Hacker News Reader

Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

>A manual transmission does have one upside.

It has many, many upsides. With the only true downside being the skill needed to operate.

Manual transmissions aren't going anywhere. Yes, the latest greatest $35,000 car that average Americans are buying will always be an automatic. But for trucks and cheaper cars they will always be the best choice.

View on HN

I generally prefer manual for on-road driving but auto is a far better choice for 4wd technical trails and rock crawling. Trust me when I say you don't want to stall when navigating a tricky obstacle while hanging off the edge of a cliff.

I'm somewhat sure that unsychronized 12+ gear truck manuals and float shifting are somewhat of an Americanism, because Eurotrucks seem to basically all use automated manuals (AMTs).

> only true downside

Its main downside is an additional cognitive load that it imposes. You need to do one more unnecessary thing to drive your car.

I think there are only one or two models of consumer pickup trucks left in the US that still offer manual transmission.

There's basically nothing left but automatic anywhere on the market here :(

As far as I can tell, the manual is no longer the cheap option in the US. I assume that's because it uses exotic equipment put into thousands of cars rather than the standard stuff put into millions of cars:

Fewer manual cars produced => lower scale efficiencies => higher delivered costs

It could also reflect the willingness of enthusiasts to pay more for a manual transmission (or to avoid the automatic).

BTW, the average new car price is nearly $50k. RIP to the $35k latest/greatest.

My experience in 2013 was manuals were bottom of the heap, bare bones cars and sport cars, nothing else in the sort of stuff I was looking at. I suspect the latter is what's driving up the cost.

The last time I bought a car was in 2012, and I had to wait for a manual to arrive on the lot. I haven't looked, so I don't know whether they're more readily available nowadays. I hear there's been a lot of change in dealer inventory in the last decade.

> Manual transmissions aren't going anywhere.

I have not come across any manual EVs

>I have not come across any manual EVs

ICE vehicles aren't going anywhere, either. It will still be decades before we are even at 50/50 in the US.

Requiring more skill to drive is not necessarily a bad thing.

This is like assuming that being able to program the VCR will make you a great software developer.

It's a start!

You are living in an absolute dreamworld. I give manual transmission 15 years tops.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com