Honda is testing a manual transmission for EVs
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
This has been done a few times. Some high-end electric car had it about a decade ago. Toyota demoed it in 2022. There is a Chinese driver training car that has a fake manual transmission setup so people who need to pass manual transmission driving tests can practice.[1] It even simulates stalling the engine. That's probably the only one that's useful.
[1] https://jalopnik.com/this-chinese-electric-car-designed-for-...
On the point about manual transmissions (or simulations thereof) not being “useful”, I think you’re approaching it from the wrong perspective. The people that want them enjoy using them, not unlike how horse riders like riding horses. I guess you could say that horses are “useless” too since cars exist, but that would be missing the point.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrical-motors-torques...
electric motors hugely benefit from gearboxes, they're not used as a means to simplify and encheapen.
Direct drive or wheel hub motors are uncommon.
The difference is that one fixed gear ratio is usually good enough.
Heavier vehicles more or less need multiple gear ratios for EV drivetrains too.
So that exactly fits the definition.
Edit: By prefer, I mean having the choice and choosing manual, obviously. Choosing manual because it is cheaper does not count.
Auto should be used for all the other cars (including performance cars, where you want your mind focused on stuff other than shifting; true sequential is king there, though).
I've driven manual cars but never owned one. Other than transmission fluid changes (rare), though, I've never had to fix an auto transmission. They're pretty reliable. My current one is at about 260k km, 24 years old (previous owner burned out engine and transmission at ~100k km on car by not using towing mode to tow, so car has more on it than that).
I just do not at all understand the point of a so-called sports car (especially the expensive ones!) that's not a manual! What's the point?! I genuinely do not understand why anyone would want an automatic sports car. I don't have to understand; I'm not the arbiter of anything let alone others' enjoyment of cars. I am still confused tho lol
It's like running Linux. At some point it's just another OS, so what difference does it make? And for some, it doesn't make a difference. For others, having more control, and being able to dig into the guts of a desktop Linux system and replace whatever you want let's them feel more connected to the computer, making it less of a mysterious box that operates on magic and black smoke, and more of a predictable machine.
To me it's more like "running your own-compiled GNU Hurd Kernel", probably on your own-assembled kit :D
Linux has very "tangible" use cases, far beyond wanting the machine "be an extension of yourself". No?
I mean sure. Obvs I don't speak for everyone that runs Linux. Knowing how Linux, works from Kernel to user space, from an LFS install, or simply being around it that much lends itself to being the kind of person who's able to setup, or gets paid to setup the kinds of tangible use cases others want. Like a webserver, back when it was hard. Like eg mounting files as a drive. It's just losetup then mount /dev/loop0 /mnt. That's a tangible use case where you can copy files off a dvd ISO. I'm sure you can find a program to do that on Windows, but it's basically a built in feature on Linux. Linux at the base level is workshop full of tools, it's up to you what you want to build.
What are some hobbies you enjoy?
I almost never know what an auto will do if I put my foot to the floor. And often just 50% it interprets as you wanting to floor it and shifts down 2 gears which is often an overreaction given the car's torque and power.
I dislike the gamble at roundabouts too. They're everywhere in the UK and they're busy - you often pull out in front of cars where there is a gap and you need to know your car will do exactly what you need it to do.
Also start-stop is trickier to control in an auto and it's linked to how hard you brake rather than the clutch pedal (it's getting harder to disable start-stop in cars these days). I never want the engine to turn off at the entry to a roundabout but if you brake too hard, it will
That said if I am regularly doing 100s of miles on motorways I absolutely love an auto
And of course for a lot of driving (highways) theres very little shifting anyway.
I drive a BMW with a 8 gear automatic, it's always in the gear I want it to be, and I was a stick advocate for many years, no need for it anymore.
With a manual tranny, manual brakes, manual steering, and manual suspension you feel connected to the car and the road, and it's just a joy. It's even more fun when you learn to double clutch the downshift, and work on doing a perfect downshift and entry into the turn.
With practice, you can drive a stick smoother than an auto, though most never bother.
