The end of the manual transmission is near?
popularmechanics.com
popularmechanics.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32397975
I will give up my manual transmission, if you will bring back pull-knobs, twist knobs and other tactile switches for the main controls of my vehicle, with the appropriate tactile feedback at set points so I can set them without looking.
After thinking on it, I am going to raise my demands, however: you also need to produce cars that are as visually appealing and reasonably sized as in the 50s and 60s. Fire all your designers, go back to whatever your models were in 1965, and begin anew. When in doubt, don't.
I don't think people understand how much engineering goes into a dash/interior in a passenger car, at least from a company that prioritizes crash safety. Everything is designed to give just the right amount when hit by a body flying around in crash. Even the lower part of the dash is designed to crush just the right amount if you "submarine" in a head-on crash - enough to stop you, but not enough to shatter your knees.
The number of crashes per year has remained remarkably stable year over year, despite the number of driven miles and number of cars rising enormously. Conversely the number of fatalities due to crashes has dropped considerably.
So despite driving many, many more miles then they did previously, people aren't dying in crashes at a greater rate (total crashes is harder to track due to intermittent and inconsistent reporting data).
[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... [3] https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/driving-went-down-fataliti...
I drove a Triumph Spitfire for a while. Any time I took it out of town I took the state highways or country roads, because not only would that thing fit under a truck trailer, at a stoplight I could reach out and touch the bumper on most vehicles. Anything bigger than a sedan and I had to reach -up- to do it. I was only ever safe in that vehicle in the same way that motorcyclists are safe - constant vigilance and pre-planning, which I learned as a bicyclist.
I looked on IIHS for the ford F-150 and it gives a green rating for the pedestrian safety. On further inspection, this is because there is a type of automatic braking. Now, I am happy to have that system, but that doesn't have much to do with the shape of the car at all.
Fortunately shielding against one shields against both.
That's already happening, too. "Root" is a car insurance company that only serves "good drivers". Guess how they evaluate your "goodness"?
And where are the political candidates to take pliers and a blowtorch to the regulatory barriers to satisfying the customers?
Down with all or these regulatory pencil-necks and their doctrine of Portion-Controlled Servings[1], say I.
The prima facie reason is that in case of an accident the car should be able to request help even if everyone inside the car is unconscious. The other reason is, of course, that document you signed at the dealership stated that you've only purchased the _right_to_use_ the car... not the actual car.
Have fun with your rental :-) You should have read the fine print.
Radios these days are software defined. They can sit on the same chip that uses a trusted bootloader and also provides an engine control module. Marketing departments can and will bend and pervert engineering specifications to highlight the consumer benefits and minimize the profit motive.
QED
Assuming you can even get to the antenna without special tools... you're just going to cut the antenna so short that the radio can't get a signal? On a hunch?
What if the SOC in your vehicle has to download a rolling encryption key every week in order to activate?
Going back and forth with measures and counter-measures besmirches the point. Cars have to be serviced and this may be considered just another aspect of it.
I'm not suggesting that this sort of thing is necessarily a good thing(tm) but, it may be viewed as such by some and it's possible.
Isn't it the consumer's prerogative and responsibility to decide?
Not to mention, lawsuits and PR nightmares can be factored into a business case analysis. VW actually went ahead and defrauded the US government in diesel-gate and they're still an almost $100 billion company.
I can assure you that (in the US at least) when you buy a car, pay off any financing, and ultimately hold the title free and clear, you do in fact own the car.
Titles to ratty, broken down, cars are bought and sold every day... aren't they? And, just because it's shiny doesn't mean it's a great car either. It could be a great sculpture.
I think the issues at play here are more about service and warranty contracts as well as buyer expectations. Having the title just means I own a giant hunk of metal and plastic, no?
Anything that has a remote chance of making more profit than the competitor will be attempted. Even if it's morally questionable... moral != legal. Heck, VW even threw legality out the window with emissions shenanigans a few years ago.
I'm not arguing that it's wrong or right... it's just the entrepreneur's duty to try and the consumer's obligation to keep things in check.
Caveat emptor.
The point is they'd put a fart detector in the cabin (and send that data to the mother-ship too) if they thought it would be profitable.
:-)
It's not a complete joke. Lots of tyres contain RFID chips for inventory control.
Michelin consider it's an asset that the "Tire tag can be read even when the tire is moving or rolling"
---
Edit: Just realised that "Someone" posted the same comment 4 hours ago.
“Through RFID technology, Michelin makes tires that "communicate" by linking them to a more global ecosystem, to create infinite potential for innovations and added value for its customers.
Our goal: connecting all MICHELIN tires for Passenger Cars, Light Trucks, Heavy Trucks and Busses by 2024.”
and
“Permanently readable
- RFID used in tires is a passive technology that doesn’t require a battery
- Tire tag can be read even when the tire is moving or rolling”
and
“Secure
- Tag is locked after writing by the tire manufacturer
- Robust traceability technology against robbery and counterfeiting”
It wouldn’t surprise me if some governments tracked cars by their tires,
The same thing will happen for all current vehicles when cellular providers eventually start shutting down 4G networks.
That's why fortunately for now, all vehicles can still function properly without a network connection. I do suspect that someday that will change tho.
One of many reasons I will never buy a new car and will always buy classic cars no matter how much they cost.
This is reality already? I'm starting to think maybe computers were a mistake. I mean how much more screwed up can our world get before it turns into a cyberpunk hell?
It has a screen but as far as I can tell it's not required for anything that doesn't implicitly require a screen (i.e. GPS).
Overall the car is amazingly well designed. The tactile experience is there, you can feel your way around everything without moving your eyes from the road/immediate dash area. It still has an analog clock. I also feel like there are a lot of advanced, car enthusiast friendly features I have yet to explore.
It's also a stupidly practical car. I've frequently loaded the back with cinder blocks and bricks, filled it with a small arboretum of house plants, drum sander, multiple bikes, small couches, etc. I feel a bit silly loading up a Porche at home depot, but boy does it do the job well.
And at the same time, when you're getting on the highway it has all the power you could want, and is just a blast to drive around at night on empty roads. Comfort wise it feels like it has exactly what you want, but nothing more.
Don't feel silly for utilizing your vehicle's capabilities!
I fit 9 bales of hay in a Saturn Vue. I'm still really proud of that :-)
Not anymore, unfortunately. In the current gen (2022+) Macan they got rid of the buttons in favor of a glossy touch panel. It looks cleaner, but it won't by the time you get home from the dealership.
Huh? What generation is this? I use that button all the time in my 95B.2 while CarPlay is up. Last time was a couple of days ago, hauling a load of pavers home from Lowe's.
Another interesting issue is compatibility porsche id and apple car play. it seems the car play kicks out porsche id 3 times out of 4 given that you use your iphone as identification means.
Yeah, the Porsche ID thing is a tire fire. It almost always fails to log in immediately after startup, showing an error message before it even bothers to attempt reconnection. Then, if you leave it alone, it reconnects on its own and usually works as expected. About 5%-10% of the time it won't log in successfully until the next drive cycle.
Porsche should update their famous "There's a reason why most rocket scientists are German" ad to include "... and why most software developers are American." (I'm sure the PCM OEM is American, but it would be a well-deserved hot take.)
Although a counterpoint to this is the giant A pillars limit visibility so much as to be dangerous themselves.
Stupid of me, of course. But it’s easy to miss a bad combination of factors.
OTOH there's also a fairly simply fix invented by an 8th grader... [2]
If you're ever in the Netherlands you should book a driving lesson for shits and giggles. Not claiming we're all amazing drivers, but we sure do have hard driving exams when compared to the USA.
Even when there IS a Driver's Ed class, there's not enough behind-the-wheel time. They need to include hands-on lessons on emergency maneuvers, especially in the rain, so people can get an understanding for how the car will handle, rather than a trial-by-fire the first time they have to slam their brakes in the rain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automatic_transmission
You choose when to change the gears but the computer deals with the clutch, best of both worlds.
case in point, me flooring it on a left hand turn in my moms prius and having to wait a good 500ms for the thing to start moving at all.
I know exactly what my manual does in first gear and when, I don't think about it, it's an extension of myself.
I can downshift before the hill to get revs, and prevent the auto-shift as I go up the hill. Or I can downshift to use engine as brake. No clutch to worry about, and my hands never leave wheel. Long-press the paddle to return to auto for the boring sections. Awesome usability! Could never go back to manual, the paddle-shifters are too much fun and too easy!
Though I will also say that a modern automatic doesn't need 500 meters. It works almost as well as manual. If you floor the pedal if shifts to apply more torque.
Sure there is! Electrics have maximum torque at zero RPM. As RPM increases, their torque drops off. Some cars will have a torque limit that provides for constant torque (less than the motor would be capable of), but as RPM continued to increase, eventually the torque falls off.
> You always have full power available.
This is also incorrect, but less so than the max torque claim, as power is torque times RPM (times a constant), so as RPM rises and torque falls, power is closer to constant than torque is.
Here’s an article covering a dyno test of a plaid Model S: https://electrek.co/2017/02/21/tesla-model-s-p100d-ludicrous...
https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/02/29007...
> This is also incorrect, but less so than the max torque claim
Eh, I think you're being a bit pedantic here.
The point was that in an EV, you always have the maximum torque for a given speed available. Whereas in an ICE, you'll have to downshift, which in some automatic cars can take a second or two. You can suddenly floor the gas and go nowhere, whereas an EV takes off immediately. Even a 600 horsepower hypercar will be a little sluggish if you floor it at 55 mph in the top gear.
You can do that in an automatic, too. Reach over to the gear selector, move it from D to a lower gear.
I can honestly say I don't give a shit whether I'm driving a manual or an automatic. I don't really think about gear changing in either.
Automatic instead of manual feels how I imagine pre-chewed ice cream feels.
I recently had a car with "10" speeds (it was actually a CVT) and to get any passing power on the highway I had to drop it into 3rd.
Shift shift shift shift shift shift shift and then pathetic engine would scream like nothing Ive heard before.
Nailed it. Not to dismiss those romanticizing clutching and shifting, but that is incidental. The entire point of a manual transmission is performance. It's control over torque that delivers it.
I love that I can pump RPMs into the red before clutching into gear, the vigor of that power, G forces pulling the body against the seat, chirping wheels in 4th gear at 70mph, going up a steep hill with a quickness. (Crud, did I just romanticize torque?)
I find it hard to believe the ICE manual will ever die completely so long as there is a rally to race. No matter how quick an automatic electric is, it's not going to beat decent drivers of ICE manuals. But hopefully someday they'll all be rice burners, for the enviro.
I will also add that the break pads in EVs are criminally underused to the point that they reach their maximum service life with barely any usage on them.
If you want a comparison, it's basically like flicking on the little dynamo engines on a bicycle and then turning on the light. It'll slow you down a lot quicker than without the light on. Same principle here and works just as well.
The simple fact of the matter is it is not possible to engine brake in an EV, because it is not possible to reduce to a lower gear. EV is better than ICE in nearly if not every other way, but let's not take it too far. The driver of an manual ICE vehicle will be able to have better control at faster speeds than an EV on curvy, non-flat roads solely due to the ability to engine brake, but this probably isn't legal driving.
