The unintended consequence of EVs: More demand for manual transmissions

Yes, actually, there is benefit. Rick disagreeing, doesn't mean those benefits magically vanish.

The benefit is in the snow, on dirt roads, on windy, twisty paved roads.

The benefit exists on high end, but more so for the average car.

I grew up in Canada, live here, and cut my teeth delivering pizza, on manuals, in any weather. Warm suuny days, or -25C in a snow storm, pizza was delivered. On dirt, pavement, concrete, in freezing rain, pizza was delivered.

Try googling "lake effect snow". Try googling "ice bridge".

You know when you feather a clutch? When trying to ever so gently, get moving on ice or slick snow.

Normal torque of even the weakest car, will have you spinning, digging a hole.

You want to stop fast? On a rural, soft, dirt road? Like when a moose, or deer, appears in front of you?

Many non-porche cars do not have multi-piston breaking systems. Slamming the brakes on, and throwing the car into 1st, has, in a front wheel drive, the effect of you "digging in" to the dirt. Braking distance can drop to 1/5th in such a case.

No you won't destroy the tranny or clutch, for by the time you get it in first, and clutch, your foot floored on the brake has already dropped speed. Not to mention, do you want to burn a little clutch, or smash into a moose?

There are other scenarios too, but urban Californians, driving high end cars, won't run into the same ones.

I have no problem with someone disagreeing, and I agree with the 99% figure, but we aren't discussibg stunts, or track driving here.

I mean, is it common in California, to throw a couple of bags of sand, into the trunk of rear wheel drive cars, so that in the winter you have weight over the rear wheels?

Never thought of it that way at all, but, yes, you are right.

I am of the belief that our approach to educating young drivers is nothing short of an accident factory. They actually come out thinking they can drive.

I still remember our last experience with that. They had to do 6 hours with an "instructor" and then complete 50 hours with an adult licensed driver.

The six hour course was, from my perspective, almost a joke. Sure, they get to experience and learn rules of the road in practice and that has value. The problem is that after only six hours with an instructor who, venture a guess, can't really drive, they get dropped on their head to rely on the nearest licensed adult --who also can't drive-- to learn.

One of the first things I have always done when teaching someone to drive is to immediately explore the extremes. That means, at the very least, full throttle acceleration, full-hard braking and rapid lane changes. Dry and wet if conditions allow. Of course, there's a progression to this, but we certainly get there within a couple of hours or less and practice over many days.

I remember a family friend who broke out crying when I told her to press the accelerator all the way and hold it there until I said to release it. To be clear, she was crying before we ran the test...in a minivan. After calming things down, she agree to do it. The reaction was typical "Oh, that wasn't so bad at all". Too many Hollywood movies.

Braking is another one. Most people never brake hard until they have that first accident or near have one. When I show them what full braking means, they are always blown away by how hard a car can brake without disintegrating. When I tell them "brake as hard as you can", they think they are, but they rarely get there. I often have to say something like "really stomp on it this time" after the first attempt. Again, perspective changing in many ways.

And then there's the lane changing. We start slow and progress to "as violently as you can" on dry pavement. This, too, blows people away. Once they have good control I put them in a sports car and repeat the drill. Disbelief describes what they experience.

After that, I try to get them on a racetrack to gain a better understanding of vehicle dynamics and, if a wet skid-pad is available, all the things you can do there.

Over the years several of my small group of (friends and family) students have come back to me to tell me how they were able to avoid having an accident due to one or more of the drills I put them through when they were learning. That's always cool to hear.

Driver training doesn't come close to making safe drivers at all. Not to go too far, this morning, around 3 AM, someone died on the south-bound 5. I was raining. The story so far is that the guy got on the freeway, changed lanes, lost control, slammed into the center divider, bounced off and then crashed into a passing car...killing that driver of that car. Did not need to happen.

The ZF 8 Speed Automatic actually has less moving parts than the ZF 6 speed automatic it replaced.... And the it has proven to be one of the most reliable automatic transmissions produced. The old 4, and 5 speed transmissions are notoriously unreliable.

"They don't make a "big" difference. If they made a "big" difference you'd have seen them decades ago. We've had the tech for as long as we've had automatic transmissions. More gears is just more stacked planetary gearsets."

I guess I just don't understand your argument. Are you saying these new transmissions don't make a difference because they didn't do it earlier?

Even though fuel economy testing proves they clearly do make a difference....

And these new transmissions most certainly are not "just more stacked planetary gearsets". There has been decades of technology and efficiency improvements integrated into these new transmissions. I'm quite certain the transmission control module and shift programming, clutch packs and materials, etc. are different than an old 4 speed transmission.

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any car that this would be possible to test. I picked the Dodge Charger because it's the closest option we have, and very little changed between those two model years except the transmission.

I participated in forums back in the ~2015 era because I had a Dodge Challenger at that time. And it was quite clear that the 8 speed made a huge improvement in fuel economy in the 2015+ cars. That matches the official EPA tests.