisco when I got a job in Las Vegas. I needed to buy a car to live in Vegas, I never owned a car before then. This is 1998 and I bought a beautiful late eighties standard transmission Toyota pickup. I already had my license for a few year but I really learned to drive with a standard transmission living on a hill in Cole Valley for two weeks. Fun times.

When I bought a car with a manual transmission quite a few years ago (I also owned a vehicle with an automatic), for the first few weeks I basically planned my commute around not having to be in stop and go traffic on a hill anywhere with the stick. I've said on a number of occasions that I couldn't imagine learning to drive a stick in SF.

Just one more reason to get a motorcycle. Or two. Maybe three. Did you know you can fit several motorcycles in the same space as just one car in your garage?

Also, I feel compelled to point out that you can get a Porsche, or Lotus or whatever and feel pretty cool with your francy sports car. Or you can get _several_ top of the line motorcycles for the same price. Just sayin'

I agree and have come to the same conclusion. I wanted a nice (manual) sports car here in the states - but for the same price I can get a nice sports bike, ADV bike, AND cruiser. As much fun as it would be to have a sports car, being able to walk out to the garage and pick which bike fits my mood for the day beats it every time. Furthermore, motorcycles are far more engaging, exhilarating, and challenging than a sports car could ever be.

For most people it is not what is better, but what are they used to in daily life. I learned on manual transmission, the care I mostly use has manual transmission and gear up and down because I'm used to do it.

One driving instructor warned us, not to hit the break with the left foot when driving automatic. ;-) (of course this never happened to me)

Eventually I don't really care.

> One driving instructor warned us, not to hit the break with the left foot when driving automatic. ;-) (of course this never happened to me)

Yeah, if you go and press the brake down like it's the clutch you will be very viscerally made aware of your mistake.

I drove manual for a long time, but after switching to automatics, I got quite good at left-foot braking without much trouble. You can get a slight advantage on reaction time doing it. The trick, besides not instinctively hitting the brake way too hard, is never to ride the brake pedal. You definitely need to build up your lifting muscles in your left ankle if you want to hold it poised one inch above the brake in stop-and-go traffic for absolutely fastest response time.

I found that when I drove in LA (lots of traffic lights), and drove from NY to SF, having an automatic was really helpful.

I drive a manual every day here in the UK, but when you have to stop/start (traffic, lights, etc), I wish I had an automatic.

But then, I love driving around normally with a manual. It's not really something I think about when driving.

There are so many different types of gearbixes/engines these days and hat ipresume every conversation on here will be talking about a different flavour of 'automatic'.

As a rule if the technology comes in a car costing more than my annual salary I don't think it is worth discussing in terms of 'normal'

Well when you are only getting around 30bhp / L from your engines you don't really need a manual do you?

I think times have changed somewhat since squishy 6.7L V8s that made 180hp and got you 5km/L. :P

Yeah, american car engineering is mind blowing. I have a 2008 Lexus IS350 - 3.5 liters V6, naturally aspirated and it produces 306 bhp. Friend has 2008 Ford Mustang - 4 liters V6, and it makes 210 bhp. What the hell.

Isn't Lexus a Japanese car company?

Lexus is Toyota's luxury division. So, yes.

The Cologne V6 was a truck engine designed in the 1960s with a 5500rpm redline. Which are all good reasons why it made no power. The reason it was used in the Mustang after so many years was for cost/marketing reasons that had little to do with engineering.

If your friend instead had a 2011+ Mustang V6, it would have a modern(ish) engine making 305hp out of 3.7L on 87 octane, where the 2GR in the IS350 needs premium gas to make 306hp.

I'm assuming that's a dig against American cars, but most European and Asian cars sold here are also automatics.

I'm pretty satisfied with the way my Subaru works -- I leave it in automatic most of the time, but I do have a manual option that I can use when going up/down hills, in icy conditions, or whenever I want. I'm sure other models have the same feature. It seems like the best of both worlds.

In India, it's the opposite. Very few vehicles have automatic transmission, major reason being mileage.

Here in Uruguay it's also 99% manual, but I suspect it's because it's cheaper.

