On the one hand, the article states that enthusiasts have been decrying the death of the manual transmission for twenty years, and on the other "it's all the fault of EVs" (which have been in mass production for only eleven years). It has fuck all to do with EVs (at least in the U. S.), except for making an appealing headline. It's why, when we bought our 2005 Scion xB, we had to order the car to get a manual transmission because they didn't keep them on the lot...because no one was buying manuals in 2004, either.
After driving a dual-clutch automatic transmission, I realized that our Scion will be the last manual transmission car we buy (mainly because the next one will be an EV, like our current first-gen Leaf, but even if we bought ICE...). Oh, I could wax nostalgic about "driver control" and "enjoying the car", but it really boils down to "old man is willing to give up performance while shaking fist at cloud". Hell, I might as well get out and crank start it, and then hop back in so I can manually advance the spark with the steering column lever. You kids don't know "control" until you have the ability to burn a hole in a piston with the flick of a lever! I don't need a computer to decide when to light the fuel/gas mixture!
You seem to have mis-read the article: it is not blaming the death of the manual transmission on EVs, it is connecting a sudden resurgence in the interest in manual transmissions on EVs (so like, the exact opposite).
While manual transmission is fun and has a different feel for driving. From my experience, once your car starts outputting anything above 400hp, having a manual takes away from that power because no matter how good of a driver you might be, you won't beat a dual-clutch automatic shift. It literally happens in milliseconds. By the time you reach for the shifter, you've already wasted power and torque.
I used to think manual was the "only" way for driving fast sport cars until I test drove a Nissan GTR Nismo producing 850hp. The speed between shifts is faster than your eyes can blink (even at low speeds). It's something you can't do justice by describing. The only way to believe it is to try it.
With all that said, I don't quiet see EV manufactures going manual anytime soon since we're still in a transitional period with many challenges and problems to solve before serving a niche market. Plus, most drivers nowadays that are looking to drive a manual car, probably aren't shopping for an EV.
I've driven (daily even) a 600awhp car and didn't feel that way. I'm not trying to beat anyone on shifts, I'm trying to enjoy my car and drive. It's not always a numbers game.
Clutch engagement via pedal is nowhere near instant, and the dual clutch gearboxes (computer controlled) are faster.
Feathering the clutch is mostly useless in everyday driving and performance driving. Likewise, dropping from 6th to 1st. Above 20mph, it's nearly always a mistake to downshift to 1st, and who is going 20mph in 6th?
The only legitimate reason I can see to prefer a 3 pedal gearbox over a DCT is the ability to clutch kick to initiate oversteer, which is purely for drifting.
Mostly 3 pedal cars are useful for a display of mastery, but 99% of drivers fall way short, and don't even realize it, leaving gobs of performance on the table or mismatching revs and introducing undesirable weight transfer.
There is nothing an abacus does better than a calculator, but I don't begrudge abacus aficionados, and abacus mastery is quite impressive.
Source: Porsche Driving Instructor for 5 years with thousands of hours in the passenger seat.
> Porsche Driving Instructor for 5 years with thousands of hours in the passenger seat.
I agree with all your points. I have lots of track experience and training with a range of cars, including Porsche and one of my favorite "no pucker factor" cars, track-modified BRZ. In fact, next year I am hoping to go to Formula 3 training [0].
That said, for street and lots of track driving, I think the manual (stick shift) transmission is simple, brilliant and can be used to develop skills and understanding. The other aspect of these transmissions is that they are simple and inexpensive to maintain and repair. Their next generation computer-controlled dual clutch manuals are fantastic, of course. However, I really think full manuals still have a lot of value.
You might appreciate that I have taken all of my kids through race driving school as a requirement --at least by my standards-- for being safe street drivers. They've spent a good deal of time at both Willow Springs Raceway and the local Porsche Experience Center learning and doing fun things with cars.
Nothing like being on track behind a car driven by your kid, seeing him come out of a 120 mph sweeper sideways (because another driver made a mistake in front of him and he had to react) and then watch him instantly correct the situation to conclude: Yeah, he can drive. It also removed any desire in them to go fast on the street and do stupid things with cars.
> akin to running away from a fight given martial arts training.
Never thought of it that way at all, but, yes, you are right.
I am of the belief that our approach to educating young drivers is nothing short of an accident factory. They actually come out thinking they can drive.
I still remember our last experience with that. They had to do 6 hours with an "instructor" and then complete 50 hours with an adult licensed driver.