The times I prefer an automatic are in stop-go traffic, and starting out uphill. I'd also prefer an automatic in a luxury car or SUV. But for a muscle car or sports car, stick all the way!
You can't win a drag race with a stick, racing auto trans will always shift faster. But there's no skill in the latter, and so it's no fun.
I recently took up dirt bike riding. I was repeatedly offered an electric bike, which didn't need shifting. Phooey. I wanted the gas bike with the manual shifter. And I was right, managing the engine and gear adds much fun.
Most EVs are single speed transmission due to the wide range torque curve, so manual vs auto is kind of a moot point for all but very high performance vehicles anyway... Which is why this honda thing is a total gimmick, i'd happily give up manual gearbox when there is no performance and efficiency difference.
I love it, fuel efficiency is on par with manual. There are things that I don’t like, specifically: - Driving in traffic: If I’m inching forward, transmission suffer because it does continuously half-clutch. Much more control with a manual. - Mountain driving: I usually set it again to manual to be able to brake with the engine when going up and meeting a curve. Interestingly, it does fine going downhill. - tricky terrain: it changes wildly depending on the traction you are encountering, so manual mode helps keeping a constant rhythm and speed when traction is not optimal (snow, mud, etc)
I have to admit though that the automatic is way faster than me at changing gears, which helps keeping a constant acceleration and avoid head bobbing.
That's because a DSG gearbox has two clutches. It is basically a traditional gearbox with one clutch connected to the odd gears and one to the even gears. The system selects the next gear according to the revs of the engine and does all the physical shifting in advance. The actual gear change is then only disengaging one clutch while engaging the other one. You can overlap this so the engine continously delivers torque to the wheels. Thus, no head bobbing.
head bobbing (sudden g-force jerks) was fixed before the introduction of another clutch; that's a function of rev-matching between upshifts and downshifts. An early BMW SMG system, a manual gearbox with electro-hydraulics on top of it to handle shifting and clutch work, gets rid of the head bobbing.
How? Precise rev-matching.
dual clutch systems were a means to speed the gear-shift process up, with two clutches there is no need to wait for shaft speed mismatches, you just keep the opposite clutch where you need it RPM-wise. This helps alleviate the head-bobbing, but it's more just an artifact of how the system has to work -- rev-matching is now something required in order not to blow the system up.
tl;dr : it's the rev-matching saving your neck, just like it would've been doing had you been a passenger with a race driver -- but they're doing it to save tires and keep the car stable, they probably don't care about your neck.
Not having to deal with gear shifting is a huge benefit for me. It takes out one non-trivial element from the whole driving experience and lets me focus more on all the other things you need to do while driving. It’s also more relaxing, especially combined with adaptive cruise control. And I never worry I will mess up the when starting from a full stop and have to restart the car. Especially when starting from an uphill.
From what you described you’re the type of person that likes to have full control over the car and how it behaves, and that’s totally fine. But many of us don’t, we just care to get from point A to B with as little friction as possible. Sure, it’s more expensive to get and maintain, but that’s a price I’m fully willing to pay.
Your mind is not very busy shifting if you've been driving manual for a while.
I think it's more fun as you _feel_ the relationship between the engine revs and the movement of the vehicle but in congested traffic it becomes a nuisance too.
Are there any dual transmission vehicles which manual and automatic transmissions???
Yes, but Koenigsegg is not a brand that's in budget for most of us.
Sequential is manual but better when doing 0-130 in 3s,a bit worse when doing regular driving.
It is automatic
I have better uses for my time and attention than matching rpms and flicking a lever, especially in stop and go traffic
> Cars with manual transmission can be towed
Automatic cars can be towed, just read the manual (for reference: https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/22275/can-a-ca... )
An EV doesn't have a transmission in the conventional sense (1). It's just a final drive from the motor to the differential (which you'd have in any conventional ICE gearbox anyway). The motor is always connected, and can drive from zero speed to maximum in the same gear. It's a totally difference experience to an 'automatic' ICE car as there are no shifts. It's like a part of the car is just no longer there - and for good reason as electric motors can provide torque over a much wider range of speeds than an ICE engine can.