An equivalent automatic transmission adds one or two thousand dollars to the car, which is unaffordable to most (for no perceived gain).

We buy lots of Indian-made cars here (mostly Marutis but some Tatas too), the other cheap cars being Chinese.

I've not owned a stick in like 10 years. Everyone around me drives SUVs or hybrids or big sedans - I assume those aren't even available with manual transmission.

One thing I do miss about the stick is that at stop signs I always did come to a full stop in order to shift into first gear.

Well, from my point of view this is the main difference between EEUU and Europe. To understand the difference and the 3% you need to read about volkswagen scandal. Better or worse, probably in few years there will not be more cars with manual transmissions on U.S.

Not surprised, if you spend any time in traffic, manual transmissions get to be a pain after a while. Having said that, I learned to drive a manual and my first car was manual, in fact it was really bare bones. (no AC, power steering, power brakes etc...)

Random data point: In Australia, I've noticed consistently, over the past year or so, that about 25% of used cars are manual transmission.

(Carsales.com.au is the leading used car marketplace in Oz and as of this comment there are 55k manuals and 171k autos for sale)

I rented an automatic in Greece, and it was the most malfunctioning, poorly-maintained transmission I've ever used. If that's what Europeans think driving an automatic is supposed to be like, it's no wonder manuals are so popular there.

First car was a Civic stick on San Francisco. I speak fluent stick. My last stick was a RAV4. I loved sticks but that was a terrible stick. Switched to a Mercedes C230K and I was instantly a better driver. Now I have a Leaf with a CVT.

I don't miss sticks at all.

Nissan Leaf doesn't have a CVT (despite that it might feel like one). It's an electric card that doesn't need to switch gears at all.

Driving a manual in the US has one major benefit: it foils carjackings. Every now and then, someone tries to steal a car only to find he can't drive stick.

Now, though, you basically have three choices if you want a manual: economy cars, sporty cars, or trucks.

Would anyone happen to know what the accident rate is for drivers who drive manual vs. automatic as a whole?

What about among the same drivers who drive both? (This one is to control for distractions that might be present when driving automatic but not manual.)

Judging by some of the comments here, you'd expect Tesla to release a manual...

Really, outside of a sports car with plenty of room to enjoy it, they aren't convenient. A manual in typical commuter bumper to bumper traffic is particularly annoying.

I was kind of gung-ho to learn how to drive a manual back in the day, but now that cars regularly have 6 or 7 forward speeds I have absolutely no desire to drive a manual transmission again, especially in a city.

I'm one of them. I drive a 2001 Hyundai Elantra GT, with 190k miles in it, still in the original clutch kit. I refuse to drive anything else, especially automatic transmission cars. They're BORING!

I love driving a manual, but with the rise of CVT, what's the point?

Amusingly subaru simulates gears with their CVT. By default you get 6 "gears", but in sport you get 8.

And that's completely missing a point of a CVT where you can keep the engine at a its most efficient speed and vary the transmission ratio to accelerate or decelerate in response to throttle input.

Agreed, it's sad that in chasing more market share subaru is making multiple decisions based on marketing and not on engineering.

Forcing a CVT from the ideal RPM to entertain drivers seems impressively silly.

Kind of like the Golf R, which installed a vibrating/unbalanced motor under the winshield to make a more pleasing vibration. Or the Mustang EcoBoost, various BMWs, and other cars that are using speakers to make more vroom noises to hide the less appealing note of their smaller turbo engines.

Maybe the automatic folks should install a manual looking stick between the seats and whenever you move it it kills power for 0.5 seconds.

> Many the automatic folks should install a manual looking stick between the seats and whenever you move it it kills power for 0.5 seconds.

I don't know what I hate more, this suggestion or the fact that it would probably actually work.

But if you drive in the mountains, wouldn't gear simulation in a CVT help to save brakes while going downhill?

You don't need to jump between ratios to engine brake. You just need a way to get the car to do it.