And for the record I believe “engine braking” is a slightly different mechanism than “downshift braking” but could be wrong here - my manual passenger vehicles don’t have explicit “engine brake” controls but a semi truck might.
The sloped design of new cars isn't just about aerodynamics. In a low-speed impact a pedestrian is lifted onto the hood. Forward leaning grills, such as on the Dodge Charger, some of the beefier Mustangs, and any number of other muscle cars or sedans, instead clip pedestrians in the knee or hip, tip them over and drop them onto the ground, where the car then runs over them.
I think there was also an issue with those profiles and Jersey barriers, in that they were more likely to pole vault over them off the side of a bridge or onto - not into - oncoming traffic.
You are not ever going to get those designs back.
How so? Could we just use modern crumple materials in the same shape?
A more bizarre solution Google patented always stuck with me: A sticky car hood beneath an eggshell coating so that a struck pedestrian would stay on top of the car instead of falling and hitting their head or being run over [2].
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiiBlirAG8w
2: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a20953/google-pa...
Found it - Nissan has an actuator[0] that lets the cars hood be used as a damper for unlucky pedestrians in case of collision.
[0] https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/INNOVATION/TECHNOLOGY/ARCHI...
edit: also recently people noticed that high 'trucks' would simply miss the crumple zones in the car they were crashing into
> Another problem is "impact incompatibility" where the "hard points" of the ends of chassis rails of SUVs are higher than the "hard points" of cars, causing the SUV to "override" the engine compartment of the car.[18] In order to tackle this problem, more recent SUV/off-roaders incorporate structures below the front bumper designed to engage lower-height car crumple zones
Anytime anyone waxes nostalgic about how "they dont make cars like they used" I think about this video. They sure as hell don't make cars like they used too, you can get out and walk away from a crash in your ugly newer car that would brutally end your life in one of those beautiful classic cars.
For anyone that is curious the key thing to pay attention to in survivability here (besides yah know... the airbag) is.. does the interior cab of the car change shape? The cab of the old car violently changes shape in a way that would destroy parts of your body whereas the newer car's cab doesnt seem to be affected at all. Even if getting crushed between the seats and dashboard didnt kill you immediately in the bel air, I struggle to imagine how emergency first responders would even get you out of that.
Did you see that bel air in the video? It is in beautiful condition as far as I can tell.
Besides, things like rust would make the car crumple more not less and the issue is that the car doesnt crumple enough (in the right spots) so I imagine rust in the frontend could actually make it safer ironically.
Yup. But because pickup truck drivers still want to sit 50 feet above traffic, the trucks end up with these ridiculously tall front ends and complain about how ridiculous they look. When you tell them it's so you don't run over other cars and kill the occupants in a crash, they literally tell you that they don't care.
Edit: yep, @Buttons840 nailed it..
The defective Tanaka airbags used ammonium nitrate, of Oklahoma City Bombing and Beirut port fame.
https://owners-manual.mazda.com/gen/en/mx-5/mx-5_8fl9ee16j/c...
They wanted to keep the profile of the car low which didn't allow for the space normally needed, so they provide it 'on demand' in case of impact. Unfortunately for a friend of mine who is an owner, that turned a fairly minor collision with an object into a several thousand pound repair as the system shears the bonnet mounts and deforms the bonnet.
[0] https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla... [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/five-star-safety-rating...
And much like 18 wheelers they can’t scale down the front while maintaining utility because they need large engines and high ground clearance.
Enjoy the Chicken Tax. It's why we can't have the Hilux in the States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
edit: I suppose it's not unintended consequences. It's LBJ's corrupt decision to trade tariffs for votes / curry favor with unions that harms US consumers.
A bigger problem is fuel efficiency standards that encourage larger footprints. You can't hit the mandated mpgs in a compact truck, so enlarge the truck to make it hit the standards.
Well, we have the Tacoma, which fits pretty much the same niche. I was under the impression it was more market driven and less regulation driven.
As to why Ford etc is targeting regular people with these monstrous trucks it’s both profitable and current regulations promote their sale. You can dig into the history of these regulations but as far as I can tell it’s a mix of trying to appease businesses and a specific voter demographic. Call it corruption or giving people what they want, it’s not going away anytime soon.
I remember seeing them everywhere in Australia when I visited.
...then I realized that one of the vehicles taxi companies use are toyota siennas and read some articles about how minivans had actually barely gone up in price even though people were desperate for cars.
I got a 2006 awd sienna with nice newer tires, a 3500 pound towing package, roof racks, sunroof, power doors and hatch, disc brakes, an absolutely cavernous interior with removable seats that can fit a full size plywood sheet, window shades, a leather interior and the top trim level audio system with a newer android touchscreen radio unit for $6000. Yah it had 180,000 but on a sienna if it is maintained well that is nothing. I mean.. all the electrical shit still works on it somehow? Also this thing is fun to drive, it isnt a sports car by any means but steering is sensitive and accurate and the wheelbase is so long it eats bumps like a couch even though the suspension isnt floaty.
If I had bought a civic it would have had 250,000+ miles, cloth seats, shit tires, huge dents and probably a replacement panel that was a mismatched color along with innumerable random small problems.
Americans hate the idea of owning a minivan more than the idea of not owning a car and it is hilarious because minivans are what you get when you take a hard look at american life and design a large vehicle for it that ticks off every box. Unless you are towing very large things frequently ever other large vehicle is a joke compared to a minivan.
I mean.. sliding doors yo... I will never buy a large vehicle without them after owning one with them.
Mostly insecure rich people (or desperately wannabe rich), especially "overcompensating" macho-men and short-women, buy SUVs and shiny non-work big trucks.
Now we have no small trucks, and a continued parade of bloated, impractical junk that manufacturers are pushing as “small.” The new Ford Ranger and Chevy Colorado stand out as regressions from their former incarnations, and the Maverick is another joke. They all force giant four-door cabs and puny beds on all buyers.
Thus they lack the usefulness of a proper truck, and the safety of the “utes” you describe.
Pickup trucks are the opposite of fashion. There are to cars what Crocs are to shoes.
Fashion is about signaling not whatever you happen to agree with.
Tattoos aren’t universal, what’s acceptable for Army special forces, goths, gang members, etc are all different. So, good or bad only exists in a specific context it isn’t something that any person can judge universally. Someone really can define good as whatever pisses people like you off.
Utilization of private vehicles scales with income, not with population density. HN just all tends to live in "nice" places so they never see people using their vehicles to the max. This is true for all vehicle classes, not just pickup trucks.
If people decide to broadcast their opinions about the world using cars, they certainly can; but I don't think that kind of behavior can be called "fashion". Ideology, maybe.
I happen to think that most modern trucks look incredibly stupid, but that's because their design language isn't intended for me. It's intended for people who have different fashion tastes, tastes that approximate political positions that I don't hold. In other words: the truck itself isn't a direct political statement, ordinarily; it's an efficient means for signaling politics through fashion.
As a Canadian living in the heart of supply management (i.e. state ownership of the means of production) country, where supplies are provided by the so named and literal Co-op (i.e. community ownership of the means of production), trucks are very popular. In part because they are useful tools in carrying out the business within that socialist system, but also because outsiders emulate to try and convey similar social standing.
If there is a political statement to be found in there, which may be a stretch, to me it would be that trucks = socialism. But when I look beyond my bubble, I'm left with the impression that trucks are, if anything, especially stateside, a statement at the compete opposite end of the spectrum.
What approximate political position do you believe is inbuilt into the design of modern trucks?
Political affiliation is definitely part of social standing and the degree to which such signaling impacts how people talk, dress, and what they buy is very much fashion.
As you venture out into the world you will also find trucks that are clear political statements. You might be right that an individual cannot own a truck for both fashion and political reasons (although I'm not sure I agree), but just because some people use trucks for political statements does not mean all trucks are political statements. Some trucks can be used for fashion without crossing those who use them political statements.
99% of trucks are not that these days and that may be being generous.
Also... spend half the money on a beater truck and the other half on a civic so you dont take up the whole damn road on your commute to your office job and kill me when your comically oversized vehicles rides over mine in a car crash. I am tired of seeing $70,000 trucks without a scratch on them being used like they are a commuter sedan, its selfish and stupid.
Yes. One in 10 or maybe 20
Individuals buy push snow blowers or snow blower attachments to their lawn tractors.
Occasionally a business will contract someone with a plow on a truck but that's not common because the contractors who actually deal with this regularly have dedicated equipment that's better than a plow on a truck and using a shitty plow on a standard truck is actually not easy.
Even the parking lot in my private apartment complex is cleaned after a snow storm by a company with multiple front end loaders and skidsteers.
This is what you build for that purpose:
https://img.archiexpo.de/images_ae/photo-mg/67143-15337174.w...
https://d3v9db8ug40up8.cloudfront.net/styles/large/s3/2020-0... This is colloquially called Unimog (successor, kind of), a general purpose utility vehicle with awesome drivetrain, huge tires, great weight distribution, not too heavy, serves winter and summer in several roles.
or
https://www.ecotech.at/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Ecotech-Sc...
The farmers in my family do have pickup trucks. 40 year old ones with standard cabs and no frills.
There is virtually no good function for a modern leather appointed king cab other than signaling your group. Which is fine! Half of car ownership is that but do t pretend that even half of trucks are used for some truck like usage. Heck the half that are is for hauling boats or rvs once or twice a summer.
Doesn't justify the urbanites buying SUVs though
US is 68% Urbanized, 21% Rural, and only 10% Urban Cluster.
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...
And of course those horse farms only demand a big truck if you are doing big work on the horse farm. If all you need is AWD you don't need a big truck.
If you want a vehicle that will handle moderately deep snow the best a subaru station wagon is probably the ideal shape, or at low speeds a shorter jeep wrangler if you are actually going off road.
That’s the thing even in urban areas you will see pickup trucks cleaning parking lots etc.
For personal driveways, people had cheap push snow blowers. For the roads, we had big plow trucks and literal construction equipment was used for large roads and parking lots.
Very few people plow, because plowing is harder than snow blowing, more damaging to your lawn and driveway than snowblowing, and just all around less effective. And the few people who do actively plow their own driveway will either start a business to do other people's driveways (a common way for 16 year olds to make money in the winter) or just straight up plow neighbors driveway for free or payment.
Even in this literal heaven for trucks, full of farmers, outdoor activities, mud, and construction, 8 out of 10 trucks were driveway queens.
Back then I would say around 1/3 to 1/4th of households in the area with large trucks had a snow plow, but I only knew one guy with a snowblower. Of course that also related to how long it took the state to deal with back roads after even a minor snow event.
If somebody is using a nice truck to snow plow they are pissing away money. Ice, constant torquing stress on the frame, hitting shit hidden in the snow, salt on main roads everywhere (depending on place) etc... it is fastest way to reduce the value of a vehicle next to driving it into a brickwall or driving it off a bridge into the ocean.
However when my wife walks past one and the hood is over her head, knowing that this is possible because it’s exempt from regulation as a ”farm vehicle” seems like a corruption of government regulation.