The six hour course was, from my perspective, almost a joke. Sure, they get to experience and learn rules of the road in practice and that has value. The problem is that after only six hours with an instructor who, venture a guess, can't really drive, they get dropped on their head to rely on the nearest licensed adult --who also can't drive-- to learn.
One of the first things I have always done when teaching someone to drive is to immediately explore the extremes. That means, at the very least, full throttle acceleration, full-hard braking and rapid lane changes. Dry and wet if conditions allow. Of course, there's a progression to this, but we certainly get there within a couple of hours or less and practice over many days.
I remember a family friend who broke out crying when I told her to press the accelerator all the way and hold it there until I said to release it. To be clear, she was crying before we ran the test...in a minivan. After calming things down, she agree to do it. The reaction was typical "Oh, that wasn't so bad at all". Too many Hollywood movies.
Braking is another one. Most people never brake hard until they have that first accident or near have one. When I show them what full braking means, they are always blown away by how hard a car can brake without disintegrating. When I tell them "brake as hard as you can", they think they are, but they rarely get there. I often have to say something like "really stomp on it this time" after the first attempt. Again, perspective changing in many ways.
And then there's the lane changing. We start slow and progress to "as violently as you can" on dry pavement. This, too, blows people away. Once they have good control I put them in a sports car and repeat the drill. Disbelief describes what they experience.
After that, I try to get them on a racetrack to gain a better understanding of vehicle dynamics and, if a wet skid-pad is available, all the things you can do there.
Over the years several of my small group of (friends and family) students have come back to me to tell me how they were able to avoid having an accident due to one or more of the drills I put them through when they were learning. That's always cool to hear.
Driver training doesn't come close to making safe drivers at all. Not to go too far, this morning, around 3 AM, someone died on the south-bound 5. I was raining. The story so far is that the guy got on the freeway, changed lanes, lost control, slammed into the center divider, bounced off and then crashed into a passing car...killing that driver of that car. Did not need to happen.
Still missing the point. I don't care that it shifts faster, I like driving a manual and do it for my enjoyment. This isn't a numbers game or who can master the clutch. This is a consistent opinion I see and I don't understand it. Let people drive a damn manual and enjoy it for what it is.
Using manual for enjoyment (that you're saying) is different than using for control (as in there's an actual benefit) that GP said. Rick answered precisely that point. There's no benefit to the "control" offered.
Yes, actually, there is benefit. Rick disagreeing, doesn't mean those benefits magically vanish.
The benefit is in the snow, on dirt roads, on windy, twisty paved roads.
The benefit exists on high end, but more so for the average car.
I grew up in Canada, live here, and cut my teeth delivering pizza, on manuals, in any weather. Warm suuny days, or -25C in a snow storm, pizza was delivered. On dirt, pavement, concrete, in freezing rain, pizza was delivered.
You know when you feather a clutch? When trying to ever so gently, get moving on ice or slick snow.
Normal torque of even the weakest car, will have you spinning, digging a hole.
You want to stop fast? On a rural, soft, dirt road? Like when a moose, or deer, appears in front of you?
Many non-porche cars do not have multi-piston breaking systems. Slamming the brakes on, and throwing the car into 1st, has, in a front wheel drive, the effect of you "digging in" to the dirt. Braking distance can drop to 1/5th in such a case.
No you won't destroy the tranny or clutch, for by the time you get it in first, and clutch, your foot floored on the brake has already dropped speed. Not to mention, do you want to burn a little clutch, or smash into a moose?
There are other scenarios too, but urban Californians, driving high end cars, won't run into the same ones.
I have no problem with someone disagreeing, and I agree with the 99% figure, but we aren't discussibg stunts, or track driving here.
I mean, is it common in California, to throw a couple of bags of sand, into the trunk of rear wheel drive cars, so that in the winter you have weight over the rear wheels?
This article should be re-titled as: "Performance cars still come with a stick". Outside of the Ford Mustang, not one vehicle mentioned has any sort of sales volume (relative to other vehicles). The Civic Type R and GR Corolla are being produced in such hilariously small numbers it's basically become a meme.
There's no demand for a stick in any other segment (in the US). Otherwise, we'd see them! They cherry picked a couple examples from Porsche, because the rest of the lineup is overwhelmingly PDK sales.