So, when you step off the accelerator on a car with an automatic transmission, the ECU has to decide whether it will switch to the tallest ratio to let the car coast and save on gas, or keep the same ratio and engine brake using the intake vacuum. On a traditional automatic, you either use the paddles to keep in the required gear, or on older transmissions use the 3 or 2 position on the column lever.

CVTs have no fixed ratios, and do not need to in order to engine brake. My preferred control would be a small column-mounted stick with 2 or 3 positions that would enable automatic engine braking at varying strengths, kinda like the controls for an electric retarder on big trucks or buses.

Seems that light brake pressure could be translated to CVT downshifting. Any disadvantages? Or the cruise control of the car could control CVT.

Oh I hate CVT. I've got a Land Rover Discovery 3 with a non-CVT auto and it's as smooth as anything changing gear, you just don't notice.

Looking at getting an auto for our second smaller car, and CVT is like someone has an elastic band on the gears. Would drive me up the wall. The Citroen box at least comes with paddles which helps.

The VW/Audi dual clutch box is the best, you get the economy of CVT and it's so much smoother. Shame they are so much more expensive second hand than CVT autos :(

More expensive and a lot more unreliable too. I know of several people who have large repair bills for DSG boxes.

Less than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual controls. - 2036

I wonder how long it will take to get to this point with self-driving cars (Automatic-automatic?) vs. manual-automatic vs. manual-manual.

I loved my manual car when I lived in a state with little traffic. Now that I'm in CA, a manual sounds like a nightmare.

I live in Seattle where traffic sucks, and there are hills. I drive a manual. You get used to it.

One of my interview questions is if they prefer manual or automatic transmission. Most of our rockstars drive manual.

I'm sure this is a joke, but you actually shouldn't ask anyone in an interview if they own a car or how they intend to get to work.

http://www.snagajob.com/employers/erc/article/the-top-3-ille...

I want an electric car with a fake manual transmission. Like all those racing arcade games.

I love my 350 HP 6speed GolfR.

In Canada it is currently $1250 cheaper to buy a manual Ford Focus than one with automatic transmission.

Manual transmission is not somehow cool, it just shows the inefficiencies of a regular gas engine more openly: that the engine has to run in a certain small band of RPM to provide the energy for driving. Automatic transmission covers the deficiency best - and will be the standard on the electric car future ahead. In that way, Americans are already used to the future.

I don't get why you're downvoted, it's exactly the case - the very need for having a gearbox is a problem of ICEs. Electric engines don't have gears because the RPM/efficiency curve is pretty much flat.

Aren't there still benefits to running at lower speeds? Electric motors aren't magic frictionless devices, higher speeds must still produce increased wear and heat.

Too bad that when all the vehicles are hackable, political assassination will be way too easy.

Does that mean my six speed manual car from 2002 is worth more than the KBB price?

I would say a sports car is not a real sports car without stick ...

Well, of course. You need the other hand to hold the cell phone.

I'd love to see research on this. I know that if I'm not in the highway, cell phone conversations (or text based applications) receive low priority - such that, my phone has been thrown to the passenger side when I've needed to shift or I regularly have to tell people I'm talking to to wait a minute.

Please don't hold your cell phone or use text-based applications while driving at all, regardless of transmission.

I must agree! (though we had less knowledge of the dangers it brought in the mid 2000s.)

And all of them are owned by rental companies, it seems.

Auto-playing audio? Are you kidding me?

In 10 or 20 years from now, perhaps the news article would read "Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. needs manual drive mode."

Cars with multiple gears, how quaint.

I prefer stick but can't always get it.

Even the cheapest Korean manufacturer can make a 5 or 6 speed manual that is close to unbreakable.

And you can, in difficult situations at least, shift better than the automatic - especially if you are shifting a certain way because you can see traffic or the lack of it, up ahead.

> especially if you are shifting a certain way because you can see traffic or the lack of it, up ahead.

Downshifting instead of using brakes is more environmentally friendly as well. Though you can do this with an automatic too (or semi-automatic I guess). My mother has a car with paddle shifters which you can use if you want, or you can just keep it in automatic. Best of both worlds.

Edit: I drive stick, though. It's what I know.