I don’t think we need to make people prove how they will be using a vehicle, so maybe we should just require different license classes based on vehicle’s current weight and/or height? Driving a 7,000 lb truck that is 6.5’ tall is not the same as driving a passenger car.
Among the community of people that use their trucks for "real work" (whatever their definition of that may be) an immaculately kept truck like the one you're describing would be referred to as a "pavement princess".
The talk about "farm vehicle" is a red herring in this whole thread. Actual farm plates are rare. The significant distinction is cosplayer vs contractor, which happens to be independent of commercial plates.
The right answer is probably charging yearly registration (/road use) fees based on GVWR. This is already common for trailers. There should be a part that scales as the road wear from weight does. I think it's something like the third or fourth power?
[0] - https://www.campanda.com/magazine/rv-special-drivers-license...
As you say, you don't need very many pickups for that. The fraction of American pickups that are used for snow plowing is pretty much irrelevant to this conversation.
Yes, farmers use pickup trucks, and they're great for that purpose. Nobody is arguing or disagreeing with you on that point.
Nobody is arguing against the purchasing of pickup trucks in the general sense. We're arguing against the purchase of a pickup truck as a daily driver. Something that will be used to commute and buy groceries.
Trucks used as passenger vehicles are already more expensive to register and run than farm vehicles.
The fact that modern American passenger vehicles have evolved into statistically significant deathtraps for surrounding pedestrians, cyclist, and even smaller cars is as political as anything else in that country these days.
You can find plenty of more compact pickups - I've been searching for the best one for a while because the Dodge Ram and Ford F150 are just too big.
The Honda Ridgeline, the Ford Maverick, the Chevrolet Colorado, the Hyundai Santa Cruz, the Toyota Tacoma, are all more compact, only seat 2-4 people, and have more bed than cab.
Kids and and dog have plenty of room. And the bed is plenty big for all luggage / camping gear.
Plus it’s useful when we do need to haul couches or bigger items.
Downtown park isn’t fun but is doable.
Bring back small, capable trucks.
Toyota could bring back the tiny 90s tundra, and they would sell a tiny tiny number of them. That's why the modern corolla is as large as the 2000s camry.
It can also be introduced with new vehicle registrations so as not to bring out the pitchforks. Anyone with a truck can keep going, but next purchase, they need to do a driving test.
I can't imagine parents paying for their kids to do the extra course if it costs them a fraction of that for their kid to drive a regular sedan.
You need to do a pilot study to see if accidents can be reduced. This could be done in a Western town that has tens of miles from it to anywhere else, so you are only putting a few thousand people through the course.
This could be financially incentivised, so people get paid to do the course. If the results are good then you could make it so that people buying a truck or wanting to drive one get $500 off if they have done the course, with insurers in on it so that it just becomes easier to do the course. No freedom to be American need be jeopardised.
The CAFE standards for cars are too restrictive. The fleet averages look great, but the percentage of cars as vehicles on the road is low. Cars such as station wagons don't exist any more - the only option is to go larger and get an SUV.
The current crop of technocrats thinks that regulation is like violence. If you don't get the result you want, then add more regulation. Still don't get the result you want, add more regulation. They never think about offering compelling products that people want to buy at a decent price point.
The danger posed by pickup trucks is chiefly a function of the absence of regulation: the US has decided that you can role-play as a farmer and get treated as one for safety purposes, without actually demonstrating a need for a car that's patently unsafe for US streets and highways.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-726-may-7-2012-suv...
Far be it from me to defend truck-style SUVs!
But since you asked: just about anything that can be turned into an explosive. Or, you know, prescription medicine.
I thought this comment was saying the opposite of what you meant at first. There are no small cars anymore, even the "Mini" is gigantic. And modern cars are safer than ever, due to smarter design and better engineered materials.
Each step of the way they went out of style when people went "eww that's a car for soccer moms"
Hell, my father used to have a fairly common French sedan that would sometimes need a lot of maneuvering through the public garage ramps, and would barely fit in the parking slots.
Road tax depends heavily on the vehicle. I think we pay ~€1000 a year, ~€83 a month, for our Hyundai ix35.
* Electric Cars are exempt from both IIRC.
* Diesel is mostly front loaded in the yearly road tax. With a very low tax on fuel. So if you drive a lot it is worth getting a Diesel for this reason alone.
* Petrol has a lighter yearly tax. There is a formula someplace and it has to do with engine size, weight, age and some other things assuming I understood correctly. The yearly tax is cheaper on average than the diesel. Then there is a large tax on petrol. About €0.17 a liter or €0.642 a gallon.
For example, you can't attach animal guards here to pickup trucks, and you need extra reflectors and different lighting configuration in US for all cars.
While not directly related to safety standards, intelligent active matrix LED lighting systems are illegal in US, too.
The tall grill at least doesn't ram your head through the glass. I don't know who started calling them FUVs (Fuck U Vehicles) but they are not wrong.
While not styled to lean forward like what Dodge does pretty much all the tall bulbous front ends that HN hates and are found on modern cars and crossovers are designed like this. A bunch of plastic with air behind it is the primary means by which OEMs meet the European pedestrian safety requirements. The styled plastic provides something that's softer than the quasi-structural radiator core support that all the front end cosmetic stuff attaches to for the pedestrian to hit.
If you ignore that bit of the conversation, you're right that in a modern car you've got a good foot of material before you reach the first bit of metal, which is the hood, and the hood as some others have said is designed - today - to have a little give when a human encounters it. Something I actually have limited first hand experience in.
A lot of those muscle cars though, the hood of the vehicle extended all the way out past the bumper. So you wouldn't be able to build those exact designs. But maybe there's some compromise that incorporates your points with mine? The modern Mustang looks like an homage to the Mach era, but it's a shadow of that bad boy, and it only comes after decades of wandering in the proverbial desert.
The problem is always when you ask why generations of smart people didn't see the obvious answer, occasionally the answer is only visible to outsiders (curse of knowledge) but more often the answer simply doesn't work because of other, bigger concerns than aesthetics. For every time Beginner's Luck works out, there are tens or hundreds of cases of Chesterton's Fence.
It's beautifully styled imo and has only physical controls inside
This sounds like the opposite of OP's request for physical controls.
That sounds like a nightmare. So you have to forcibly silence everyone in the car to do anything? Even if I'm alone I would prefer silence and pushing buttons instead of having a conversation with a machine.
Obligatory reference, if you haven't seen it: Scottish Elevator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
So, the original Mini Cooper?
What alternate dimension are you from? My older brother had a 60's Ford Fairlane when I was growing up. My first car was a 67 mustang. I had a friend with a 68 Camaro. I knew someone else that had multiple Thunderbirds from that era.
These were not small cars. The Mustang and Camaro were the size of a full size sedan today , if not bigger. The cross sections of the doors were very large, they just aren't very space efficient at all. They're only small relative to the other cars of the era, and I wouldn't call their size reasonable in any real way.
Those are the coupes. The sedans, such as the Fairlane and Thunderbird? Those were about as big as a modern full size crew cab pickup.
I’m reminded of my grandparent’s 1979 Cadillac (Not sure of the model). It barely fit in the garage. They parked their Chevy Suburban in that same garage.
Basically, OP is "graciously" willing to give up his manual transmission if we provide him a car that suits his style and comfort at the expense of everyone else.
Luckily for us, he isn't able to find one.
And judging by their popularity, that's where a lot of people who may just want a little bit larger car are going.
It seems like a set of rules that locked the window and left the door open.
This is verifiably false with three minutes of searching, which I did on my cellphone as I sit by a campfire. As an owner of both a 1965 Mustang and a 2015 Explorer, the difference in size between these vehicles is comical. I've rented a 2020 Camry that was larger in every dimension. It got great gas mileage, but small it was not.
1967 Ford Mustang Length: 183.6" Width: 70.9" Height: 51.6"
2020 Toyota Camry Length: 192.1" Width: 72.4" Height: 56.9"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang_(first_generati...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Camry_(XV70)
The 1965 Mustang was even smaller and lighter. The 1969-1970 Mustangs, while larger, are still smaller in every dimension than a modern Camry. Some older cars were indeed boats, but almost all modern American automobiles are boats, and a lot of this has to do with the laws that regulate and shape the products created by the American automotive industry.
I'm not sure why you compared the Mustang to an Explorer though. I mentioned the thunderbird as being comparable to trucks, and those were well over 200 inches in the 60's. It's still an exaggeration to say that's as large as a truck with a crew cab in most cases, but the 209.4" length of a 1969 Thunderbird sedan is slightly longer than a Ford F150 with a regular bed size at 209.1". They were all, by most measures, much larger than their comparable categories today, and much larger than those categories a decade or two ago.
They still make the Mazda Miata, BMW 1 series, Toyota BRZ, etc. These are all small cars, although I'm not going to research all of their dimensions. The truth is there is a very small minority of people who want cars smaller than that, and it's not profitable to produce them.
Safety considerations aside, the aesthetics of the rocket and atomic age reflect the hope on humanity's future that was dominating back then. Automotive designs of late 10's early 20's are a tiny bit fancier than in previous couple decades, but they don't look futuristic, they tend to look more aggressive instead. That's also because there's demand for that aesthetic in our era.
To change the way cars look, change the way you live your life.
Looking at you Mini. The clues in the name.
Old school Fiat 500 or Citroen 2cv style
Maybe I should get another one.
I was always skeptical of the P38s because of the airbags. How do you deal with that over the long term?
I won't say I've never had EAS problems but it's never left me stuck, unlike coil springs.
Manual door locks, manual windey windows, manual seats, buttons and dials, mechanical gauges. All based on "proven technology" first-gen Renault Megane components, so it's easy to fix.
You goto Magna, Foxconn, tesla, and get their EV platform skateboard. With intention of manual transmission.
You goto https://www.factoryfive.com/hot-rod-truck/ for the body of the ev.
Coachbuild the inside, you can basically be rolls royce here because you're low volume.
Obviously all the knobs and switches would be built with reliability in mind.
Sound system I was thinking would just be a good bluetooth speaker system and a phone mount. Dont have to worry about android auto or carplay or sound system or gps going out of date. its just your phone.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxHVVEEGx7Y
The Cyan Racing Volvo P1800 “restomod” is, in my opinion anyway, the most desirable car in the world.
Anything with a Koenigsegg sticker comes a close second.
You only represent yourself and you are mixing multiple issues. Why would car makers listen to this "compromise"?
I grew up learning to drive a manual transmission car. Awesome. I loved the feeling of driving and shifting gears up the hilly, mountainous, twisty horrible roads in Jamaica. Exhilarating!
But cars got better. I got older, and now automatic transmissions are so much more efficient than manual transmissions * for ordinary people *.
We're not talking about people who love driving here. We are talking about people who drive an ordinary car. People who just want to commute and relax. We are not talking about Porsche or Konignsegg's (sp) latest car with a manual transmission.
These days I'm in a taxi in Thailand almost every day, and half of the drivers use a manual transmission and the other half use an automatic transmission. I think the reason is that cars with manual transmissions are older and cheaper.
But at the same time, the driving experience in those taxis with the manual transmission is horrible. Herky-jerky, and most of the drivers don't even know how to use the manual correctly.
The world changes. It is what it is.