Cars like the Civic Type R, GR Corolla, and Supra (w/ a manual) are a double edged sword. On one hand, I think they're awesome cars, and I love that they're being offered. On the other hand, the chance to buy them is reserved to very few people. Paying 50k-55k for a Civic sounds absolutely insane to me.
The article misses another reason why demand for EVs might drive demand for ICEVs with manual transmissions: if you're going to convert an ICEV into an EV, it's typically easier to do so with a manual transmission (in which case you can leave the gearbox as-is and just always drive in e.g. 2nd) than with an automatic transmission (in which case you have to either remove/replace the transmission entirely or somehow convince it to not try shifting based on the "engine's" RPM). Newer cars also have a lot more "smarts" in their drivetrains that would probably interfere with an EV conversion, and I'd be unsurprised if buying manual instead of automatic mitigates that somewhat.
Whether people are actually buying new ICEVs and converting them into EVs is doubtful, but if they are, then that would readily explain the uptick in manual purchases.
When you can drive from First Avenue to Fourth on a downtown cross street, with a car 3’ from your rear bumper at the stoplight, without letting the smoke out, only then may you leave the monastery.
I'm surprised but I can understand why young people want to go manual. Change is also part of growing up and become different from their (our) parents.
I always owned manual cars but I drove many miles on automatic cars. In my experience manual is safer on hilly terrains when you either have to feel the car or drive really slowly and hope for the best (but a friend with a new automatic car told me this is changing.) Automatic is great inside cities where you always stop and go. It's a tie on the highway because nothing happens and there is no difference driving 50 miles always in manual 5th gear or in automatic 5th gears. For electric, flooring the pedal at the traffic light, no clutch, full torque is great. I won't add a manual transmission to my future EV, if ever.
> It's a tie on the highway because nothing happens and there is no difference driving 50 miles always in manual 5th gear or in automatic 5th gears.
Except, most automatics are going up past 5th gear. 7, 8, even 10 speed auto's are pretty common. Those higher "highway" gears make a big difference in terms of engine revs (which equals less noise and better MPG).
Uh,???, that is not how it works. The highest gear ration and the lowest gear ratios aren't set by the number of gears.. That is set by an engineer based on expected usage. More gears just allow the car/driver to pick a more efficient gear for a given speed.
Note that the top end gearing is pretty similar between the manual and automatics. There is a larger difference in 1st gear, which implies that the automatics might launch a bit faster, although I'm no expert it might just be compensating for the lack of being able to dump the clutch.
Also, it is possible to build manuals with more gears, it just isn't usually done for weight and ergonomic issues unless your driving something like an 18 wheeler.
What 5 speed manual transmission can do 2k RPM @ 80mph (like an 8-speed auto)? My old civic would be at like 3500 @ 80. I've observed these with my own eyes. How is that "not how it works"?
They don't make a "big" difference. If they made a "big" difference you'd have seen them decades ago. We've had the tech for as long as we've had automatic transmissions. More gears is just more stacked planetary gearsets. If you can build a 2spd you can build an N-speed. But just because you can build it doesn't mean you can justify it. It's only within the last decade that the extra complexity and cost have become a) cheaper b) worth it.
What? These 8-10 speed transmissions absolutely make a huge difference. Just one example I'm familiar with is the Dodge charger. The 2014 model had a 5 speed automatic, and the 2015 had an 8 speed. Otherwise they are exactly the same car. The 8 speed transmission resulted in a 3MPG improvement on the highway from 27MPG to 30MPG. That is a huge improvement for only changing literally one component on the car.
A better comparison would be a 5 speed auto vs an 8 speed auto in the same car (not just similar but differing by year, you don't know what else they changed like maybe ECU mapping).
The problem is that the ECU itself is going to be much better at optimizing the engine load, rpm and gear than someone driving a manual even with a gear shift hint on something like the EPA tests. And AFAIK the epa highway test is more like a boulevard test than a test of efficiency at a constant say 65 MPH, so gear shifting itself will cause a loss that won't be made up by the slightly higher efficiency of the manual itself since locking torq converters/etc. Thats part of the reason why people have been picking automatics, they started getting better EPA ratings, what 20 years ago when they still had roughly the same number of gears, and not long after started posting better 0-60 numbers as well.
Plus, car manufactures frequently do things like change the default tire with a given package (the car you linked as differing gas tanks too). So you get the sporty version and along with the larger engine you get fatter less efficient tires.
What I'm trying to say, is that you can't claim the 3MPG diff on that car is entirely just the number of gears by itself.
