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Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

latimes.com

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Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#411

Post by agumonkey »

kbart wrote: post #407
agumonkey wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people hate you if you do that. They will pass you angry, just to stop 5m down the road while you get there behind.

Driving well below allowed speed limit is dangerous, especially in high speed and high traffic roads, because a car behind you might be forced to brake, the car behind it brakes harder, next one even more harder creating a chain reaction that might end up in collision when the last driver doesn't have enough time to stop. There's reason why "minimal speed" sign and rule exists.

Sure, but we're talking about city driving near a red light, not breaking flow on high speed roads.

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#412

Post by Reason077 »

beefield wrote: post #279
Reason077 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern manual cars have start/stop technology too. However, it's more convoluted to use. You have to engage the clutch, put the shifter in neutral, and release the clutch again. Compared to automatic where you just have to hold your foot on the brake pedal. Stop/start reduces fuel consumption on test cycles like NEDC for both automatics and manuals, but I'll bet in the real world the benefit is mostly seen with autom…

> Stop/start reduces fuel consumption on test cycles like NEDC I would like to know: 1. How long you need to idle to recharge the electricity to battery you use to restart the engine? 2. Does NEDC and others require that the battery has same state of charge at the end of the cycle as when beginning?

Not really an issue. The energy used to restart the engine is small compared to the fuel savings. An electric starter motor is very efficient compared to a combustion engine at idle.

Stop/start will automatically disable if the battery has a low state of charge.

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#413

Post by chronolitus »

Retric wrote: post #305
datashovel wrote: post #304

I'm in US, and am always struggling to find new cars when I'm ready to buy because of this probably. Just recently I visited a dealership where the sales guy told me flat out "manual transmissions are extremely rare anymore". It may be a diagnose-able issue :) but I was a wreck (literally) when I first started driving because I would lose focus on the road. Manual transmission, it seems to me, gives me a far better "…

Have you tried a car with paddle shifters? There is no clutch, but you still select gears. Now they don't provide every advantage of a manual transmission, but you can for example downshift to avoid excessive breaking.

Don't they provide none of the advantages of an automatic (ease of mind in traffic), and all the disadvantages (less mechanical and power efficiency, etc..)

As far as I know, they're pretty much only useful in racing

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#415

Post by esw »

shash7 wrote: post #346
dcposch wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you don't intend to go racing, a manual is just a bit more interesting and keeps you paying attention the whole trip, in my experience at least. I drive an E36 M3, a car almost 20 years old. It's a musical instrument, and the driving manual is how you play it. Learning to use a clutch is like riding a bike: at first it's frustrating and you stall a lot, but you learn quickly. Once you've mastered it, it's e…

E36 BMWs are a dream to drive in manual. Its a shame they are getting increasingly rare to buy in Melbourne.

The same is true of other older BMWs. I've owned four, and my E30 was still the best.

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#416

Post by aianus »

saiya-jin wrote: post #221
henrikschroder wrote: post #46

I got my driver's license in Sweden, and the official driving handbook completely worships manual transmissions, and makes several untrue claims about how much better they are than automatics. 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 manual…

wow, you are incorrect in almost every statement. I get it, you like easy driving without worrying about clutch and gears, but not everybody is like that. I would never want automatic transmission for my car, it's inferior, expensive, less fun and car has no way knowing details of road situation I am facing and choices I am about to make. And I am far from petrolhead person FYI. Another point - I don't know a single…

You don't have traffic where you live? I like driving manuals too but 45 minutes of stop and go traffic each way would be torture in a manual so I have an automatic.

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#417

Post by Colex »

bane wrote: post #403

Just got back from another trip to Europe where I encountered the slightly odd European preference for manuals. I can kind of see why, the car culture is quite different from the States -- where most cars are two or three generations beyond the kind of automatics most Europeans associate with the transmission type. The inverse is that most European diesels are two or three generations beyond what most Americans assoc…

Having lived in the US, Canada and Europe, I have spent a lot of time driving both manual and automatic transmissions. I would say that the answer "being more in touch with the car" is not far fetched. I enjoy driving, different cars give me a different experience. But I find driving automatic cars very boring, and that's about the only reason (might be a bad reason, but still valid). I can drive both just as well, I never really thought about the fuel efficiency (I have a motorbike for driving around city that will take care of that) nor have I ever heard anyone mentioning that - I have heard that they were more expensive, but I've never tried to buy one in Europe.

Regarding the size of the cars. US cities have been well planned and designed for cars, while a lot of European cities haven't really been planned for cars back then. So, when you live in a city like London, most people will go for a smaller sized car rather than an SUV (or other types of big cars common in the US), otherwise going through those small two-way traffic street and find parking can be annoying. Otherwise, I might not mind as much having a big comfortable automatic car.

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#418

Post by tehabe »

For most people it is not what is better, but what are they used to in daily life. I learned on manual transmission, the care I mostly use has manual transmission and gear up and down because I'm used to do it.

One driving instructor warned us, not to hit the break with the left foot when driving automatic. ;-) (of course this never happened to me)

Eventually I don't really care.

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#419

Post by TeMPOraL »

exclusiv wrote: post #117
zippergz wrote: post #35

I'm a car enthusiast, and I was a manual transmission purist for many, many years. But then I had to be honest with myself, and admit that the VAST majority of my driving is commuting in traffic. And that driving is much less annoying with an automatic. My leisure driving is maybe 5% less fun without a manual, but that's far outweighed by how much better my daily commute is. At this point, I'd only buy a manual for a…

While I agree regarding traffic I think everyone would be way more courteous and the roads would be safer if everyone drove a manual.

Definitely not. Check out any country that is not US for that. Not just Argentina or Brazil, but Europe too. Poland, for example.

(Personally I think everyone would be way more corteous and the roads would be safer if traffic laws were actually enforced. What I mean by that is e.g. ANPRs deployed pretty much everywhere, automatically fining you for speeding. The way most drivers I know treat traffic laws as mere suggestions is ridiculous.)

Re: Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

#420

Post by petercooper »

usrusr wrote: post #270
Tomte wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, for professional racing drivers. The vast majority, certainly >90%, of people who claim to be driving more efficiently manually are simply mistaken. It's mostly observation bias. They recognize those two situations a day where they really have the upper hand. For a second or two. They don't realize that in most other driving situations they don't even come close.

Racing divers would shift exactly like automatic because they need to tease the best possible acceleration out of a given engine configuration. Day to day driving is wildly different from that, there are only very few situations where people come anywhere close to the maximum acceleration their car would offer. With manual transmission, you can attain submaximal acceleration by flooring the throttle in a low gear. Th…

Racing divers would shift exactly like automatic

I'm not going to say "you're wrong" but I think there are plenty of situations where you know or can anticipate what gear you need to tackle a certain scenario, where an auto simply can't know.

For example, a set of 90 degree bends with (very) short straights between them (this is a real scenario where I live and why I've thought about this at length already). In a manual, you might ride the entire set of bends out in a low gear so you get both the most acceleration between bends and not have any gear changes mid-bend so you're ready to accelerate out quickly. An automatic, on the other hand, would be inclined to change up gear between bends and then have to change back down again once you want to accelerate out as it wouldn't really know what was going on.

My car's transmission has a wide variety of options, including a "race" mode, and I usually drive manual instead, because the semi-automatic options seem to be terrible at anticipating anything and coaxing them through throttle alone is an art beyond me.

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