It’s not just ordinary people. The opposite, if anything. F1 and rally cars haven’t been manual for decades. I don’t think any modern super is manual.
Though with the ev-ification the point is moot as save for a few rare exceptions they’re single-gear.
But min/max on my GTI means I lose connection with the vehicle and my ability to drive matters less. For what? .4 faster 0-60 or 1/4? Eh
Not a statement of the pleasure you derive from transmission vinyl.
When manuals are discussed on the internet, it’s the manual clutch which is the central difference, not what’s essentially a firmware feature or lack thereof. That’s what’s mentioned in pretty much every comment other than your nitpicks.
I actually have it on my car, there are paddles behind the steering wheel that can shift the gears up and down. It's a bit of a gimmick for ordinary driving as you can just let the car choose the appropriate gear, but I guess if you want to shunt down a few gears quickly on a hill to get some engine braking it can be useful
In racing, but particularly in F1, you can't leave a single millisecond on the table because the competitors won't. So F1 gearboxes shift in milliseconds which is obviously impossible for a human to do with a clutch pedal. And that is all F1 teams optimize for, speed.
When driving purely for fun (as most street sports cars are used) there is no stopwatch, so it hardly matters if the shift happens in 10 milliseconds or a 1000.
What matters is how much fun it is and that is where a good shifter and a clutch pedal with a nice feel shine.
The comment I replied to was talking about efficiency, and my reply was in those terms as well. If what matters to you is the car equivalent of putting your audio cables on pyramids you do you, but this is not “what matters” to what we were talking about. It couldn’t be any further really.
F1 might use some decoupling? But I would expect them to work like most other race transmissions, by not decoupling.
There are computers that control the rev-matching, but that's technically on the engine side of things. There are sensors on the gearbox that let the controller know when to add throttle, but it's still very much not the responsibility of the transmission. There are also downshift protection to make sure you don't over-rev the engine, but this is also on the engine side of things, but it does block the signal from the paddle shifters.
Efficient in what way? I find it highly unlikely an automatic would have better fuel economy than a manual.
https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/how-automa...
Modern automatic gearboxes have dual clutches and two separate sets of gears for even and odd numbers. You alternate between them as you shift up and down. Shifting is faster and smoother.
(The system isn’t perfect. If you switch to manual selection of gears the transmission computer sometimes guessing wrong — while you’re in 3rd and accelerating it’ll get 4th ready for on the even-numbers clutch, so if you suddenly brake and shift down there is a longer delay while the transmission shifts to 2nd instead.)
Here’s Audi’s marketing material on their version: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_as29ym51M
I don't know of a car with a torque converted that can hit sixty in under 3.0 seconds, but the Corvette and 911 can both do so with RWD due to the bonkers launches these cars manage.
> I don't know of a RWD car with a torque converted that can hit sixty in under 3.0 seconds on street tires,
It's insane what the C8 can do with RWD on street tires. Being able to launch at full HP without destroying the rear tires is amazing. DCTs have near EV levels of torque management capabilities.
I saw a study from, I think it was Volvo, that basically concluded that while trained drivers focusing on driving efficiently could get better fuel economy out of a manual, 'normal' people driving normally got better fuel efficiency out of an automatic. And this was a good 10 years ago, so automatics have only gotten better.
Mostly that the OEM's engineers can choose to tune it to upshift or resist downshifting in situations where the average consumer with a manual would just wind it out.
This was true 15 years ago.
Bear in mind this was a relatively primitive late-80s Zf 4HP18 gearbox, with a lockup clutch in 3rd and 4th, giving similar ratios to 4th and 5th with the manual box. If anything the manual box let the engine rev a couple of hundred RPM higher in 5th, but the auto box would drop briefly out of lockup on moderate acceleration in top allowing the engine to reach a bit higher speed.
Traditionally (and this is from the very olden days) manuals had an extra gear over automatics, which is why they'd have better fuel economy. Also less drivetrain loss. Nowadays the reverse is true, automatics consistently have more gears to play with, and automatic clutch packs are fantastically fast & good.
Now an efficient automatic is more complicated to design & manufactur, but that's where economies of scale and advancements in engineering tools and manufacturing come into play
In Italy the driving test is on manual transmission and many people use manual.
I trained in Rome, parking on the left side downhill (so backward is uphill), it was tough, but learned a lot of tricks in the process to prevent stalling. You also become very attuned to the clutch
I do love manual transmission, but the purpose is to have fun, not for daily usage.
Where I am it might snow or ice once a year. However I do own an SUV that has a snow mode. It starts in second to avoid spinning the wheels and will let you manually cycle through the 8 speeds if you want.
They have high mountains in there, including Alps, with highest peak at 2912 meters.
But yes, plenty of snow in many many places in Italy.
The 3 times I can remember there was snow in Rome the city would completely lock, with cars abandoned in the middle of the road (picture post zombie apocalypse kind of thing), so you can't drive even if you want to, because there is no room on the road.
In the end, it's up to the person.
How is driving uphill in a manual different than flat driving in a manual? (Serious question)
I remember an earlier discussion on HN where different people around the world learned different techniques for preventing the rollback. I remember lots of Europeans saying that's what the parking brake is for. Here in the States we're taught to let out the clutch until it starts to bite and then release the brake. You may still roll backward a few inches but that's no big deal.
One of the biggest issues with the automatic is stop-and-go traffic. It's absolutely trash at accelerating smoothly but fast, and I have no choice but to either go very slowly forward to not make it janky, or really aggressive acceleration. With a manual car, smooth-but-fast acceleration is easy to achieve, but with this (Audi Q3) borrow car, it seems short of impossible to achieve.
More pet-peeves of automatic VS manual I'm experiencing are outlined here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32591426 but smooth city driving is probably what I miss the most currently, as that is mostly how I spend my driving.
You should try a car with a CVT from the last 2-3-ish years to feel the difference.
Oh and you can downshift to engine brake and the Sport model has flappy paddles to boot.
The six-speed automatic in my KIA for example, is from the past three years and it is not entirely great. It is perfectly fine 98% of the time, but those last two percent...
* Shifting speed is highly unpredictable on kick-down
* In certain temperatures it will slam the shift from first to second even when taking of very softly
* It will randomly decide to stay in a needlessly low gear on long, gentle inclines, even though there is plenty of power in higher gears if you force an up-shift in manual mode
* On low-speed sharp inclines (like my own residental street) it desperately stays in second gear to the point of almost stalling the engine, before does a brutal panic-downshift to first gear
But in standard highway driving or city-stop-and-go it is really nice.
I love driving manual, but a long stretch of having to commute in stop and go traffic made me switch to automatic, and it has always been a buttery smooth experience for me.
There is nothing worse than the smell of burning clutch in the morning.
We have an older generation Q3, which replaced a slightly smaller car that had a manual transmission and similar turbo 4-cylinder engine. I was a little bitter about this marital compromise in the very beginning, but learned how the car behaves and have no problems today. I only use the "manual" gear selection for speed control on steep grades. To me, it can provide smoother acceleration than I ever got in 30 years of driving manuals. It shifts quicker and with more continuous power delivery compared to any manual operation I've achieved or witnessed as a passenger. The change is learning to anticipate and speak to the car with the throttle instead of anticipating and speaking with the clutch pedal and stick.
For fleet efficiency reasons, these modern automatics will prefer high gears and also use clutches to lock-out the torque converter and avoid slippage. Combine that with fuel saving coasting modes and you can potentially reach states where a small turbo engine is at low RPM with low boost pressure and a high gearing load. If you want to accelerate right then, all these bad conditions need to be reversed through a kick-down procedure, and you maximize the feeling of a delayed surge in acceleration.
It's not the same transmission as the current generation Q3, but one thing I've noticed is that there is a slight risk of this sort of stuttering/slow take off when braking to a low speed without stopping. If I am at a complete stop with brake pedal depressed, the starts are very predictable. But braking into a turn lane or driveway gets the car into its most hesitant state if I try to accelerate back out of this slow roll.
I still get befuddled when parking her car because I never remember to shift into park and I'm wondering why I can't turn the ignition switch to off and pull the key out. Gets me every time!
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/supercars/how-many-people-a...
It's basically 'daily driver' versus 'enthusiast' or 'track car' now even for cars in that bracket.
One big advantage in the second hand market is that if you look for an automatic you can be fairly sure that the engine won't have been overrevved. (The engine computer registers this and if you read it out you can see how long and how often it was overrevved, for stick shift cars this isn't unusual at all, on automatics it just doesn't happen.)
https://fordauthority.com/2020/07/automatic-transmissions-ga...
Specifically, automatics accounted for around 10 percent of Ford Europe sales volume in 2017. That figure has climbed to over 31 percent in the first month of the 2020 calendar year.
Honestly, it kind of feels like we're not that far away from cars with steering wheels and gas pedals being the oddity.
Is the author talking about the world or the US?
AFAIK the vast majority of vehicles sold in Europe are manual. Not sure about the rest of the world.
I'm from Spain and I've never seen an AT car there. I'm sure they exist though, probably.
I now live in Mexico where AT is very common and I've gotten used to it. I think the best AT is better than the best MT, but I think the average MT is way better than the average AT. I'd be totally happy driving MT.
World = USA for something like 90% of Internet posts/videos.
Why wouldn’t you expect Popular Mechanics to be talking about the American market?
But certainly it's hard for anyone to realize that when they've been brainwashed for an entire century that they live in the greatest country in the galaxy.
I have similar grumbles whenever a publication uses the phrase "in the country", and I have to go and investigate which country they mean.
They did indicate that by being an American publication. It's not like Spain publications start every article with "Here in Spain, <blah blah blah>." That'd be absurd.
While Ycombinator is certainly based in the US, lots of people visiting/participating in HN discussions are not.
Latest poll (6 months ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378
Visualization: https://ae.studio/random/where-does-hacker-news-live
Seems to be pretty 50%/50% between US and non-US based on poll answers.
This was true up until a few years ago, but it's around 50/50 now for passenger cars. There is a definite regional split, with manuals still popular in southern Europe, but having rapidly declining market share in northern Europe. Part of that is that hybrid and electric cars have had more uptake in northern Europe and are almost always automatic (there are a handful of manual hybrids, but they're not common).
Automatics as a percentage of new passenger car sales in 2020 for a few European countries [1]:
EU27+UK: 50%
Sweden: 86%
Germany: 61%
UK: 56%
France: 48%
Greece: 34%
Spain: 32%
Italy: 28%
Compare what cars people drive in US, in Germany, in Greece and in Romania.
Cheap hybrids get CVTs, good ones eCVTs (actually a differential couples to a couple of motors).
Manual is dying in Europe just like anywhere else
This is a common talking point but has actually swung hard in the opposite direction in recent years.
Porsche, Ferrari, etc all commanded huge premiums this year for their manual versions. Specifically among younger buyers and first time buyers! You even see this effect downmarket - Toyota promised to never make a manual version of their Supra, then just this last year they put together a cobbled transmission to save their car.
Manuals are also an order of magnitude less complex and cheaper - so automakers will still have some incentive to include them on small budget cars to keep down their base MSRP (even if they don't offer a ton of them). It helps that in most other countries, manuals are still king.