"A better comparison would be a 5 speed auto vs an 8 speed auto in the same car (not just similar but differing by year, you don't know what else they changed like maybe ECU mapping)."
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any car that this would be possible to test. I picked the Dodge Charger because it's the closest option we have, and very little changed between those two model years except the transmission.
I participated in forums back in the ~2015 era because I had a Dodge Challenger at that time. And it was quite clear that the 8 speed made a huge improvement in fuel economy in the 2015+ cars. That matches the official EPA tests.
Just based on the usual engine efficiency curves it seems unlikely that 3 extra gears would have an average ~10% efficiency/MPG gain by themselves. For that to happen the engine itself must be falling off a lot more than 10% over a few hundred RPM outside of the efficiency peak. Which seems unlikely, look at this stack overflow question, about half way down where someone posts an efficiency map.
Note that the most efficient curve for a given load is frequently ~1k rpm. Which given the usual gear ratios a 5 speed transmission should be more than capable of keeping it a couple hundred RPM on one side or the other of the actual peak.
Its more likely a long list of optimizations where the most noticeable was the gear count change on a car that probably wasn't particularly optimized to begin with. A good part of it might have been the transmission/torque converter, but even then it had to be a pretty crummy transmission for that large of an improvement. The usual things to look for are drag improvements, weight improvements, tire efficiency, oil/transmission viscosity changes, and an untold number of small transmission and engine tuning changes to the ECUs as well as any number of subtle mechanical changes to the intake and exhaust to ignition system changes. Most of those things aren't going to show up on a white paper at the dealership.
So while the 0W-30 oils and the like have an effect, the tires things as I mentioned is huge on some cars. You can walk around in the truck area of many dealerships and see 10% deltas in MPG on some of the them that are identical except for things like offroad tires and 300Lbs of bed liner.
These 8-10 speed transmissions absolutely make a huge difference. Just one example I'm familiar with is the Dodge charger. The 2014 model had a 5 speed automatic, and the 2015 had an 8 speed. Otherwise they are exactly the same car. The 8 speed transmission resulted in a 3MPG improvement on the highway from 27MPG to 30MPG. That is a huge improvement for only changing literally one component on the car.
Sure it's "only one component" but you 5/3rd'ed the number of moving parts in it. And "it" is a component that frequently limits the effective useful life of the car. I said that tradeoff didn't make sense until the past decade or so. An example of someone in 2015 choosing to pick up ~10% fuel economy in something that was already pushing high 20s is, to put it undeservingly charitably, not an example to the contrary.
"Sure it's "only one component" but you 5/3rd'ed the number of moving parts in it."
The ZF 8 Speed Automatic actually has less moving parts than the ZF 6 speed automatic it replaced.... And the it has proven to be one of the most reliable automatic transmissions produced. The old 4, and 5 speed transmissions are notoriously unreliable.
"They don't make a "big" difference. If they made a "big" difference you'd have seen them decades ago. We've had the tech for as long as we've had automatic transmissions. More gears is just more stacked planetary gearsets."
I guess I just don't understand your argument. Are you saying these new transmissions don't make a difference because they didn't do it earlier?
Even though fuel economy testing proves they clearly do make a difference....
And these new transmissions most certainly are not "just more stacked planetary gearsets". There has been decades of technology and efficiency improvements integrated into these new transmissions. I'm quite certain the transmission control module and shift programming, clutch packs and materials, etc. are different than an old 4 speed transmission.
Well then, mineral extraction woes be damned, I’m for them!
I never learned how to use a car with a missing pedal. For example, how do you tell it to produce adequate power right now (not 3 seconds from now) so you can pull out into busy traffic or overtake?
The irreplaceability of the feel of 3-pedal driving is part of what keeps me from jumping to an EV.
I will eventually give up, but I will be sad about it.
Driving an EV is just not interesting in the same way to me.
I don't enjoy driving on Easy Mode.
After driving a dual-clutch automatic transmission, I realized that our Scion will be the last manual transmission car we buy (mainly because the next one will be an EV, like our current first-gen Leaf, but even if we bought ICE...). Oh, I could wax nostalgic about "driver control" and "enjoying the car", but it really boils down to "old man is willing to give up performance while shaking fist at cloud". Hell, I might as well get out and crank start it, and then hop back in so I can manually advance the spark with the steering column lever. You kids don't know "control" until you have the ability to burn a hole in a piston with the flick of a lever! I don't need a computer to decide when to light the fuel/gas mixture!