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Comment by melony | Hacker News Reader

Here's a better compromise, a semi-automatic:

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.

meh, my wife's car does that, but to me it's not the same. I think if I can put into words what I like about manual transmissions, it's more than just the control to change the gears, it's the actual tactile feeling of removing power from the drivetrain (via clutch), then re-applying it. it's the cliche feeling of "connection" to the car, road, and what's happening. But I understand why the manual is dying. Most people don't want it, today's automatics are much better suited for towing (thus eliminating the manual in trucks and SUVs), and the top of the top of performance cars paddle shift light years faster than anyone could in a proper manual transmission.

Or how about just being able to anticipate the power band around a corner? Being able to downshift on a hill without thinking about it. Those are things you don't even realize you do in a manual, that you do.

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 drove a manual years ago. It was fun then, but now I prefer the paddle-shift of my "semi-auto", which is still going strong without fault for 15 years.

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!

I've given up with manual, as a technology, since I've used an EV that didn't have any switching transmission. Just fixed gear ratio. The feeling is better than manual. You always have full power available. There is no RPM regime where an EV won't be able to apply maximum torque. Manual can't beat that feeling.

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.

He meant 500 milliseconds not 500 metres. Not having any pickup over 500 metres would be insane.

I am sure that doesn't change the argument at all, most electric motors don't need 500ms to apply force.

Surely they don't. But that's not what it's about. It's about the fact that I can't reliably gauge how this car works or have good feedback in comparison to my manual.

I would argue you have better feedback and can understand better how it works than manual. There is a fixed ratio gear connecting motor and wheels. Simpler than clutch and transmission by miles. The motor works with electricity and a motor controller, all software. It has reliable performance characteristics.

> There is no RPM regime where an EV won't be able to apply maximum 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...

Most EV motors are fairly flat, but as you mention, they use software to further flatten in. Reality is; the torque curve is nearly perfectly flat.

That’s contrary to electric motor theory and to the dyno test that I linked above. The power curve is much flatter than the torque curve.

https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/02/29007...

Not sure what your point there is? EVs are still fixed-gear ratio and provide maximum torque over the entire range. The graph you linked just shows that?

> > You always have full power available.

> 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.

> Or how about just being able to anticipate the power band around a corner? Being able to downshift on a hill without thinking about it. Those are things you don't even realize you do in a manual, that you do.

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.

Even as someone who hates cars and has never in 40 years had a driver's licence, I get this (have learnt how to drive).

Automatic instead of manual feels how I imagine pre-chewed ice cream feels.

But anyone that drives a manual will let you know it's mostly about the clutch and how you use it, rather than choosing what gear you're in. Using a clutch just right can produce amazing amount of torque just when you need it. Automatic clutch can be incredibly efficient, but it simply can't know what you want to do.

Yeah. And the car is just second guessing you in general. I can blip the throttle in my automatic and the car acts like nothing happened at all. Or I’ll put my foot to the floor, nothing happens, then a few seconds later it downshifts and jerks forward. But it’s easy on long journeys and the road is not a racetrack so I can’t complain.

Yes, you'd think the car would get the most aggressive when the pedal is to the metal. Instead, I noticed that a strong, but gradual increase on the gas will provide more power.

I drove an AT rental with a "manual" mode. The AT kept wanting to sit in high gears, which require a lot of torque at low RPMs, which ended up hitting this funny resonant spot in the car and cause an annoying rumble. I ended up running it in manual mode and lower gears.

Rental fleets are so bad now, the first thing I do is figure out how to manually operate the tranny. Then Ill downshift 15 seconds before needing the power.

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.

> Using a clutch just right can produce amazing amount of torque just when you need it.

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 point out that modern electrics don't do automatic anymore. The "automatic" transmission is all software. There is a fixed gear ratio. EV motors have almost perfectly flat torque curves across the entire RPM spectrum. That feeling when you pump the RPMs and let the clutch go? An EV could give you that from 0 to 180kph without ever having to switch gears. An EV doesn't need to be quicker than a manual. There is nothing to be quicker with. There is no gear shift.

What about deceleration with a fixed gear ratio? I’d assume there’d need to be braking applied without being able to downshift

The electric motor just turns into a generator and charges the battery. Engine breaking with an EV is literally refilling your tank, so to speak. The modern EVs are pretty smart about it and will also apply the breaks sneakily if the engine can't bring up enough resistance (due to battery being charged, too much change in a short time, etc.)

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.

Regenerative braking is not Engine braking, which itself is not at all like using brakes other than it slows the vehicle down. Though it is probably most commonly used to spare brake wear, the importance of it is to help the driver maintain control of the vehicle. Active use of engine braking by shifting into a lower gear helps control speed while driving down very steep and long slopes, and to maintain better control in serpentine curves while at high speed.

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.

How is regenerative breaking not the same as engine breaking? Other than the lack of ICE in the EV, the engine is being used to slow down the vehicle, it has the exact same effect.

Well it’s not the same in a similar fashion of “1 + 1 = 2” is not literally the same as “3 - 1 = 2”. Maybe they accomplish similar goals but downshifting to brake can be done for as many gears as the transmission contains in a stepwise fashion. But without a transmission in a single speed vehicle with regenerative braking it’s more of a “spectrum” of braking and not directly controllable by the driver.

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.

Downshift Braking is Engine Braking, it's the same thing. And there is absolutely no reason an EV motor could not emulate the exact same behaviour as a stick shift. It's all electronic, you could just emulate the behaviour of a stick shift vehicle there and give the user a joystick with stick shift labels on top. All the motor has to do is to either apply regenerative breaking at a certain efficiency value. The electronics can ramp regenerative breaking from 0% to 100% in any amount of steps you like.

Another nice thing is using the clutch to roll start a vehicle with a dead battery.

My first car was a Beetle with the autostick. It was great. I started it more times than I could count by pushing/rolling it.

I find the clutch is actually what gives me the feeling of control. Also, I skip gears a lot.

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