Finally, manual transmissions are overrepresented on the used market. Because manual cars are roughly half as complex as automatics, that translates to many fewer components going bad over time. Less likely to die = cars that stay circulating in the market longer. So if you buy used cars, the options for manuals increases dramatically.
Obviously EVs are a suboptimal solution. The real solution to transportation energy use is to switch to walking, biking, and transit as the principle mode of transportation,while switching freight mostly back to rail.
If you could just walk or bike where you wanted to go (ie, land use is good where you live), than these problems become much smaller.
The environmental damage from the use phase of ICE vehicles dwarfs the environmental damage from their construction, because use is continuous and ongoing while construction only happens once. Getting rid of the continuous pollution of ICE cars is a major win.
https://innovation.uh.edu/companies/texpower
The founder, Arumugam Manthiram, published several papers on the topic, introducing promising new chemistries:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/adma.2020027... (nickel-manganese-aluminium)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/aenm.2... (nickel-aluminium-titanium-magnesium)
https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/313056/1-s2.0-S240582972... (review)
Seems promising. The lead candidate previously for matching cobalt without the cobalt was lithium-vanadium-phosphate, but it has a variable voltage output that makes it difficult to work with.
Manual transmissions are not "an order of magnitude less complex and cheaper." They're far more expensive because the volume is much lower and every configuration has to be crash-tested, so the cost of that crash testing is amortized over a much, much smaller number of vehicles.
Manual transmission vehicles get significantly worse mileage and this drags down the fleet emissions which means they need to spend significantly more pushing out low or zero emission vehicles, or can't produce as many SUVs and trucks, where the profit margins are highest.
Porsche and Ferrari don't represent the market as a whole, or any significant portion of it. Both are acquired to a large degree as investments - they often appreciate in value if well-cared for, or at least lose significantly less value compared to the average vehicle.
People are buying manual transmission vehicles because they're rare and likely to appreciate in value more, not because they're better in any sense. They get worse gas mileage, are slower, and less capable. Dual-clutch gearboxes can shift fast enough that the limitation in them is the rotational inertia of the engine, to the point that there's little or no interruption in delivered torque, thus enabling shifts without upsetting the balance of the car. No manual transmission car can be up/down shifted during track in / cornering / trackout without upsetting the car's balance; dual-clutch gearbox cars can be. And lastly, they can have more gears.
Early gearboxes had longevity issues (clutches) but that's largely been sorted out and is no worse than manual transmission cars.
Speak for yourself, but I don't really have much of an issue shifting while going hot through a corner.
> And lastly, they can have more gears.
Why is this better? Fuel efficiency, sure, but are we going for a Fast and the Furious race scene shifting thing?
Don't take my word for it. Just look at the size of a manual drivetrain vs an automatic. The increase in steel is directly proportional to the engineering required/number of moving parts.
>Manual transmission vehicles get significantly worse mileage
While it's true that CVTs have finally surpassed manuals for fuel efficiency, I think you are largely overstating the difference. We are taking about 1 to 2 MPG difference.
Dual clutches are certainly faster, but again they are huge and complex things. And not more efficient. Among car enthusiasts, they are becoming about as popular as devices that chew your food for you - technically superior, but who cares?
>Early gearboxes had longevity issues (clutches) but that's largely been sorted out and is no worse than manual transmission cars.
I don't know how someone can take this seriously. A Nissan CVT is not even serviceable - you literally have to swap the entire unit when it goes bad. Which costs more than a used Nissan! Meanwhile a comparable manual will run as long as it's engine.
Again, there's fundamentally half as many moving parts in the drive train. You can't escape the laws of thermodynamics.
But realistically, what additional work are we looking to have done to accommodate a manual gearbox over automatic? Very little I'd imagine.
I bought mine because it was more fun and engaging than the alternative.
That auto-rev matching feature is used in DCT cars for smooth down shifting: almost every manual transmission sports car out there has this exact same technology.
Once I started the engine on a hill by engaging clutch. Kids were puzzled, but not so impressed. Oh well.
At least for enthusiasts, the love is alive and well
btw my little sister took-it-without-asking/stole it and crashed it when she was 14 :(
But they've been putting a delicious 6 speed manual in their FRS/GT86/BRZ for 10 years, and continue to.
The supra is a rocket ship.
They didn't say never, just that it was unlikely. I think the new Nissan Z scared them into offering one. The timing was too perfect to be coincidental. From the lead engineer a few years ago:
> Tada said he knows people keep asking for a manual in the Supra and in time, after customers have driven the Supra with the automatic, if they are still clamoring for a manual, he will consider it. "It is not out of the question to see an update like that."[1]
[1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/why-2021-toyota-supra-doesnt...
Porsche was ready to kill their manual with the 991.1 911 GT3 being PDK only, but there was enough outcry they brought it back for 991.2 and 992. The recently unveiled 992 GT3 RS is PDK only since it's a true track car and PDK puts in faster lap times. Even the revived GT 6-speed only accounts for a fraction of their builds and the 7-speed is hardly ordered on the regular 911 at all.
(1) PDK is a free option on the S models, you can't even get MT on the base Carrera anymore (2) the 7MT in the 991/992 is derived from the PDK unit: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15120538/a-tale-of-tw...
That being said I own a 991.1 C2S w/ 7MT and I'm never upgrading bc I don't want a turbo and I'm not into the GT3 anymore as I stopped going to the track
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20950148/ford-electric-mu...
https://insideevs.com/news/511495/two-speed-ev-gearbox-inmot...
and
https://insideevs.com/features/436049/rimac-two-speed-gearbo...
I thought it was the opposite. Has that changed?
Also automatic gearboxes can change gears usually much faster than humans. Operating the clutch is hard and when not done in the correct way, letting the clutch slip too much, waste energy.
Taking this all into account, in many cases, an automatic transmission might be more efficient.
I have been driving cars with manual transmissions all my life. My current car as indicator lights telling you when to change gears up and down. I often find myself skipping gears, especially when accelerating in the city, I often skip fourth gear. The car has six gears and you should already switch to the fifth gear when driving 50Km/h. My first car only had four gears, and the fourth gear was only used when driving over sixty. If a car has more gears it also means that you have to shift more often, which might make driving less efficient in city traffic due to the many more moments you shift slightly at the wrong moment.
Taking this into account, in almost all cases cases, a manual transmission might be more efficient.
But probably more relevant, all automatics I’ve driven have “manual” shifters (paddles or +/- selector on the gear lever) which let you override the gearbox’s decisions, to an extent.
So nothing precludes anticipating your gearing, even on an automatic.
Are there studies on the frequencies of accidents based on manual vs. automatic?
I have driven both autos and manuals and have noticed a distinct difference in focus when driving the latter. I feel more engaged with the roads and my environment. I also noticed that I've never fought to stay awake while driving a manual, and unfortunately this is the case with automatics.
My previous and current cars are manuals, and I don't ever plan on buying an auto in the future. If my next car has to be a Miata or something, so be it.
That certainly seems like the way of things.
Now that I'm getting up there in age, despite swearing otherwise, I'm starting to feel like grandpa. I'm just not the target market anymore, for anything. New cars are boring identical bars of soap with dumb-dumb transmissions. New homes are ugly and made of cheap materials. Computers keep getting more and more locked down and are losing peripheral ports. Everything from appliances to clothing wears out after a few years. Media is made for 5 minute attention spans. Everyone leases and streams things instead of owning them. You can't even buy a lot of software anymore, you have to pay every month. Everything seems to be just getting worse, and only my age cohort seems to notice it. We're turning into those stereotypical cranky old people that we used to ridicule.
The boomers before me were a huge market, and for a long, long time, industry could profitably make things for their taste. Now everything is made for 18-38 year olds who are also a ginormous generation with similar taste. My generation was tiny, and no marketer really ended up caring what we like. I got skipped over, and indeed it's starting to feel like nobody makes anything for me anymore!
Excuse me Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour, the Framework laptop?
Very gladly: It has even fewer ports than most mainstream laptops. The theoretical flexibility doesn't make up for the facts that it can have at most 4 ports, and the MicroSD reader counts as a port. So you can have one USB-C (which you need for charging), one USB-A to be able to connect a mouse, one HDMI to be able to connect a monitor that doesn't provide USB-C power, and a MicroSD card reader.
You don't get built-in Ethernet ever
So you could in theory swap e.g. the charging port for a MicroSD reader, move all the files and swap again.
In any case I see your point. I always generally scoffed at laptops with less than four USB slots alone and lack of an ethernet port. But I have a 20€ dongle for that now, which is convenient for switching between the work and private laptop.
Also grouping dual clutch transmissions like the PDK with regular old torque converter automatics is extremely silly.
To be fair, plenty of internal combustion cars prior to this rising electric era have embraced sound issues and overcompensated. Like the Mustang engine sound passthrough to entertainment system speakers, and the GT-86 / FRS / BRZ engine sound tube passing through the firewall.
After living in the US for a few years, I'd never go back to a manual car. I view driving as a chore more than a pleasure and I can't wait for them to be fully self driving.
It definitely seems to be more luxury cars over here that are automatic, and the cars for the everyman seem to still be manual.
[1]: https://www.wearemarmalade.co.uk/driver-hub/news/is-learning... [2]: https://www.gov.uk/driving-licence-categories#category-b-aut...
Not just for themselves, but for others - automatics have had better fuel efficiency (less pollution) for years now.
We could even go further and say that needlessly polluting to improve the "feel" of driving is immoral.
It's true that it takes less effort to drive. Easier to drive by just using one leg and easier to use one arm. But the loss of control is real, at least for me.
One example is moving from zero to non-zero. If I just release the break while standing still, the car slowly accelerates, too slowly. If I gently press the accelerator pedal, same problem. If I press is slightly more, the car accelerates too much. There doesn't seem to be a sweet-spot anywhere for a smooth but fast "takeoff", which is easy to achieve with my manual car.
Another example is highway driving and wanting to accelerate to pass someone. Sometimes the car decides that when I press the accelerator (while driving in 120km/h already), to shift down a gear to be able to speed up faster, but it's completely unnecessary, just go faster instead.
Last pet peeve is reversing. Instead of pressing the accelerator to go backwards, you release the brake pedal. But this again is hard to find a sweetspot and I end up doing stop-slow-stop-slow-stop... and so on, instead of just smoothly backwards without stopping, while being to adjust the speed.
Overall, I can't wait to get back to my car with manual transmission, so I can have a smooth driving experience again.
This is the number one problem I have with automatics!
Even in 'eco' mode, most tend to shift down. It seems completely wrong. It should just be in 'sports' mode that it always kicks down.
And I'm pretty sure I've driven an automatic car that had paddles to drive in manual mode but it STILL shifted down.
Also I assume your point doesn’t apply to diesels, and I’ve noticed the same shifting down in diesel autos.
and the point does apply to diesels, the same as it does to any engine with pistons and a crankshaft. it's just that the operating range of a diesel is a bit lower.
Except that I drove an auto for all but my first 3 years and last 3 years of driving.
Now I drive a Tesla and the janky auto transmissions and lag in an ICE for the engine to rev is so maddening I actively cringe just trying to drive a rental.
