What a manual transmission offers is the feeling of being in full control.
Being able to maintain a gear selection and being able to directly control the clutch are huge advantages in specific conditions like extreme weather or some off road terrain. A surprise shift during a curve in icy conditions makes me nervous every time for example.
If an automatic system allowed for direct control of gears and the ability to disengage and reingage the clutch on demand it would cover those scenarios.
The company car I get to use has an automatic transmission that drives me mad.
Its shift points are always right above the speeds I usually drive at.
It shifts into third at 40 km/h which is too fast for a speed limit of 30.
It shifts into fourth at 60 which is too fast for a speed limit of 50.
And it shifts into fifth at 80 which is too fast for a speed limit of 70.
So you’re constantly driving with too high rpm’s, burning more fuel and making more noise than you’d have to.
It has a “manual mode” where you can shift by moving the stick up or down. But it doesn’t actually do anything. If you shift at a different point than the automatic would, you just get a “shift denied” message on the dash, even though the rpm’s wouldn’t even get close to being too low.
And when you push the gas pedal just a bit more than half, it shifts down and the engine roars, but it doesn’t actually achieve much cause the car doesn’t have much power.
Internal combustion engines are most fuel-efficient at low rpm’s (<1500) and full throttle, and that’s impossible to do with this transmission. So it only gets 34mpg (7l/100km), and it’s a Diesel hatchback. My old manual car also had a 34mpg rating, but the way I drive I could get 47 (5l/100km), and it had a gasoline engine.
It’s been a while since I regularly used a car, but I remember the automatics my father had having some sort of logic that shifted up when driving at a constant speed, than back down when wanting to accelerate.
Now those where fancy pants Systems (I think they called them 7G-Tronic), but this was also over 10 years ago, and such logic doesn’t strike me as overly complicated, so I’m surprised there’s current cars with static shift speeds.
What’s the torque band? Driving a diesel, it’s really high compression and torque is applied low in the rpm range. Gasoline is a lot lower compression and might be twice the rpm to get the most torque. Outside of that torque band and your using more fuel for less movement.
Every engine is the most efficient at max torque, which for a typical car’s gasoline engine would be around 4500 rpm.
But that “efficiency” means fuel burnt per unit of power. At max torque, the engine makes much more power than you need for normal driving, burning more fuel than necessary.
As a rule of thumb, you get the best real-world fuel economy at full throttle just above the low rpm limit where the engine would run “jerky”.
That’s at 1000-1500rpm for a passenger car’s gasoline engine.
At that rev range, you may only get 40 horsepower out of an engine rated for 100 at max torque, but that’s enough. You only need around 10 to maintain your speed against wind resistance, and you don’t actually lose any time accelerating slowly cause you’re gonna be at the next red light soon, anyway.
For reference, when I’m accelerating from a stop to highway speeds, I’ll shift to 2nd gear as soon as I’ve moved one car length, 3rd at 30km/h, 4th at 40, 5th at 50, flooring the throttle the entire time I’m not shifting. Then I’ll stay in 5th unless I’m forced to brake below ~45 again. Up or down a hill I’ll go one gear lower.
In my Diesel van, I regularly drive 40 in 5th gear.
I can’t make you take my word for it, but this is what I learned in a work-sponsored course for fuel efficient driving, and it got me much better fuel economy than the manufacturer’s claim for any car I drove in the past 20 years.
The systems used in these cars are dual clutch - they always offer (or only have) a manual shift mode, which will hold the gear you’re in until you say when, and only down/upshift if you bang the rev limiter or try to go below minimum RPM.
Can they be put in neutral at high speed and switched back to a gear at speed?
Technically, yes, there is a little automatic like shifter to let you select PRNDS (S or M for manual shift mode), but would you want to do that? nope.
My bigger q is, why are you doing a clutch kick in a supercar that will probably break if you try that? Most Lambos are 4WD, and 4WD cars will break stuff if you go for a clutch kick.
EVs don’t do any shifting and usually have a low center of gravity, even better for suspect road conditions!
I thought I would never possibly want an EV, but the acceleration of the Teslas is impressive enough to tempt me. The guy I know who has one accelerates hard enough to push me back into my seat during city driving. As in, he’s stopped at a red light and then he’s going 30 the moment it turns green. His Tesla goes from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, as opposed to over 6 in my '08 328i. The M series BMWs can match a Tesla’s acceleration, but the BMWs cost a lot more.
I mean, I’m still not getting an EV. But now I am tempted… Maybe if they had real, physical dials instead of a computer screen?
I mean, I’m still not getting an EV. But now I am tempted… Maybe if they had real, physical dials instead of a computer screen?
That, unfortunately, is the tendency for the entire auto industry. It’s not an EV-specific thing, although admittedly Tesla is the worst offender
If the 5th gen Subaru Impreza came as an EV, I would be fine with that. Two analog gauges, a digital display for the fuel, gear and mileage, and another digital lcd for the clock and range. That’s literally it on the gas car. All I need on an EV. Replace RPM with Amperage and I’d be fine.
Same! I love my auto-standard combo! It’s fun to play with when I want, and not insanely annoying in traffic.
One of my cars (the only one that isn’t a real manual) has a “sport mode” manual upshift/downshift on its automatic transmission, and it’s FUCKING INFURIATING because there’s this huge almost-a-full-second lag between when you tell it to shift and when it finally gets around to doing it.
I would trade it for a manual transmission – even in stop-and-go Atlanta rush-hour traffic! – in a heartbeat if I could.
