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Comment by Marazan | Hacker News Reader

Without being able to determine future road conditions then automatics can't guarantee being in the "right" gear for the up coming section of road. Be that due to traffic, grading, weather, banking, sharpness of corner etc.

My go to example is the insanity of junction 15 of the m8, that loop onto the west bound motorway is a 270 degree corkscrew rising 30 feet with a diameter of 55 yards onto a 5 lane motorway where I need to go from the left hand lane to the right hand lane (as there are entrance and exit lanes on both the inside and outside of the motorway at that point). A current automatic engine wouldn't know what was the right thing to do in that situation ( https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.8672951,-4.2358853,374m/da... )

To determine all of that you'd basically be at the level of self-driving car. Which would be awesome.

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>> Without being able to determine future road conditions then automatics can't guarantee being in the "right" gear for the up coming section of road. Be that due to traffic, grading, weather, banking, sharpness of corner etc.

Latest Rolls-Royce Wraith does exactly that - it uses the GPS map data to change gears in advance as it is approaching a turn in the road. I am sure that this technology will be available in ordinary cars soon enough.

An augmented version of this technology (applying known map data plus sensor data) is a huge piece of the self-driving car.

Or just buy a Nissan Versa today: http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/five-myths-about-stick-s...

Manuals have better fuel usage then automatics is a myth for recent cars, no fancy self driving needed.

That's based on the official figures. No-one gets the listed MPG ratings in real life and automatics suffer worst than manuals for under-shooting the official mpg rating.

I just purchased a Toyota Yaris. The official figures for the 1.3L engine give 5.7L/100km for manual and 6.3L/100km for the automatic.

Now in a high-end car with a sequential gearbox this is different, but for a small town car when you'll be doing a lot of starts and stops you'll see the losses on the hydraulic coupling.

Your GPS already knows where you want to go, what the road ahead looks like and often even the current traffic situation. I imagine writing some semi-smart software that hooks up that info to the automatic gearbox to give it hints about what to do wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility and no doubt a lot easier than self-driving.

There are cars which already do exactly that: http://www.dvice.com/2013-3-7/new-rolls-royce-looks-ahead-gp...

I'm a die-hard manual fan, so you have my sympathy here. That said, I think current automatic technology is at the point where it can handle your go-to example with no problem. Yes the responsiveness of your base-level Toyota/Honda/Ford automatic transmission is going to be lacking versus a manual, but step up to a Mercedes or BMW double clutch automatic gearbox, or just go straight to the top of the automatic heap with Porsche's PDK transmission, and I think you will find all of them quite performant, even without paddle input.

To preempt the "but you have to own a porsche for that!" responses, I'm not saying this is cheap, I'm just saying it is not limited by the available technology, just cost.

I have a feeling being able to determine immediate near term road conditions is a 1.0 feature for self-driving vehicles?

Waze-style technology + GIS + networking with other vehicles + weather data (if you look, there is already tons of small weather monitoring stations all over major). thoroughfares).

I mean many vehicles within the last handful of years have automatic traction control that can react faster to a real time change in road conditions than any human could ever hope too. A lot of the stuff I mentioned above is just extending that foresight out further so as to not be so jarring.

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