UK roads can be very undulating and windy, for the couple of times I drove someone else's automatic car it always felt like I was waiting for it to figure out the correct gear - some of this is probably historically inferior designs, but the other element is anticipation...
I can see the steep hill suddenly rearing up around the tight bend, I know to drop down in advance to keep the revs high if i don't want to start rolling backwards (or more realistically in todays cars, resulting in just slogging up it) - an automatic transmission can't do that, it has to wait to feel the load just before it's too late, I can also see the top of a hill quickly drop back down so i know exactly the right moment to shift up again - In short, I don't have to guess like the gear box because I can see and know when I'm going to need more or less torque.
You actually see the same problem in new drivers, they don't anticipate or select the right gear so they crawl up hills and their cars speed tends to match the angle of the road, it's a bit like automatics are newbie drivers, they will eventually select the right gear but not before they've lost all their momentum and revs.
I'd guess that the opposite is true for the US (which by comparison looks to be as flat as a pancake) for the very same reason, you don't need to anticipate gears when the terrain ahead is unchanging, once the box can infer you want to go faster and how much faster, making perfect timing for good acceleration is probably better than a human.
I think a lot of it does have to do with historically bad automatics as well, and the fact that doing your test in an automatic locks you into driving them forever.
Regarding hills, I normally drive with cruise control on so if I'm going 50mph, the car will automatically downshift to maintain that speed. You'd be surprised how many people slow down by default when going up hill because they don't try to maintain the speed and you end up zipping past.
> Most of my sense of accomplishment came from navigating the steep curve of learning how to drive a stick shift with my dad at my side—it’s not something you master overnight.
I've noticed, in general, when people have invested significant effort into developing a skill they are reluctant to let it go. This happens a lot in programming too.
Automatic cars were expensive, only posh audis, Mercs and top end "british" cars had them, all the way up till the mid 2000s. they still feel expensive to buy (even though electric cars are all autos now) and there is a fear that they are unreliable and expensive to fix (not sure if that's still the case)
Here in the UK if you only plan to use automatic, you can take an automatic driving license, but you can't drive manuals. So its a bit pointless really. Although one of my mates did it.
Unless I'm going to do track driving, I don't really want a manual (actually if its track I'd rather semi auto)
However, when driving automatic car, I still get the panic "ARGHH CLUTCH OTHERWISE YOU'LL STALL" reflex when I am coming to a halt.
This kind of line always confuses me. I mean, I remember my first driving lesson in the UK. Guy arrived in a BMW 116, manual. He said to me: what is there to explain, you get in and drive. So I got in and drove. Did my first hour, took 5 minutes to get comfortable with the clutch and shifting. Why do the people in the US make it such a big ordeal? Is it like a badge of honour?
And to your question, the answer is actually yes. Because fewer folks in the US drive manual cars, the ones that do are often proud of having the skill.
I had similar experiences. I am British also, so, also learned in and mostly drive manuals. My instructor's car would stall if you looked at it funny. A secondhand car I drove after I passed my test would almost never stall at all. I don't remember the makes - I enjoy driving but I'm definitely not into cars that much, sorry. But there's definitely quite a bit of variation in how cars handle and even someone like me who doesn't care that much for the internal details realises they'll need to “figure out" a new manual car when they first drive it.
100% this. My 5-speed Jetta TDi was actually hard to stall w/ all its torque (even at idle). I learned on a 3-cyl. Geo Metro, though, and it was laughably easy to stall.
If you really want to geek out, do a NASCAR Racing Experience. Those clutches and transmissions are awful in comparison (they’re not supposed to be optimized for feel). They’re mushy, the clutch throw is long and very stiff, and the shifter takes forever to move into gear. The base model economy car stick shift I learned in (‘91 Mazda derived Ford Escort) feels like a luxurious precision instrument in comparison.
As of 2022 they have the fancy five speed sequential stuff and the clutch is not always necessary.
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-the-nascar-next-gen-cars-hav...
From rest (with a gear selected and clutch depressed), you have to unlatch the handbrake, whilst at the same time gradually engage the clutch and deploy power via the throttle pedal. You have to ensure you don't go backwards on a hill nor stall the engine and quite a few other factors. You also have to be aware of what is around you and deal with weather etc. That's the simple description with only a few complications. At home we reverse hill start onto a narrow gravel track that runs at 90 degrees from the concrete parking stand - it is quite tricky! More so in a long wheel base Transit.
I drive two manuals - a car and a large van, and one auto - car, at the moment but I've driven most vehicles from 7.5t down, with or without auto.
An auto feels torque from the engine/wheels/conditions and your fuel input. You can floor the pedal to get going and then reduce power gradually as speed is picked up and eventually you know when the auto changes gear and can influence that accordingly - hard to describe.
In a manual you can see what is ahead and take action accordingly. You don't feel the actual torque but you can tell (with experience) from the engine noise and the feeling of acceleration.
It's all about using your array of sensors - eyes, hands, bum etc. and a shed load of experience. You do not learn that in five minutes and autos are not simply stop/start either.
The pupil can do that on their on time, on the first shitbox they acquire. If you want to learn how to start an 037 without stripping the gear feel free to do that.
On the other hand, it comes easier to some people. I taught my best friend, and he was better than I within about a minute. I gave him the general instructions on how it works and he stalled twice and then he was fine.
I think that the ease of use curve is entirely dependent on the thing between the shifter and the seat.
Like many things if you understand it at a high level then getting the basics down quickly is easy. It's the details that require practice and experience, like starting on a hill.
The most difficult part of driving is not even the machine itself but traffic.
Perhaps it's just Brazilian cars being bad, but I doubt it.
There are some cars that have very touchy clutches, but most are just fine.
https://yogov.org/blog/most-common-reasons-people-fail-their...
https://www.insurethebox.com/what-are-the-most-common-reason...
Well, at least that's the story that youtube clips of car guys tell, seeing how they operate the selector.
Being swung back and forth like that by the engine must feel intimidating.
And I like it. I'll miss it when it gets replaced by an electric truck, even though the latter will be over all a much better vehicle.
Manual transmission, manual choke, manual fuel valve, no traction control, no ABS, no computers (if you get one made before 2010) - what more can you ask for? The ones made prior to 2010 also tend to have analog gauges. It's the ultimate analog riding machine!
Get one of these old machines and have fun. In 10 years or so you won't be able to find fully-manual, non-computerized, motorcycles either.
Four wheels, a cargo bed, and, when it's -20F outside, a cab and heater ;-)
Other than that, yeah, a cycle is great.
Our last stick, a peppy Mazda 3 imported from Canada is the car they all beg to drive when they visit now from college.
Today, I've paid my dues. I've pushed the lever back and forth, and stepped on the pedal, probably millions of times. It makes me feel like I'm in one of those psychology experiments, where they see how many times a rat will push a button in order to earn a pellet of food.
But also, driving has stopped being fun, due to congestion. Today it's just a chore.
Of course it's a matter of personal preference, I get that. Today, I like everything automatic. Get in, step on the pedal, go. Step on the other pedal, stop. Even better than automatic tranny, is adaptive cruise control. That's like night and day when on the highway.
The difference is that I own two cars: a boring and comfy automatic for DD and a manual Porsche for the weekends.
But obviously, the end of all gear-shifting is near, as most electric cars only have a fixed transmission ratio, so never shift gears. We really need to switch all new car production to electric, it should be quite apparent why, especially as large parts of the world went through extreme heats again this year.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/flere-tar-forerkort-for-bil-m...
[2]: https://www.elbil24.no/nyheter/na-er-hver-sjette-bil-i-norge...
But even if Germany kind of misses out on the automatic transmission age a bit - the discussion is moot due to the switch to electric.
Many are actually back to torque converter automatics, not dual clutch. VAG is about the only dual clutch holdout now. BMW, Mercedes, Ford, Chevy, etc.. are all torque converter automatics, not a dual clutch to be found. Not even on "flagships" like the M3/M4 Competition.
Last time I drove a car from after 2018 it started automatically keeping pace with the car in front of me on the highway, and you couldn't manually close the trunk but instead had to push a button and wait for it to close.
I hate modern cars.
Same thing is happening in power tools and large appliances. Things used to work, I guess.
I was also looking at Rangers and Tacomas earlier this year. I've seen pre-2020 model year Tacomas listed for $45k. Surreal to think, " Hmm that 4 year old, used mid-size pickup is a little pricey, maybe it's better to get something more frugal like a BMW."
I hate how technology is changing the roads. This happens to me so frequently. I am a right lane driver. I hang out, I cruise at 55, and take my time. It feels like every few minutes someone comes up behind me, slows down, and doesn't go around. If I go to the left lane they speed right past me, so I can go back into my right lane... Bizaare!
Edit: actually, if they are tailgating you too close you might want to try to get rid of them, but tapping your brakes (to flash your rear red lights), or putting your hazard lights on briefly to get them to go around is probably better than going left one lane.
If such a car is following you and you get to the left or middle lane to overtake a slower car then the car behind you first accelerates to your right as if they were going to pass you, then brakes because of course there's another car there, the one you are overtaking.
The other case where I find them annoying, the worst case for me, is when I'm quietly driving my speed, overtaking a (slow compared to me) car that is following another one. But while I'm overtaking the "auto following" car, the car in front of it gets back to the right lane and the other car suddenly takes off much faster than me. So here I was, driving 110 and overtaking a car driving 90, while suddenly accelerates to 130... until it gets stuck again a kilometer further, and I have to overtake it again, and everything repeats.
Of course, I could do the same acceleration/braking dance and stay behind them all the time, but I care about not spending fuel for useless speed changes.
Manuals are disappearing in the "small" trucks sold today. You need to go with 4x4 to get a manual in Toyota. And, Nissan dumped theirs completely.
Manual locks Manual windows.
In 2015, when my first kid was born, I traded it in for my SUV. Got my 20k back for it.
Every time I see a Ranger, my heart aches
Sounds like a Dacia Duster Pick-Up. It's 22 000€ or so (new).
In cheap Porsches like the Boxster the manual is a ton more fun, since those cars don't really go very fast, so you feel more engaged. But Porsche manuals are kind of janky and notchy in those.
Maybe I'm just reminiscing "good ole times" but the manual in my S2000 was and is still the best manual I've ever driven.
Honestly, how have automatics gotten worse in the past ten years?
Do most manual transmission cars now do this?
The funnest was uphill on snow from a dead stop with no weight on the bed. Luckily my truck had 4x4
Can't you use the clutch and foot brake smoothly enough to take off on a hill? Even a slippery one? Hand in your manual transmission driver's licence!
[Tidbit: where I live drivers are issued with different licences for manual and automatic cars. You have to pass the test in a manual car for that licence, otherwise you can only drive automatic cars.]
What a great car that was. Complete beast in the winter.
I used to drive a manual 5L Mustang in the depth of the Edmonton winter. There was definitely one hill going into the city where if the traffic stopped (due to there being a pedestrian crossing right at the top for some reason) it was definitely time to start praying to the old gods and the new.
One time, after a particularly snowy night I drove into downtown and after making a right turn the car had its belly get stuck on a bunch of snow. But, indeed having a manual transmission did save me there as I switched into 3rd and got the car out that way after a couple tries.
Fun times.
