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Comment by thatguy0900 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how you could return to manual transmissions. I feel like once the skill of using it is widely gone its not coming back. It would have to have a huge education campaign with it

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Or transmissions at all. The future is electric and electric motors don’t need gear boxes, they have uniform torque over the entire RPM span.

To get real nitpicky here, a number of EVs still have a multi-gear transmission. It's just 2 gears instead of 6+ though. You don't have to worry about staying in an efficient RPM for electric motors, but the torque multiplication factor of gears is still useful & can be necessary.

> To get real nitpicky here, a number of EVs still have a multi-gear transmission.

The number is like 2 or so innit? Audi and Porsche have a low gear for increased torque. Rimac's Concept One had a two-speed gearbox, but Nevera (formerly C2) dropped it. Formula E cars do have 5 or 6 gears.

> they have uniform torque over the entire RPM span

That's not true, electric motors make peak torque at low RPM and then it drops steadily with increasing RPM.

But yes, it's acceptable enough to allow for single speed transmissions for most road cars.

I mean it takes a couple of hours of practice to learn it, and maybe a week or so to really get comfortable with it. It's not that hard. Millions of people drove manual cars in the past.

Or in the present... I have yet to see an automatic in Europe (granted I haven't been paying that much attention)

I drove an automatic Renault lent to me by an employer around Lyon, France for several weeks in 2005. Manuals are common in Europe, but automatics certainly exist there as well. One of the cars I routinely drive in the US today is a 5 speed manual. I do like manuals. They're a hassle if you need to operate a cell phone while driving, but that's just a bad idea in any case. One wonders if there were more manuals on the road if there would be fewer t-bone wrecks caused by people texting through red lights.

What part of Europe? When I got my license 15 years ago they were a minority, but already not that uncommon in Germany. E.g. a friend from school drove an old Merc with the 4(?) gear automatic. On the other end of the scale [at least to a pupil] the new BMW 645ci owned by another friend's parents also had an automatic (Google says it was a 6 gear automatic, nothing special; I only know it had paddles for manual shifting, but the details are lost on me because for some reason his parents never let us drive the V8). They only became more common since then. These days I mostly associate them with cheaper cars (which isn't a bad thing, just economics) and expect them to vanish into obscurity within the next decade.

Now that a CVT gets better mileage than a stick shift, it’s impossible to make the case for a stick. Plus, EVs don’t even have transmissions, at least not ones that need shifting.

> Now that a CVT gets better mileage than a stick shift, it’s impossible to make the case for a stick

A manual transmission is _far_ easier to rebuild than a CVT or other automatic. They also tend to be more durable, though I expect that is an advantage that has diminished or even reversed.

> Plus, EVs don’t even have transmissions, at least not ones that need shifting.

Most don’t, but some do. It depends on the voltage range; more precisely, it depends on the RPM range, which is directly correlated to input voltage.

In addition, almost all of the “classic” EV conversions I’ve seen maintain either the original transmission or an upgraded replacement with similar functionality. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOx5uCufB2Q

Sure you can make the case! Manuals are more fun. But they've been dying a slow death in the US and are already down to ~1% of new car sales here.

Performance can be handled by an automated manual, economy by a CVT, and the future is EVs. And apparently fun and 1% of the market is not enough to convince automakers to commit to the extra $$ needed for the extra tooling, supply chain complexity, and emissions certification required to offer them as an option.

CVTs are one of those things that are great on paper and suck in reality. Their overall ratio spread winds up being laughable and they traverse through it at a snails pace and the fuel economy isn't great enough to warrant putting up with that.

And my 09 Nissan Altima CVT doesn't make that great of fuel economy. Plenty of manuals/automatics that can do just as good.

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