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Comment by oxfordmale | Hacker News Reader

I live in Europe where driving stick was the norm until the arrival of hybrid and electrical cars. I have predominantly driven stick, and only recently driven an automatic hybrid car. From a comfort point of view I do prefer an automatic, although some petrol heads may keep preferring driving stick. However, I suspect it will become a niche within a generation.

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Manual is niche in Norway now. The manual sale is close to zero. And you will have problems selling your old manual car. This shift started before EV’s took over the new car market. But it’s not that many years since manual were completely normal. Point is that preferences changes quickly.

I drove older bmw 3 series (e46) for more than decade with manual. Loved it, defended it, it simply gives you much more control over car and onnetion with it, helps you to be split-second precise when ie you need to accelerate hard to get to desired revs. No common automatic transmission works as well on ICE cars. But I reall it took me quite some time to get really good with it,, half a second makes a lot of difference. Then you switch cars ie for vacation and you are almost beginner again since so many changes re pedals resistance, timings, engine torque curves etc change across brands.

Then the car broke down last year and we went for bmw 5 series, which you can't even buy in manual (just to be clear I would never pay full price for these otherwise great cars, rather 20-25% for ca 6 years old).

Its so much easier especially for longer driving. My mental load decreased by up to 50%, with also the help of laser projection of speed, limits and navigation on dashboard. With 2 small kids, having a car thats too sporty is actually a major drawback anyway (so ie Tesla's 0-100 times leave me uninterested, why would one do this to your closest ones), unless driver self-centered a-hole. With family in mind, I wouldn't go back. Sport mode makes it already more agile than I (and rest of family) want, basically 0 lag on gas pedal.

I lived in Europe and I'm back for few months. Automatic rental car costs 2x of normal, so naturally I'm driving stick. I absolutely hate it. It's an absolutely ridiculous bullshit that needs to go (together with ICE's). I firmly believe the only reason stick is still being sold is so that rental companies could gauge their customers.

Damn, wait till you get on mountain bike, it has not one but TWO sticks that shift separate gears.

And TWO brakes, one for each wheel ? How it is even possible for human to have that much coordination to rein in that monster ?!

If you're really being precise about your gears, a shift-up or -down can involve both wheels. I never do that, though.

Most modern MTB's have abandoned a front shifter and only have one for the cogs in the rear.

How about a horse then…

I mean I’m taking my kids to daycare. Not focusing on lanes, speed, gears, rpm’s makes lets me focus more on road, traffic and cars ahead. Why people insist being a Luddite on even most frivolous things is a virtue?

I think it's a cultural thing. We Europeans are just more used to driving manual transmission vehicles.

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