But anyway, I’m now in the Bay Area and my third most popular past time now is making fun of people suddenly and violently forgetting how to drive the moment there is a single drop of water falling from the sky.
He seems to be suffering from the common misunderstanding that higher revs = higher fuel consumption. Those extra gears aren't at the top end to reduce torque at high speed (what?), they're spread more uniformly to keep the engine operating in an efficient or powerful region.
That is a good approximation. Each revolution has to do a somewhat fixed amount of work due to resistance.
However too low revs will mess up milage too due to bad combustion.
Note that engine braking is possible with automatic too.
I've always preferred a good CVT when it comes to fun. There's nothing like being snapped from 0-100 with no pause in the action. And the scream of a hydrostatic on a 30,000 pound combine is a treat. Manuals might be more fun than your average slush box, but in the grand scheme of things...
Now where's my EV MX-5 without any self-driving and touchscreen/smartphone-on-wheels garbage?
It’s looking like if you want an electric vehicle without non of the other nonsense that comes with new vehicles the conversion kits will be the way to go.
I'm unconvinced.
Surely Mazda will be electrifying their fleet and the MX-5 isn't going to vanish and it's never going to become some non-drivers' roadster. Lotus has to eventually followup the Elise with something electric, that too likely won't be some autonomous trash with deprecated steering wheel+pedals.
Then there's the budget Chinese EVs the world markets seem poised (desperate?) to become flooded with. Don't you think there'll be myriad basic, mostly-manual EVs in there? I half expect some cheap Chinese RWD EV econoboxes to become favorites for hot-rodding gearheads to upgrade the motors and batteries in. Hot-rodding should be entering a new emissions-free era, sounds great.
I once drove my brand-new Mazda B3000 4WD to another city, on Christmas Eve. The dealer had helpfully washed my new truck before I drove it away. Some water had seeped and my starter was frozen solid. Fortunately a couple of hearty passers-by pushed it so I could kick-start it. If it had been an automatic, I would have spent Christmas hundreds of kilometers from home & family.
Manuals are MUCH MUCH more common in other countries. I was just in the UK, and (because I'm curious) I peaked in cars in every lot we parked in. Manuals were the dominant mode there, in my unscientific sampling.
But in a sense manual transmission is still dying. EV's don't have a transmission in the same sense, and from a user's perspective they're similar to automatic transmission. Well, "dying" might be a bit premature, but declining anyways!
Here in Sweden, the number of people getting automatic only drivers licenses is higher than ever and climbing fast.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/supercars/heres-how-koenigs...
They're extremely humble and low-key about their inventions too, though they come out of seemingly nowhere, I don't think, for example, that anybody expected this latest innovation, because the consensus has been "manual is dead" since the new sports cars like Porsche, Ford Mustang and various others are ditching it for pure performance reasons (0-60 times).
The new manual looks amazing with its gated shifter, very Pagani Huayra-like. Their whole youtube channel (especially the invention videos, which are very humble for the sheer audacity of what they achieve) is interesting, but here's the link to the manual-automatic video.
auto boxes on semi trucks also do some squirrley things on long hills and descents where control is pretty darn important.
Shifting is completely normal to me, almost like muscle memory. I know my car well enough that can match motor revs to the new gear pretty close, without having to look at the dials. The whole process is automatic - I no longer even notice doing it. I just shift when needed, without actually having to consciously think about anything...
That being said, I don't really feel nostalgic or emotionally attached to that experience. I'm not used to automatics, but I know that in an automatic car that gives you good feedback, you can still develop that same "intuition", allowing you to for example kick-down in a lower gear for overtaking.
For me personally, loosing manual transmissions is no cause for concern.
I am concerned about people becoming worse drivers, and roads becoming more dangerous, but I think that other trends contribute more to that than automatic transmissions do. Like modern SUVs providing super little feedback. You can't feel the road, you can't feel the motor, you can't feel your speed, or the cornering forces, or how much grip you have. The whole driving is experience feels floaty and detached - like playing a video game.
There's a ton of things you can do with a manual when pushing a car to its limits that simply aren't possible with an automatic, especially when on slippery terrain (mud, snow).
Damn shame.
And usually, you can still control the car manually even on automatic transmission.
That said, I will never buy another ice engine if I can help it. That’s coming for all of us ”enthusiasts”. For better or worse “boring” electric motors with all the smoothness and infinite torque across all rpm’s are the future…
Mt and even ice will be only for the affluent as a recreation item. (See who currently can own a horse and what they use them for as an example)
So what are the enthusiast masses to do?
My pitch is that electric sports cars of the future should have digital simulations of the mt experience. We just need to modulate the electric motors to simulate the torque curve of an ice engine.
Either put a real clutch and mt gear box in and pump the output into that. Or fake the whole thing with a haptic clutch pedal.
Sim racing has just about all the tech figured out for how to make it believable enough. And we already pipe fake engine sound around ice cars to make em sound better.
The best part is that you could simulate different types of engines and new and fun combinations of manual and auto stuff. And when you want efficiency just plonk it in the middle gear and let the electric motors be electric mode. You get all the options. Full manual, sequential shifter, paddles dual clutch, and full auto electric.
Maybe that would be better in electric retrofits but if Mazda made an electric Miata with that option the haters would hate until they tried it and saw how fun it would be. Really that’s the only reason anyone has to get a mt anymore. They are just fun as hell to drive so all we need to do is figure out how to make the electric cars we will all have to drive fun.
This isn’t the solution for the purists with cash to spend 10-20$/gallon of gas it’s the thing for the rest of us who love to drive but cant justify an ice.
I mean I think you are right in that it’ll never happen. It would be a lot of engineering for a super small segment of the market, but I can dream…
I also presume manual transmissions will continue to be available to the enthusiasts and professionals/sportspeople who have an actual reason to desire them.
it's very fun to row through the gears of a moderately sporty car; that's where people's "fetishm" (more accurately "preference") comes from
My tiny ultra-efficient EV blows them both out of the water on mountain roads though.
There's one exception: the RWD EV's front end likes to skid while decelerating into turns. I prefer the Mustang's habit of breaking the rear end loose while accelerating out of turns.
I'm on board with it being a hybrid (though it actually gets roughly the same fuel economy on the highway) and especially happy with gas prices what they are now. But I don't think you need a sporty car to appreciate the torque you generate in a manual
I've owned a dozen+ manual transmissions and the one in my Hyundai Elantra is by far the worst I have ever used. It's incredible "notchy" and prevents you from shifting between gears quickly (I assume intentionally for fuel economy/longevity reasons). You couldn't pick a worse example to compare against.
Fast-forward to today, and it's all changed. Automatics have at least as many gears, they're more reliable (they don't need the clutch changed every 100-200k), and they have significantly better fuel economy. The only reason to drive a manual now is basically nostalgia.
Well, that explains. You haven’t had a fun manual car. I loved my e36 325. Porsche 964 was nice, too.
I’m also pretty positive if you wanted to buy a brand new Porsche or BMW you could pay for a manual version.
> Manual transmission fetishism is perplexing to me. I’ve owned two manual transmission cars… an old Hyundai Elantra and an even older Toyota pickup. I can’t think of a single reason I would not rather have the automatic version of either.
To which I say: it’s because you haven’t had a fun manual car. BMW 325i and Porsche 964 were both fun in manual.
> I’m also pretty positive if you wanted to buy a brand new Porsche or BMW you could pay for a manual version.
No, actually it doesn’t work like this anymore for most new models.
Where I live (where manuals are the "default") it seems like automatics are the fetishistic option. There's lots of hills, winding country roads etc round here, an automatic is a bloody nightmare because it doesn't "know" I'm approaching a hill, time to drop to a lower gear just here, I'm approaching the top of a hill, change up now, I'm overtaking on a road, I need high acceleration now. It completely fails at knowing all this and is less efficient as a result.
This is why I am sceptical of all the "automatics are more efficient these days" line. Maybe there's some volkswagen style dodgy tests that show that driving under predictable conditions on a motorway it is more efficient, but as automatics can't know upcoming conditions on the road or intentions I doubt they are more efficient in the real world. At least not round here.
Recently started driving a CVT, been about a couple months. I absolutely love the experience. It's so much more relaxed. The movement of the car is always smooth, I can hardly hear any changes in engine speed. I can accelerate from 20 km/h to 80 km/h and the RPM stays constant around 1100.
Hill driving is amazing, the car knows to shift down when going uphill. It knows to apply engine braking when going downhill.
City driving is effortless. Put it in drive, and it's literally just a matter of using the brake and accelerator. It even disengages the transmission completely when you come to a complete stop and stay there for a few seconds.
I have shift pedals on the steering, but I never felt the need to use them!
Why is this 20% increase in price not being discussed here?
I suppose this was partly because the cheapest automatic version had more HP than then cheapest manual version, and partly because automatic is just more expensive. But the point stands...
On the other hand, I also expect politicians to pull in the 2035 mandatory phase outs of gas vehicles.
Eh, I don't know about that. The current-gen Prius can easily get over 600 miles on a tank of gas if you aren't a lead foot. And a refill takes 5 minutes. For longer trips, that still makes quite a difference.
Also, unlike with gasoiline, you don't need to supervise an EV while it charges. Stopping for 30 minutes (bathroom breaks included in that time) every 5 hours doesn't seem too onerous to me.
In terms of vehicle external design, modern vehicles are designed for pedestrian and passenger safety, and that emphasis pushes towards a consensus design of the jelly bean look. EVs with their "frunk" will further evolve that design as it means that there isn't a honking great lump of steel in the front of the car.
As for the driver UI/UX, touch screens for controls that the driver needs to operate while driving are a definite negative. I expect that there will be studies by the various standards bodies regarding this that will require movement back to haptic feedback requirements in the design rules.
Passenger sure, but pedestrian? I’m not so sure. Maybe this is an American thing only but cars continue to get larger and larger, which is great for passenger safety, but decidedly less great for pedestrians.
I think manual transmissions are increasing in popularity though as a lot of farmers are aging, and lose confidence in their ability to operate a manual transmission.
Anecdotally, nearly 100% of the 'Í do not like automatic tramsmission' people that I know are woman, all of an age between 45 and 55. Somehow they still take pride in riding stick, while the rest of the world has moved on from being Mantafahrers.
My point is that manual transmissions actually made a lot of sense in cars without ABS and drum brakes. Learning to brake with a gearbox was a life saving skill with those cars.
Nowadays none of this applies with ABS and ESP/ESC and indeed MT is likely to become a relic, specially with the rollout of EVs.
That said, if you can find them, there are still some modern-ish BMWs that aren't M-series that come in manual. I picked up a 2016 340i and modded in CarPlay, and it feels like the best of the old world and modern world - rides the line perfectly for me. Will be sad when I finally have to let it go.
In the US. In France the share of automatic gearbox for new cars passed 50% for new cars only in 2021, and there are still an immense majority of manual vehicles in circulation; you have to use a manual gearbox to pass your driving license.
This will change with electric cars that for the most part don't need gears at all, of course.
