The end of the manual transmission is near?

Huge premiums != large market. It just means the market is bigger than their production.

Manual transmissions are not "an order of magnitude less complex and cheaper." They're far more expensive because the volume is much lower and every configuration has to be crash-tested, so the cost of that crash testing is amortized over a much, much smaller number of vehicles.

Manual transmission vehicles get significantly worse mileage and this drags down the fleet emissions which means they need to spend significantly more pushing out low or zero emission vehicles, or can't produce as many SUVs and trucks, where the profit margins are highest.

Porsche and Ferrari don't represent the market as a whole, or any significant portion of it. Both are acquired to a large degree as investments - they often appreciate in value if well-cared for, or at least lose significantly less value compared to the average vehicle.

People are buying manual transmission vehicles because they're rare and likely to appreciate in value more, not because they're better in any sense. They get worse gas mileage, are slower, and less capable. Dual-clutch gearboxes can shift fast enough that the limitation in them is the rotational inertia of the engine, to the point that there's little or no interruption in delivered torque, thus enabling shifts without upsetting the balance of the car. No manual transmission car can be up/down shifted during track in / cornering / trackout without upsetting the car's balance; dual-clutch gearbox cars can be. And lastly, they can have more gears.

Early gearboxes had longevity issues (clutches) but that's largely been sorted out and is no worse than manual transmission cars.

It's unlikely it took you five minutes to get the hang of clutch control and shifting gears. OK, it is possible you managed to avoid kangerooing but only for a small range of circumstances.

From rest (with a gear selected and clutch depressed), you have to unlatch the handbrake, whilst at the same time gradually engage the clutch and deploy power via the throttle pedal. You have to ensure you don't go backwards on a hill nor stall the engine and quite a few other factors. You also have to be aware of what is around you and deal with weather etc. That's the simple description with only a few complications. At home we reverse hill start onto a narrow gravel track that runs at 90 degrees from the concrete parking stand - it is quite tricky! More so in a long wheel base Transit.

I drive two manuals - a car and a large van, and one auto - car, at the moment but I've driven most vehicles from 7.5t down, with or without auto.

An auto feels torque from the engine/wheels/conditions and your fuel input. You can floor the pedal to get going and then reduce power gradually as speed is picked up and eventually you know when the auto changes gear and can influence that accordingly - hard to describe.

In a manual you can see what is ahead and take action accordingly. You don't feel the actual torque but you can tell (with experience) from the engine noise and the feeling of acceleration.

It's all about using your array of sensors - eyes, hands, bum etc. and a shed load of experience. You do not learn that in five minutes and autos are not simply stop/start either.

The government has made it all but illegal to make a car that isn't ugly

Mechanical controls are safety-related - it's harder and more expensive to engineer a crash-safe interior with knobs and such. That's why with modern crash testing you saw a very rapid depreciation of pull-out knobs and the like. It's also harder to manufacture and repair. Electronic controls? You run power and a data bus to the unit, and you're done.

I don't think people understand how much engineering goes into a dash/interior in a passenger car, at least from a company that prioritizes crash safety. Everything is designed to give just the right amount when hit by a body flying around in crash. Even the lower part of the dash is designed to crush just the right amount if you "submarine" in a head-on crash - enough to stop you, but not enough to shatter your knees.

Well given that the current approach is to dump emissions directly into the atmosphere, I'll take the alternative.

Obviously EVs are a suboptimal solution. The real solution to transportation energy use is to switch to walking, biking, and transit as the principle mode of transportation,while switching freight mostly back to rail.

If you could just walk or bike where you wanted to go (ie, land use is good where you live), than these problems become much smaller.