The gearbox in an ICE car is only there to cover for the inadequacy of ICE engines. It's missing from EVs because it's not needed.
Life-long petrolhead here (driven as an amateur in the WRC for reference). Bought my first EV a few years ago, and never going back. It makes zero sense for most people to have an ICE car now. If you've not driven one, reserve judgement about the transmission as most people I know who've driven mine have found it a revelation.
(1) with the exception of the Porsche Taycan AFAIK.
I loved my 15-year-old Kia Rondo with the V6 and 5-speed transmission and manual up/down override. It was very peppy and surprisingly great for a plain old crossover SUV.
Last year I went on a road trip to a friend's wedding 80 miles away. The Rondo was showing its age, so I wanted to rent a more reliable car, was curious about EVs, and found a Kia EV6 at my local Hertz outlet.
OMG. The driving experience was so different! The torque is always there when you need it.
A couple of months later I got one of my own. I was amused that the window sticker says "1-speed automatic".
Speaking only for you and me, and without any political implications, we are not going back!
That sounds suspect. In the past 20 years I’ve found it makes far less errors than when I drive manual transmission over the same time. The set points just differ.
The curve for engine breaking is also not absent, just different I regularly release the accelerator in an automatic transmission, and it will slow down to a stop
I used to think like that, but driving a manual tranny in one of the most congested cities in the world, with bad hip joints (the left one the worst) at the age of 50, it takes it's toll.
So I bought a Chinese EV a couple of months ago and couldn't be happier. No more clutching a thousand times a day was a huge QOL improvement.
Even if I go back to ICE, it would be an automatic. I don't drive for fun anymore, I just want to get to where I'm going with the least ammount of effort possible.
Having said that, manuals are harder and I have noticed people are less willing to give up something that took time and effort to learn, so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt.
Fun facts, the new high performance Toyota GR Corolla has a new automatic gear that's proven faster than the manual version.
I really hope similar things happening for programming languages with GC since D language got a lot of flak by making GC as the default.
To rephrase your perplexity, how some people prefer manual memory management is probably one of the mysteries I'll take to grave with myself.
Today, my own car has a manual transmission, which I prefer for the added control. It lets me use different levels of engine braking on downhill stretches (very useful depending on where you live) and manage my speed more precisely in heavy traffic.
In a car I learned manual first and it was a mission, on a bike I learned automatic first and switched to manual from that, and it was much easier.
When my husband and I needed to replace his car (a little manual shitbox, god bless it) I suggested we replace it with an another manual, and I wanted a hot hatch. Proper hot hatch wasn't really in the budget so we got a (luke)warm hatch instead lol. A suzuki swift, manual, which I have delusions of upgrading so I can take it on track days now that it's my daily driver. He's got the CVT gig car for his daily driver now.
Anyway, I highly recommend learning automatic first and learning manual later. It's such a good skill to have anyway. I live in a bushfire prone area so knowing that if I have to evacuate I know I can confidently drive any car I have access to is nice. As long as it's synchromesh lmao
For accelerating, I just use the go-pedal (which I still call the "gas pedal"). It gives me precise gentle control for normal driving around town, especially with passengers, or immediate zoom-zoom when I need it in a traffic situation or just for fun. I don't have to think about gears or any of that.
For slowing down, there two paddles on the steering wheel to select the regen level, just like the paddle shifters on some gas cars. A higher regen level is like a lower gear that gives you more engine braking.
Regen level 0 is like coasting. Level 1 is like being in "drive" with an automatic transmission. 2 and 3 are like downshifting further. There is also "auto-regen" and "i-pedal". I tried them all and found level 2 is my sweet spot.
If I'm going downhill and need to slow down even more, I can either go to level 3 or just use the brake pedal. If I do use the brake pedal, I won't be engaging the friction brakes. It just tells the car to pump energy back into the battery, unless I really mash down for an emergency stop.
For several people this is an important decision.
So some people don't "prefer" manual. It just made sense at the time they bought the car.
Hyundai Kona (the middle package) 22k euros with manual
Hyundai Kona (the middle package) 27k euros with automatic
Main point was that you could not get just automatic transmission on its own. You also had to get the 4WD drive version at the same time.