> You may ask why an electric race car needs a transmission in the first place? Using a gearbox helps you to extract the maximum efficiency possible from the electric motor. High Performance electric motor efficiency varies greatly depending on its architecture and design philosophy. Some motors are high revving – perhaps as high as 25,000rpm, while others only reach 9,000rpm. They will be delivering very different torque bands; using a transmission helps you keep the motor in the most efficient operating range possible.
> There’s another fundamental reason why Formula E cars use a transmission: because the rules say so. The regulations stipulate that the motor must deliver drive to both wheels through a single mechanical transmission, so you need at least one gear set to accomplish this final drive. The electric motors used in Formula E have some of the highest power-to-weight ratio of any automotive motor in the world so that transmission has its work cut out for it.
http://thecartech.com/subjects/auto_eng/Auto_Eng23.htm
The EV curve is not exactly flat, so it's worth it for Formula E to bother with a transmission. For consumer cars the extra tiny efficiency boost doesn't matter.
No idea what the text of the article says, but based on the figures, it goes into more detail than me.
To answer your question, Tesla by default starts breaking a little bit when you take your foot off the accelerator pedal, as if you were driving in a slightly lower gear. This behavior is configurable in settings.
My BMW has a neat adaptive driving mode: because the motors don’t use permanent magnets, lifting off would normally result in coasting. When adaptive driving is on, the car uses its radar to figure out how much regeneration (and if necessary friction) braking to apply so you stop just short of the car in front of you, all without applying the brake. The same system is also used to dampen acceleration when there are cars in front of you. It sounds like madness, and is very strange the first few times you use it, but ends up making driving more pleasant.
Once you get used to the idea of regen it's weird to think that traditional combustion cars just throw away all that energy as heat in the brakes and/or engine.
/s
The related context is that automatics can’t predict what gear you’re going to need before you need it. This leads to a lag that doesn’t exist with manuals that automatics compensate for by having oversized and overpowered engines.
This is most noticeable when overtaking or driving on twisty mountain roads. One way people work around it is by tapping the brakes as a signal to the transmission to shift down.
Another way to notice this weird behavior with automatics is to see how much noise american cars make when trying to take off fast from a stop light. Lots of noise thanks to wide open throttle, not much acceleration because the (cheap) gearbox keeps shifting up and reducing torque.
You don't get the sensation of letting the clutch go at juuust the right revs, but hey, there are always motorcycles.
Of course, front wheel drives can do this with left foot braking but I never got the hang of that.
I used to do this in my mom’s Kalos. Super fun. Makes it feel like your car is on rails.
WHat has changed, at least in performance bikes (broadly stated) is autoblippers/quickshifters. A skill you could learn (clutch less shifts) of course but never as fast as these.
(I agree though, since I don’t drive a semi or dump truck.)
Also, FWIW, they don't just pick between 18 gears with a single shifter. They have multiple inputs that allow shifting between multiple combinations of gears, some requiring clutch to change and some not, as they gain speed. Most trucks still only have 6-ish positions for the main gear shifter to slot in to.
In what < $15K econobox? :)
Nissan Versa at $15.5k: https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html
Kia Rio and Hyundai Accent aren't too far off at $16.5k: https://www.kia.com/us/en/rio
According to the figures in the manual for the 2016 model revision (https://mitsubishi-motors.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/1...), the CVT is indeed supposed to be slightly more efficient, according to the figures for the 2019 model (https://mitsubishi-motors.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/1...) on the other hand the CVT is consistently slightly worse than the manual transmission.
(Also somewhat interestingly, in some cases the auto engine start-stop system actually seems to increase nameplate consumption/CO2 emissions.)
And even with gas engines, I'm in Europe and I've never owned an automatic. I've driven a few and kinda hated them... with the exception of Toyota's CVT. I would drive that.
Too bad hybrids have 18/24 months delivery time around here. Not a good time to change your car.
Driving along on cruise control, if a long downhill is encountered, the car will shift down to engine brake. That's cool.
You can also downshift in a manual...
Tesla didn't get a transmission mainly because they put enough power and low end torque would blow up any transmission that hit weight and size specs they needed to do.
However, a manual trans can be in an EV. It just doesnt make sense, there's virtually no situations where you want to be out of gear.
Flipside, this is a huge adoption hurdle for me. I need my manual trans.
I love the idea of a manual trans ev wrangler: https://www.motortrend.com/news/jeeps-magneto-concept-wrangl...
But my understanding is that it's not happening.
The only argument that's swayed me away from being entirely on the side of manual cars is that if I'm out hiking with friends who I've driven to the trail and who can't drive my car and I get hurt in a way that prevents me from driving then we could end up stranded. The next car I buy will likely be electric so it ends up not mattering anyways.
- Two didnt know how to drive
- One didnt know how to drive stick
- the guy who ended up driving her to the hospital, didn't have a drivers license.
I told her next time to get it rolling on second, leave it there, and drive then herself.
But a good argument for autos is engine longevity. The autos really pamper it
Let me tell you - there is NOTHING like driving Highway 9 up to Skyline through Saratoga after chemotherapy. The manual transmission maybe mattered less than the convertible aspect (fresh air is what kept my nausea away) but the physical connection to the mechanism made me feel alive.
The car basically fell apart within a few years - but I don't regret the $8k it cost me.
I found going from a 5 speed to a 6 speed annoying -- it added a lot more shifts. After 26 years of driving a manual, my car got totaled and I pretty much had to get one with an automatic.
The new car has hill descent mode, which is pretty similar to what a manual does, and it has some more sophisticated limited slip traction control modes, which eliminates the only other real advantage of a manual.
The only remaining advantage of a manual now is cost, which matters far more in developing countries than in the USA.
All the automatics I've driven in seem to at best have a "best fuel economy" mode, a "sport" mode that doesn't even get close to pushing the engine to red-line, and an up-down shifter that lags too much for a downhill-into-a-tight outside-turn-into-an-uphill type scenario.
https://www.cjponyparts.com/ford-performance-electric-crate-...
Or, for a little more oomph, this "Tesla crate motor" by ReVolt:
The clutch would probably last a very long time.
https://www.currentautomotive.com/the-past-present-and-futur...
But it would only be of interest for the "sport" vehicle market, because EVs with one gearset work just fine.
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/electric-vehicles-manual-transm...
It's actually just a control to increase torque more aggressively on command for increased acceleration beyond what is normally needed for casual driving.
Whether I want a manual or an automatic depends on the nature of the car. If it's a small fun-to-drive car — like a Mini Cooper, BMW 3 series, porsches etc — I prefer manual.
But if it's a large luxury sedan or large SUV, then I will opt for automatic.
But I must admit, I struggled a little in a car. Car's required much finer movements than I was used to.
Maybe the high end models get the really responsive automatic gearboxes, but i suspect not everyone can afford that, compared to any old cheap manual that can do the same thing.
Now, electric wont have that problem as i understand, so happy to drive without gears then.
Any quote involving a DSG or automatic gearbox from the VW/Audi/BMW is like buying a good second hand car.
No thanks - like my farm implement.
50% of that was the cost of labour. 20% of that was the cost of replacement gearbox oil
Although the cryptocurrecny shakeout seems to have dulled the high-end watch market somewhat.
The next car for me is probably going to something similar - or an EV.
https://jalopnik.com/this-chinese-electric-car-designed-for-...
I just came back from Monterrey Motorsports Week where lots of rich old guys race many decades old race cars around the track. Again, inferior in every way to a modern car yet its a thing, a big thing.
My experience of autoboxes is the slow glacial pace of stirring an engine.
Perfect engine speed match. Perfect syncro match. The apex of the curve behind you and full throttle ahead
$ 7,600
I never heard such thing with cars with manual transmission.
From The Washington Post [0]: "The parents of Anton Yelchin, the “Star Trek” actor who died in 2016 when his SUV rolled down his driveway and trapped him against a security gate, have reached a settlement with the makers of Jeep Grand Cherokee.
"[..] [In 2015], [the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] began investigating the unconventional gearstick design on these cars, which was causing crashes because drivers were mistakenly shifting to neutral when they thought they were shifting to park.
"With a regular gearstick, drivers choose a transmission option (park, reverse, neutral, drive, etc.) by moving the stick into the corresponding notch or detent. Drivers can feel the stick settle into position.
"But a new, different, design was used in the cars affected by the recall, which include certain recent models of the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, and Jeep Grand Cherokee."
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w...
Automatic transmission isn't gonna be the de facto way to drive everywhere in the world.
I want a hobby vehicle to present some sort of challenge. Now maybe you shouldn't ever be "challenging" yourself on a public road, but doing so in an old sports car at 45 mph, is clearly not the same level of risk to others as pushing equivalently in the modern version. It's just less acceptable, even before environmental concerns. So that leaves you with "push the throttle for maybe five seconds, then back off before you plough into a shared-use bridge at 120 mph" (something I've unfortunately seen, recently). Neat trick, but really a skill as such, is it?
Meanwhile, I hit 40 mph yesterday, on a twisty road, using gravity and oatmeal. That's my accomplishment.
Then there's the noise. An old sports car made noise because the designer wanted, was singularly focused on, making a powerful engine. A new car makes noise because, after the team of engineers make a powerful engine, then design an efficient suppressor system to comply with laws, the marketers come along and find regions of the engine map the laws do not cover, and order the engineers to make it very loud in those regions specifically. The former is charming, the latter is just cheap. More so when you're embarrassed by an EV - scratch that, a practical EV, with storage space and stuff - during acceleration.
And for all that, the sports car is still usually pretty rubbish on a track compared to a purpose-built vehicle. Pro tip: real mechanical engineers worry about heat dissipation. A lot. Really a lot. Your road car almost certainly doesn't have enough for sustained track work. They manage a few laps, then important components - the brake discs, brake pads, brake fluid, dampers, maybe even some of the sensors and power steering - start fading. Again, in comparison a few thousand on bike stuff gets you something entirely race-worthy. Yes I know it's still just a bicycle - it is - but you do notice the sense of purpose, that things are there because they make the vehicle better at its one job.
If OEMs want ICE sports cars, arguably any sports cars, to have a future, then the Top Trumps needs to stop. Rediscover that sense of purpose. Either the point is "fun at socially acceptable speeds", in which case manuals are just better because they're more fun, or it's "prove I have lots of money", in which case stick an electric motor in and coat the interior in gold, because the current crop of go-fasts don't have long for this earth, legislation will see to that.
I’ll get my coat.
People seem to forget the automatic transmission started mass production in 1939, and take-rates in the US well-exceeded 50% by the late '60s/early '70s.
Almost all the millennials my age can drive and and a good percentage probably own a manual. Automatics are gaining ground in the UK but they're still typically more expensive. I suspect 17 year olds are still learning to drive manuals in the UK right now.
Sorry to ruin the joke ;)
My understanding is that EU driving tests are vastly more difficult than US. You lot are throwing cars sideways, on purpose, and recovering from it to get your license.
Here it’s just use your turn signal, stay between the lines, and don’t crash.
Just another example of us being the butt of jokes from boomers, even when it's not the case. :)
My current car is a low milage 1991 Acura Integra 5-speed manual. I bought it party because it would have been one of the cool cars to have back in high school. No one would have thought the manual would be that out of place back then.
Cost of that evening? One already vintage iPhone 4. Still driving manual, but not visiting properties in the dark any more.