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Did you see the new jaguar EV: http://www.jaguarusa.com/all-models/i-pace-concept-car/index...
Or the new Audi EV: http://www.businessinsider.com/audis-electric-vs-tesla-2016-...
Another issue with manual transmission that others have not mentioned is the annoyance as a passenger. I can understand the joy for the driver but as a passenger, I always find it quite annoying in older cars. In fact, I would probably cancel my Lyft/Uber ride if I knew the coming car is a manual.
Where I live manual is the norm, but those I know that did switch to auto all to prefer it. It apparently makes the drudgery of sitting in traffic more bearable. However, as one friend noted, once that fancy automatic gearbox goes legs up(and your car also happens to be out of warranty), the virtues of a manual comes calling again.
I honestly don't see the problem of using a standard transmission in traffic. Once you've learned how to drive with it the whole thing becomes instinct and you don't even consciously notice.
I love driving a manual, but with the rise of CVT, what's the point?
Amusingly subaru simulates gears with their CVT. By default you get 6 "gears", but in sport you get 8.
You can choose to do your road test in an automatic, but that'll earn you a restriction on your license, barring you from driving a manual. It's probably fair, but almost everyone (myself included) chooses to practice in manuals, and do the test in a manual to not have that restriction, which further skews the stats in favor of manuals.
An obligatory part of the road test is so called "eco-driving", where you have to demonstrate your ability to drive efficiently, and one way of doing that is to skip a gear when shifting in certain situtations. It's absolutely insane to force people to learn this, when automatic transmissions are consistently outperforming humans at fuel efficiency. If the traffic authorities really cared about fuel efficiency, they should instead sing the praises of automatic transmissions, but they don't, because they have an irrational love of manuals.
And the final kicker: Road tests are done in official traffic authority cars with double controls, and I did mine in a nice, modern, manual VW Golf, that had a gear-shift indicator in the dash. And since the car is most often better than you at knowing when you should shift gears, why have the manual transmission in the first place? It's a complete farce.
The silver lining is that electric cars will just decide this issue once and for all.
I was looking for a nice AWD hatchback. Subaru cancelled the WRX and STI version. Focus RS sadly goes with a manual only. Seems kind of silly to work so hard on performance/acceleration and then waste time on shifting.
A shifter isn't just for acceleration. It's also for picking which gear you want to be in when anticipating something you're trying to do. When racing you'll know exactly what gear to be in for what section of each corner. You'll have a plan going into the corner, coming out of the corner, and it'll be complicated enough that there's no way an automatic can keep up. Unless you're going for quarter mile times, you'll…
Can't push start the car when the battery dies though.
Manual shifting is neither possible nor even relevant in electric cars or cvt (continuous variable transmission) cars. Their rise will be the true end of the stick shift.
[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1081736_fake-shifting-fo...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/why-you-wont-see-another-... (Sept 2015) "Ferrari has emphatically ruled out offering a manual gearbox in its next generation of vehicles, for one simple reason: performance. Speaking at the Frankfurt motor show this week, stakeholders at Ferrari said the manual transmission had become obsolete in a performance sense because modern dual-clutch transmissions were much faster and effe…
That's a sequential shifter, which is a different beast than an automatic. They've had paddle-driven shifting on their cars for over a decade now which just triggers gear shifts manually. It's not an automatic transmission in the classic sense, there are still gears. Classic automatic transmission systems use a fluid mechanism to transmit power which is where a lot of the power loss comes from.
I'm from Europe and learnt to drive with manual, but after getting used to my Prius' CVT, would never buy a car with manual for daily use. (Besides, my next car won't have an ICE.) If you occasionally like "sporty" driving with manual shifting, modern automatics will paddle-shift quicker than most people with a real stick & clutch. Manual gearbox is just an artifact from ICE's very limited torque curve.