Until recently, manuals were also more efficient than automatics and had more gears. That was a big factor for performance cars and places with high fuel prices, but is no longer true. Now, automatics are more efficient and usually have more gears, so people who want manuals on new cars just want the additional control or engagement.
There should be more coasting with no gear engaged and low gear low rpm for low loads, than what automatics chose in practice.
But I don't have any data at hand for practical fuel efficiency and modern automatics versus manual.
I think it is accurate enough to think of each revolution as a fixed cost for 'low' or idle power.
At idle power the motor should probably only be engaged when also braking.
a cars' stability is aided by engine braking; if that isn't there it must be accommodated by knowledge of such a fact by the ABS/TCS/VCS systems, or a skilled driver that is expecting it.
A regular car that expects engine braking, thrown into neutral and coasting down the highway is a more fragile handling and car-dynamics situation without these precautions. The Mercedes Glide Mode accommodates this by using the ABS/TCS systems to keep the weight where it needs to be regardless of applied engine torque one way or another; the driver does not experience a differently handling car.
Or is there some effect in the rubber from engine braking that make the front wheel more "prepared"?
Mercedes Glide Mode for example does this automatically to increase MPG (allegedly).
The latest ones do, being integrated with GPS and a terrain database to anticipate changes.
for at least 20+ years now BMW/Porsche/VW also use the onboard IMUs and gyros and wheelspeed sensors to determine whether or not a shift should happen , say, in the middle of a long high speed banking turn.
The method of action is different. An automatic transmission using a torque converter loses more energy in the form of heat than a traditional manual gearbox.
The only gearboxes that have the same efficiency regardless of whether or not they're manually shifted are true automated manual gearboxes like BMW DCT or other such auto-magic boxes that use clutches rather than viscous (liquid) coupling to facilitate gear changes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_converter#Lock-up_torqu...
When I find myself thinking like that I try to come up with generous analogies to try and position myself in a similar mindset. With manual transmission the advantage seems to be fine grained control over the engine at the cost of more complexity and additional work. This fine grained control may be imperceptible or totally unnecessary for some people. However, I run Linux for similar reasons and enjoy tinkering with it. I also tend to prefer tools that target power users at the cost of complexity. So, even if I'm not a gearhead myself, I can easily understand the preference for manual transmission by others.
Damages that would give a manual gearbox 'personality', might make the automatic refuse to engage gear at all.
The accelerator padel in practice also becomes a shift down gear button. So you need to keep your feet at a more specific position of the pedal.
When towing trailers the automatic gear selection is usually bad.
You can't start the engine by rolling it and release the clutch when low on batteries or the starter motor is somewhat broken. I would say this is the biggest drawback of automatics.
On the other hand, automatics are nice in queues.
I hate it compared to automatic. Automatic is so much more comfortable (in my Toyota Hybrid RAV4 at least), driving in yraffic us much easier etc.
I will never buy a manual car again.
Me after I accidentally ended up buying an automatic car for the first time.
One annoying thing with automatic cars here on France is that if you get your driving license on them tout cannot drive a manual without a special extra course (just driving his, no exam).
A driving license done on a manual allows driving both cars.
It’s like cooking your own meal versus going to a restaurant. I enjoy cooking a lot.
This is obviously less relevant in America where you can still buy fast cars without being murdered by taxes.
BTW since current motors ad high speed have heating issues having a REAL mechanical "extra gear" (3 gears actually, one very short for very steep passages and tight parking, a normal one, a high one) might be interesting, but to understand that engineers need to drive EVs. Today they seems not doing so.
It's the same history for p.v. missed integrations: most engineers and decision makers seem not to have p.v. at home, so they do not feel the need and the opportunity of such integration.
It is really silly ye. I think Cintroen did it for their old cvc gearboxes too to match expectations. But I think that people know that EVs sounds different.
So they play fake sounds through the stereo.
https://www.bimmer-tech.net/blog/item/137-bmw-active-sound-d...
