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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For me, driving without a dry clutch and without a shifter is no life.
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".
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.
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.
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.
(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 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 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.
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 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.
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....
Add people to that and you've got a real grab bag.
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.