On the contrary, it makes no sense to put automatic transmissions into sports cars.
On public roads, you’re not gonna be able to drive them as fast as they can go anyway.
An automatic transmission may offer better performance, but you have 5x as much of that as you can use already.
What a manual transmission offers is the feeling of being in full control.
It’s simply more fun and engaging to drive.
But apparently, cars aren’t made to offer the best experience possible anymore.
Auto transmissions are now cheaper and anyone can drive them, so the potential market is bigger. And that’s what matters, even up to the Lamborghini price bracket.
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.
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?
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?
Same! I love my auto-standard combo! It’s fun to play with when I want, and not insanely annoying in traffic.
What is “best experience” though? It’s such a subjective thing. For you it might be pushing a lever back and forth. For every one person like you, I bet there are hundreds who’d rather leave that menial task to the car. Manual transmission can quickly stop being “fun and engaging” and become a chore, especially if you drive through traffic regularly.
I, or rather my left leg, personally do not consider manual transmission as a good experience at all. I also think paying much less for fuel is also a very good experience for my wallet. Though of course I don’t drive a Lamborghini or even a nice M4, so there’s that.
They quit offering sticks because they use dual clutch transmissions, which do the job better.
What job, though?
When I’m driving a fun car, I want to actually drive it, not hold the steering wheel and push paddle-shaped buttons that ask a computer to shift for me (if it feels like it).
Because the dual clutch is a lot faster at shifting than the standard manual, and you can put more gears on the dual clutch since you no longer have to deal with a growingly large shift pattern on a stick.
Top tip for dual clutch: You pull the shift lever slightly short of when you want to upshift. Your car will still accelerate while the computer sets up the shift (it has to do or verify the next gear is ready before pulling the trigger on the clutch switchover), and when it shifts, it is so fast the engine even sputters a couple times from the RPMs dropping so fast the timing is momentarily off on one or two ignitions.
All that happens in the span of time it takes for you to kick the clutch to the floor and reach for the stick in a standard manual.
Source: I’ve daily’ed sticks (including my current, and hopefully final gas powered car) and a dual clutch (my previous car). I still prefer the DCT over the stick.
