I’ve been driving an automatic since I passed nearly a decade ago. In that time whenever I tell anyone I drive auto, it’s usually met with some level of derision. I think that attitude is changing, but I’m still kind of confused by it in the first place.
Why?
I’ve seen manual Fords with a little trick where it holds the revs at the speed for the next gear up, just for a second or so, to make it easier to get a perfect gear change. However, even then an automatic is far better for maintaining acceleration, and therefore more accelerating more efficiently.
Yes that’s the thing, cars already have ECU’s in them as a standard feature now (along with fly-by-wire in general), so the gearbox control is essentially an additional software function rather than any significant part cost. Electronic control is much less likely to burn out a clutch.
But yeah, the additional weight is what has always made autos perform worse. However in terms of cost, I do feel like automatics might come down and beat manuals eventually, particularly as traditional manual gearboxes become more rare and automatics scale up. In any case, the price a car sells for is almost completely detached from the actual cost - the price is set as high as they can get away with, not as a percentage of parts and labour. In this way, an automatic can easily be more profitable than a traditional manual.
0-60 drag races are not a common use case in daily driving. You gear shift to 2nd before making a 15mph turn. You downshift to 3rd when entering a 25mph zone. You shift to 5th (or whatever your last gear is) as you enter the highway.
Otherwise, you’re rarely touching the clutch or gearbox. Sure, a 0-60 hits all gears and requires 5 shifts to be done smoothly, but that’s rare.
Because I’m a human, and I can see the road… I can see that the ~15mph turn is coming up. So I can be already in 2nd gear before the turn comes up. This is useful for engine braking anyway. Then I’m in the correct gear for the turn, and out of the turn. Hitting the proper gear long-before the automatic (DCT, Wet-clutch, or CVT) would ever know about the turn.
This is not an aggressive turn for racing. Racing would likely require heel-toe, a difficult maneuver as I’ve described above. But for daily driving, just predicting “where the car will be” in 10 seconds and getting the gear shifts done ahead of time is really what you’re doing. If you’ll be in 2nd gear soon, might as well get that over with and shift slightly before its needed (5 seconds or so ahead).
That depends entirely on where you are driving. Come to a T-junction in the middle of the countryside, national speed limit, and you can easily find yourself doing that. Even on a motorway, in heavy crawling traffic, there will come a point where everyone accelerates back up to full speed. Even if you don’t find yourself in these situations, changing from 3rd to 5th (or 6th) has you working through the gearbox.
Many automatics will use engine breaking also. They will downshift through the gears as you brake. And, if you want to select a gear for a specific reason, you can either put it into manual and select the gear (or if you have padals leave it in auto and downshift with those) for either a corner or to prepare for an overtake, then you can complete the maneuver and either mash all the way up or straight back into auto, then it will handle all the acceleration optimally itself. Best of both worlds.
I had one that had a sport button, this also changed the automatic shifting profile. In particular, it wouldn’t shift up a gear until the next gear was above 2000RPM, where the first stage turbo comes in with diesel. So power was always on tap, rather than having to wait for a gear change from a low rev cruise.
It’s not about drag racing or any other type of racing, it’s about efficiency and minimising wear and tear on the equipment. Even the best drivers aren’t perfect every time. An auto isn’t either, but in general it’s closer.
A manual is better than a bad auto, but a good auto is better than any manual.
My point is that if you’re a manual driver and you don’t care about the 0-60 time, then all you gotta do is slow down the clutch release so that the clutch spends… I dunno, half-a-second engaging the engine, rather than quarter-a-second or faster. Slowing down the clutch-release (erm, re-engaging the engine) smooths out the acceleration, is easy on your parts, and barely affects your acceleration times.
Its only a problem in 0-60 drag races when you’re literally trying to beat everyone else off the line. But if you’re just doing day-to-day relaxed driving… just take it easy. Its not like you’re flooring the car anyway.
I personally always like to try to time the RPM decrease such that I can instantly lift off my leg from the pedal as quickly as possible, because I like having a little skill minigame when driving. (Matching RPMs with the speed of my car for smoother shifts, and more instant engagements). But that’s really not necessary.
Just apply the gas after the clutch re-engages to minimize wear/tear. Any slippage you have for RPM-matching with tires will be miniscule if there’s no engine power. I’m over 100k miles on my car, no clutch replaced yet. So I know what I’m doing is gentle driving for the parts.
I mean, my gripe is more about the lack of power on the wheels. It’s less about the time it takes to re-engage the clutch, more the overall time the clutch is disengaged. I want to accelerate briskly (not flooring it) and then cruise at a steady speed, to achieve maximum fuel efficiency. A good automatic handles this very well, and generally makes driving easier and more relaxed. Sure, changing gear manually and getting the clutch right can be fun, but it’s objectively a worse way of doing things.
Dropping 250lbs and removing the torque converter (~2% loss alone) will do more for overall fuel efficiency for your car than anything those automatic transmissions can do.
Yeah, I get that computers + improved automatic modes of transmission control (ex: CVTs or Dual Clutch Transmissions) can improve engagement times. And the removal of the wet-clutch/slushbox of automatic transmissions grossly improves efficiency. But these units are still heavier in practice than a dumb, manual clutch.
I don’t think any automatic transmission beats a manual in efficient driving yet. Because weight is king. Automatics (at least, DCTs and CVTs) are finally reaching the response times of a manual transmission by having more direct connection of accelerator pedal to the engine… but the weight issue, cost-issue are still there.
At least modern transmissions basically never brake down anymore. (CVTs, Dual Clutch, and more are all basically going to last the whole lifetime of a typical car).
That being said, these eCVT designs from Hybrid cars (Prius Prime, Ford Edge) are pretty incredible, and are far superior to anything a manual can do.
But for pure ICE, I’m not quite sure if even the most advanced automatic today can beat me in manual. Its more about how the electric-motor interacts with the system that we finally have a way for computers to beat me. But without an electric motor, I’m reasonably confident that my manual driving is still overall better than an automatic.
Tbf the whole argument is basically moot with electric vehicles taking over.
Agreed. I edited a bit about Hybrids / Electric motors in there while you were typing that response up.
Hybrid Engines really change the game, as do full electrics. I still am convinced that a gearbox is superior by the way (ie: Toyota Prius or Ford Escape designs, as well as Porsche Tycan for a full EV). But electric engines have many more “tricks” available that remove the need of a manual clutch, wet clutch, or other needs of older ICE designs.
ICE still is overall cheaper. But if Hybrid becomes the new standard, then manuals are fully dead. These eCVT / planetary gear system magic is really incredible… and no need for a clutch (or wet-clutch) either.
I personally feel like overpowered EVs will be seen as wasteful, especially because we’ve reached the limitation on how cheap Li-ion can get. Cheaper batteries are possible with future chemistries (Sodium-ion, Silicon+Li-ion , etc. etc.) but not dramatically so. I don’t think it will be possible to scale up mass production of the complex chemical processes needed to convert acid from mountains into Lithium. And recycling of Lithium remains fraught with problems.
Of course, I could be wrong and maybe these problems will be solved soon. But for the near future, assuming the environmental costs of Li-ion remain roughly the same as now, there’s a bigger need to shrink down battery/motors and therefore use gears to handle a wider range of driving speeds.
The cheapest material moving forward will remain steel. Therefore any “steel-based” solution (like a gearbox) will remain the king of overall efficiency and effectiveness of car designs. Copper, Lithium, Cobalt, Silicon, Sodium… many other metals can build up more complex behaviors (EVs), but ugggh. They’re just not as cheap or effective as what steel can do.