Downshifting more environmentally friendly?

Because burning more gas is better than heating up break pads?

Reference?

Uses engine compression to bleed off kinetic energy (no additional fuel use). Not more environmentally friendly, but saves on brake wear.

Semis utilize this mode of braking heavily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_release_engine_bra...

Actually, it uses a tiny bit less fuel, since it doesn't have to idle.

Was taught to do it in drivers ed, which features environmental driving here. The point is not to aggressively downshift, but to let go of the gas and then downshift when the RPMs are lower. You still want to keep the RPMs relatively low. This is preferred to a situation where you would keep your speed and use the brakes at a later point in time. I should probably not have called it downshifting.

Basic understanding of an injected engine and power conservation should be enough here.

When you're downshifting you're braking with your engine. This means two things:

1. Less fuel is burned. The injectors are closed while the engine is braking.

2. Momentum, not fuel, is used to drive the alternator, AC etc.

If you instead were to brake the car, it would need to use fuel just to keep the engine running. In the same way as it would if you were idling parked. Even more fuel is needed to combat the resistance from your AC and alternator.

Engine braking in most petrol cars is an efficient tactic due to DFCO[0] - less efficient than coasting in neutral, but you're not as in control of the car when not in gear, so the combination of both being in control and getting a "free" slowing effect (especially when judging upcoming traffic, as opposed to coming to a complete halt) can be better than just mashing the middle pedal.

[0] Deceleration fuel cut off

If you're slowing down to traffic light, it's more efficient than coasting in neutral. You've to slow down anyway and slowing down with engine braking is 0.0l/km. While coasting still burns some fuel.

In addition to that, some newer cars charge battery when engine braking. Which is effectively saving fuel later.

You can downshift and use the motor for breaking. When doing that, you don't burn any fuel at all, as the kinetic energy of the car will help keep the motor turning. You have the same effect in automatic transmissions when letting go of the gas pedal.

No reference, but engine braking means you don't need to send petrol to the engine (since the engine is being driven by the car's momentum), so there should be no fuel usage. When the car is stopped, then it will use more petrol (to keep the engine from stalling). Assuming all things are equal, then when you brake with your foot brake, the energy that gets turned into heat in the brake pads could have instead been turned into energy that keeps the engine spinning (and so it doesn't need to come from petrol).

Downshifting to slow down uses zero fuel. Modern cars cut fuel completely when coasting is detected based on throttle position and whether gear is engaged among other sensors. This is only used a lot in manuals since the torque converter causes freewheeling at lower rpms. It's known as deceleration fuel cut and it's standard in OEM and aftermarket engine controllers.

Typically the engine "restarts" when rpm drops to a bit above idle speed but as mentioned it doesn't happen as much in automatics because of the freewheeling. In automatics it only occurs when deceleration starts at high rpm or the clutch within the torque converter is locked during steady highway driving. I assume shifting into "low" may enable deceleration fuel cut in more situations assuming the driver may be using it to slow down, but I have no evidence of that usage

I had assumed engine-braking will heat up the engine more and use more oil and increase general wear on the engine and reduce it's service life. New brake pads seem cheaper and more environmentally sound than having the engine serviced/replaced and burning more oil...

Downshifting doesn't really slow you down if you have one of those new 3 cylinder gas engines, for their lack of a throttle valve.

It's funny, I just got a new car (manual, of course) and it has "rev-matching" so when you shift down a gear it automatically heel-toes (basically a throttle blip) which means there's not much engine braking going on during downshifts.

Granted when driving quickly and dropping a cog or two to overtake a slow moving vehicle it's great. Slowing down for traffic? Not so good.

Took some getting used to changing down gear and not feeling the car slow.

EDIT: To clarify the folks downvoting me here's and example of how it works:

1) You're in 6th gear doing 60mph. 2) You come up to a tractor doing 25mph. 3) You brake and slow, as you do you compound change from 6th gear down to 3rd. 4) As you place the car into 3rd the ECU gives the engine some extra throttle and match the speed of the gearbox. You can physically see the revs rise BEFORE you release the clutch. 5) You release the clutch and don't feel any transmission shunt or immediate engine braking.

