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The end of the manual transmission is near?

popularmechanics.com

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Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#571
post #359
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Switzerland, most instructor cars are Diesels, since they have higher torque and are very hard to stall. Then you go home and drive your parent's petrol engine car and you stall it all the time

This is a really interesting comment for me. I’m a mechanical/aerospace engineer, I size motors by their stall torque all the time, I’ve owned/driven many manual cars over the last 25 years, I’ve done a few clutch jobs in cars, including upgrading a sports car (so I learned about and experienced some of the parameters that make a performant clutch perform). I’ve even had to replace a magnetic clutch on an industrial lathe when I did an automation upgrade on it and it exposed the fact that the clutch was worn beyond its spec - before it was manually operated and the operators just compensated for the wear over time although I forget how. Yet I’ve never put 2+2 together and thought about the torque in a car when starting out and how that relates to how easy/hard it is to stall a particular car.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#572
post #569

To me a manual is all about engine braking. You just have to use the brake pedal less. I haven't driven an electric vehicle before, but I imagine they could deliver a similar experience if the regeneration was suitably programmed? Can an EV driver comment on whether they offer a similar engine braking experience to a manual?

Aren't all hybrids and EVs doing regenerative breaking when you are pressing on the breaking pedal?

To answer your question, Tesla by default starts breaking a little bit when you take your foot off the accelerator pedal, as if you were driving in a slightly lower gear. This behavior is configurable in settings.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#573
post #569

To me a manual is all about engine braking. You just have to use the brake pedal less. I haven't driven an electric vehicle before, but I imagine they could deliver a similar experience if the regeneration was suitably programmed? Can an EV driver comment on whether they offer a similar engine braking experience to a manual?

I hardly ever use the break on my Tesla. You just take your foot off and it goes to the speed you want.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#574
The end is near just because of EVs, most users do not care about real efficiency of manual vs automatic or kind of automatic gears, they just choose because of habits with a cloying trend to see only the good parts of their favorite choice.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#575
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I add a request? A car that doesn't phone home. That is, one that the government is utterly unable to remotely turn off, monitor, or impose distance quotas. One that cannot be hacked through a poorly secured server in a car maker's server farm or government server with the username/pass admin/admin.

Forget about the government, I’m more afraid of insurance companies or the manufacturers themselves imposing such limits. Fortunately shielding against one shields against both.

exactly. I like how its the government thats always the boogieman despite Tesla and BMW already and clearly abusing thier ability to control a car remotely. Corporates have clear motivation to control you and squeese you.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#576
post #558
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They serve as a signalling mechanism all right; they signal that their owner has no taste, and doesn't care.

Just like every generation’s thinks the next generations music sucks, this reaction is intended. Fashion is about signaling not whatever you happen to agree with.

how is signaling different from "whatever you happen to agree with"?

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#577
I love stick-shift. I have never owned anything else in 52 years.

I once drove my brand-new Mazda B3000 4WD to another city, on Christmas Eve. The dealer had helpfully washed my new truck before I drove it away. Some water had seeped and my starter was frozen solid. Fortunately a couple of hearty passers-by pushed it so I could kick-start it. If it had been an automatic, I would have spent Christmas hundreds of kilometers from home & family.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#578

I reiterate my compromise proposal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32397975 I will give up my manual transmission, if you will bring back pull-knobs, twist knobs and other tactile switches for the main controls of my vehicle, with the appropriate tactile feedback at set points so I can set them without looking. After thinking on it, I am going to raise my demands, however: you also need to produce cars that are…

Yeah, this is a completely valid complaint. How in the world did automakers manage to get vehicles on the market that require you to look away from your 70 mph trajectory on a highway to visually confirm that you clicked "OK" instead of "Cancel"? Major safety design failures. You know it the first time you encounter it.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#579
post #569

To me a manual is all about engine braking. You just have to use the brake pedal less. I haven't driven an electric vehicle before, but I imagine they could deliver a similar experience if the regeneration was suitably programmed? Can an EV driver comment on whether they offer a similar engine braking experience to a manual?

Most EVs have one pedal mode: lift your foot off the accelerator and the car rapidly decelerates to a stop using regenerative breaking.

My BMW has a neat adaptive driving mode: because the motors don’t use permanent magnets, lifting off would normally result in coasting. When adaptive driving is on, the car uses its radar to figure out how much regeneration (and if necessary friction) braking to apply so you stop just short of the car in front of you, all without applying the brake. The same system is also used to dampen acceleration when there are cars in front of you. It sounds like madness, and is very strange the first few times you use it, but ends up making driving more pleasant.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#580
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove a manual for about 20 years and I still really enjoy them, but there is one thing that made me happily leave them behind: stop-and-go traffic. Not having to clutch constantly when driving in the city is a big enough win that I'm willing to give up the fun of a manual for it. But I do sometimes miss having a stick on a windy mountain road.

And don't forget leaving from a stop uphill.

I got manual transmission in my alfa romeo and it behaves the same as automatic regarding uphill start.
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