481–490 of 729 posts
It is crazy that 95% of all cars sold in India (one of the largest in the world) are stick shift with very less growth in automatic vehicles. One is the perception that automatic vehicles have significantly worse fuel efficiency than stick shift. And the second is that the newer CVT based automatic vehicles have not been introduced in India.. and the older AMT automatic vehicles is what have been half-heartedly used…
Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic: Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic. I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time…
Driving a manual car isn't about efficiency. It is about driver engagement. Yes, you can row your own gears with paddle shifters, but no automatic will ever give you the same kind of engagement or connectedness with the car as a manual with three pedals will. But yes, if there is a smoking gun for the death of the manual in America, it would be our crumbling, congested roads and absurdly long daily commutes.
That's true engagement! My plugin hybrid minivan with an e-cvt knocks the socks off of my old 5-speed Subaru wagon. A Minivan!
(Edit) The reason why is that it takes me about a second to shift gears. A modern automatic can rev up before I'd even move the shifter, let alone before I'd get the clutch back in. An electric car doesn't need the gears at all.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy stick. But the arguments you make are nonsense.
Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic: Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic. I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time…
I just do like the truckers do, leave it in second and crawl. It helps to not be concerned with maintaining a 6 inch gap with the car ahead. I truly believe that stop and go is caused by automatics. All of the brake tapping tends to bunch people up at the end of long lines forcing them to a complete stop. In a manual just let off on the gas a little and the engine brakes a little, no brake lights to create cascading…
If that’s the case then it should eventually be solved by a critical mass of vehicles with adaptive cruise control (assuming they optimize for fuel efficiency and/or smooth acceleration/braking)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best you can do is increase the glide time between stops Do you understand what causes traffic? That harder you brake, the bigger and longer the wave of people braking behind you will be. By braking less hard, you are causing less traffic. And yes, 99% of people driving in traffic are idiots who don't know how to drive or they wouldn't be tailgating and slamming the brakes every 6 feet wasting thousands of hour…
You know what else increases traffic? Merging too soon. A good friend of mine and I have a standing argument about proper behavior when, driving, one encounters a "lane closed ahead" sign. He insists that the right thing to do is to abandon the to-be-closed lane as soon as feasible [tangent: he also gets mad at drivers who want to merge later, describing them as "cutters"], while I maintain that the best way to minim…
If everyone merges early, the cars that could have been in that mile of unused lane, will instead be in the full lane, moving the entire queue backwards a mile, clogging up more exits and onramps, and making the jam worse.
Use all available road, that's what it's there for.
Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic: Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic. I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time…
Driving a manual car isn't about efficiency. It is about driver engagement. Yes, you can row your own gears with paddle shifters, but no automatic will ever give you the same kind of engagement or connectedness with the car as a manual with three pedals will. But yes, if there is a smoking gun for the death of the manual in America, it would be our crumbling, congested roads and absurdly long daily commutes.
Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic: Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic. I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time…
Yes, automatic transmissions have a big advantage in acceleration which is why they're so common in drag racing. The torque converter means there's an "extra low gear" to provide more torque from a standstill, and there's no need to operate a clutch that can take repeated slipping without quickly wearing out --- cars can "slip" the torque converter at full throttle for a moment and launch with the engine already running near the optimal RPM for peak power.
In fact, one of the most popular transmissions in drag racing is a two-speed automatic from the early 50s:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At this point performance cars are no longer truly exploitable on a road legally. Yeah you can do a quick acceleration at the occasional stoplight, but on pretty much no public road are you going to get to a speed that's close to the car's limit. And if you do, it'll be insanely dangerous because even though safety systems are amazing these days, your reaction time isn't any faster than it used to be and the people a…
Acceleration is a lot more fun than velocity for most people. You can experience high acceleration (in all directions) at low speeds in a good nimble sports car, and stay completely within the spirit of the law.
That bums me out, but I get it. My first non hand-me-down car was a beat-up Audi A4 (manual) off craigslist that I loved for years and years as a ski bum. I am definitely one of the many "manual transmissions are more fun" people. But once I got that office job, even 15 minutes a day in city traffic with a manual angered me, so I transitioned to an automatic. Now that I am out of the city I would love a manual again,…
I found that having a stick in traffic was actually easier for me. I could keep it in one gear which meant not moving my foot from brake to gas (I could just use engine breaking and use just the gas).
Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic: Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic. I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time…
Driving a manual car isn't about efficiency. It is about driver engagement. Yes, you can row your own gears with paddle shifters, but no automatic will ever give you the same kind of engagement or connectedness with the car as a manual with three pedals will. But yes, if there is a smoking gun for the death of the manual in America, it would be our crumbling, congested roads and absurdly long daily commutes.
Speak for yourself. I have a manual (actually, I've never driven an automatic, come to think of it), and I couldn't care less about "connectedness with the car". My car is a device that takes me, and sometimes my family, from A to B as safely and conveniently as possible. It's a car, I'm not in a relationship with it.
YMMV.