This reduces wear and makes it smoother.

For more detail watch this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnXLZg_O1rk

Are you sure it actually blips the throttle and it's not just the synchromesh gear in the gearbox? There's no need to blip with a synchronized gearbox, which has been the standard in road vehicles since the 1930s or so.

Even if it does blip, you can still utilize engine breaking but you have to shift early and sometimes skip gears.

Not sure why I got downvoted here.

It actually blips the throttle. It's not the syncho, trust me.

http://www.minif56.com/forum/353-mini-cooper-f56-forum/7010-...

It's not the first car to have it either, and there is actually PLENTY of reasons why you'd need to blip or heel-toe when driving even in a car with a synco'd gearbox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnXLZg_O1rk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4n9tMdISBg

Yeah, it's not completely out of question that it would blip the throttle, but it's not a very common feature either.

I drive an old piece of shit car with a very worn out synchromesh gear (it's a conical brass ring with grooves for friction - that wear out) so it's a bit smoother to blip the throttle a little when downshifting to the smallest gears. I don't heel-toe or left foot brake on the road (I'm proficient in both from simulator and performance driving), I just use my right foot to give a little gas. I rarely need to brake and downshift at the same time unless I'm in heavy traffic, I mostly rely on engine braking controlling speed.

Outside of performance driving or old worn out cars like mine, there's no real need to rev match on normal road cars.

How does the clutch in your car work? In an unsynchronized gearbox, you'd double declutch and blip when the clutch is up and gear is neutral (to rev match gears inside the gearbox). Is this thing just to match the engine and gearbox input shaft speed? Not gears inside the box? Or does it do something similar to double declutch w/ heel-toe?

I know how car without a synchro works, the first car I ever drove was a 1950's Land Rover.

Watch the video, it works exactly how Engineering Explained describes, he even explains the benefits.

What you're describing is not engine braking, it's really clutch braking. Engine braking is what happens when the clutch is fully engaged and the compression of the engine slows the vehicle down.

Downshifting to second so the engine is at 5000rpms and letting it gradually slow the car down is engine braking, and this is good. Putting the gear selector in second and slowly releasing the clutch (with no throttle/rev-matching) to slow down the car is clutch braking and its bad (which is why cars automatically rev-match now).

Learning to drive on an automatic is like never learning handwriting and going to typing instead.

Sounds pretty OK to me ;)

Until you're in a position to having to drive one. Being helpless because of technology isn't one of the traits people should look forward to.

I was referring to handwriting. :)

It just goes to show that before we worry about self driving cars we have huge improvements that can be made in driver skill! It's an easy win if only this country had the will to do it.

Disable ad blocker? Fuck you. Don't track me then

Shopping for a manual now. So few options in awd.

This is a combustion engine issue. Electric cars don't have gears.

Did you see the new jaguar EV: http://www.jaguarusa.com/all-models/i-pace-concept-car/index...

Or the new Audi EV: http://www.businessinsider.com/audis-electric-vs-tesla-2016-...

Some electric cars have multiple gears. It's an engineering choice, there's a tradeoff between low-speed torque and high-speed torque/maximum speed.

Another issue with manual transmission that others have not mentioned is the annoyance as a passenger. I can understand the joy for the driver but as a passenger, I always find it quite annoying in older cars. In fact, I would probably cancel my Lyft/Uber ride if I knew the coming car is a manual.

Manual transmission, no matter how old, is only annoying if the driver doesn't know how to drive it. It's less likely in the US, but with European taxi drivers, it's much less noticeable than an automatic transmission.

Exactly. The ride is completely smooth with a skilled manual transmission driver, much smoother than with an automatic. The small maneuvers of parking, in particular, are smoother with the skilled use of a manual transmission: parallel parking, backing into a spot and adjusting the position, and such.

Unless you look at the driver changing gears, how would you even know that a car has a manual transmission?

You can hear the toggling of the stick.

Oh no, you poor thing!

I do hate when a passenger will have their knee next to the shifter and it disrupts my hand.

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