You should be able to turn it off if you don't care about vroom-vroom.
but in terms of car-buyer logic the Honda e basically cost SUV-amounts of money, so why not just buy an SUV, which is a much bigger and therefore better car?
Considering the Fiat E was around the same ballpark price and people somehow bought those over 14 years ago, I think there would've been a market simply because there's not much else like it in the US. But that's only my opinion, and even though I just recently got a new boring SUV, I would instabuy a Honda E or equivalent adorable kei EV for my use case.
Or like on this old Mini? https://www.alamy.com/2000-green-rover-mini-cooper-sport-wit...
cars and cyclists aren't mutually exclusive, even if popular media and outlets would have you think otherwise.
> For transporting a piece of furniture around town a cargo bike is the easier choice anyways.
wait, is this satire? if not then your definition of 'town' and 'furniture' are way different than mine -- and I own an electric cargo bike.
Control over the transmission allows me to adjust the torque curve to my liking for the current situation. A direct drive electric motor has no torque curve, so a transmission is pointless.
I wish they would focus more on the things that I enjoy about driving an ICE car that actually apply to an EV - steering feedback and throttle response, for instance. Those are what currently prevent me from daily driving an EV. As an attentive and engaged driver, I feel less safe when I have slower or missing feedback from my controls.
Actually it does, but it's much flatter than that of an ICE. For a brushed DC motor, it's a straight line, from max torque at stall to zero torque at no-load full speed.
The original Tesla roadster had a 2-speed transmission, because the motor didn't have a high enough operating speed range. That worked badly. The jerk at shifting was high, and the transmission wore out. Tesla finally developed a water-cooled motor with more speed range, got rid of the 2-speed, and retrofitted their first cars.[1]
Variable speed electric motors with smooth acceleration are an artifact of smart control. The motor itself is not that well behaved. DC electric traction motors used to have "transition controllers", where the windings were switched from series to parallel. That's what the "throttle notches" on electric locomotives did. Here's a locomotive which works that way, a common Diesel-electric locomotive in India.. This loco is an old Diesel-electric, where the Diesel runs at a governed constant speed and driving is done on the electric side.[2] This is the true electric equivalent of a manual transmission. The big white handle on the left is the transition controller, and the two levers in front of the driver control engine and train brakes. This setup is workable for slow-accelerating trains. Watch the driver work the white handle like a shifter. This takes some training and practice. If you move that lever too fast or incorrectly, fuses will blow or the train will stall. That really is a manual control.
Streetcars, which spend much of their time accelerating or decelerating, had an good electrical "automatic transmission" by the 1930s.[3] That's a large electromechanical device which uses transition switches and resistors to smoothly control acceleration. The driver just has an accelerator pedal, and all that machinery manages the motor torque. That's the power train of a PCC car, the base model San Francisco still uses on Market Street. The controller has speed and pedal position as inputs, so, like an automatic transmission, it's following what the power train is doing. Stomping on the pedal will give you normal full acceleration, and will not hurt the machinery. So this really is an automatic.
Modern electric cars with AC motors have a similar function, created with electronic controls. Older golf carts demonstrate how electric drive lurches without some smarts in the controller.
So that's what the electric motor equivalent of a "shifter" really does.
(I'm really bored this week. Hence these long posts. I'm waiting for a open source project to fix something they broke in a new release, and my main project is stalled on that. They're in denial at the moment.)
[1] https://www.autoblog.com/news/breaking-tesla-has-a-solution-...
The "obvious" option (short of putting a real manual gear box in the drive train?) is it just changes the mapping of accelerator position to acceleration rate so in first gear you accelerate faster than in fifth with the accelerator in the same place? maybe with some other silly gimmicks/limiters to force you to "shift" correctly?
The purely electronic way of having gears is to have a controllable configuration of poles on the engine, for lower gears you have less poles, for more gears you have more poles. But I think you could do something like 2 or 3 gears tops using this
I own a 2023 Nissan Leaf, the max RPM of the motor, and the gearing chosen by the manufacturer limit the top speed (to ~90mph). While it's pretty high, it would occasionally be useful to have a higher speed for momentary maneuvering.