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Automakers can’t quit manual transmissions so they’re cramming fake stuff into EVs
(www.theverge.com)
Here’s a picture of the dash on 2026 Camery EV concept
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I've been driving for years so I gotta critique this concept.
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Where's the right side mirror? That's critically important in being aware of what's on your blind spot or when merging in lanes.
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The turn indicator positions are nonstandard. They should be on the left arm and controlled in an up-down motion, instead of being used to turn on and off the lights. Right now they're on the steering wheel where the horn is, which is confusing.
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There are no instrumentation that isn't musical on the dashboard. I can't tell how fast I'm going, whether my engine speed is normal, or how much gas/charge my vehicle has. Yes, it moos. Yes that's the sound a cow makes but that's not helping me drive the car now is it.
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Why is there a traffic light on my dashboard? Unless it is synced to the traffic grid and shows real time status of the light in front of me it's useless.
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The gear shifter doesn't distinguish between the gears, or anything really. Is my transmission set to drive forward or backwards? This is the difference between going through a drive thru and ordering coffee and literally driving through the coffee shop.
No wonder our children aren't learning how to drive safely if their toys do not reflect real world knowledge of steering wheel equipment.
This is why we need good driving simulators. Like GTA 5.
Not a fan of all of these fake features being added to modern cars. Fake air vents, fake tailpipes, fake engine noise being piped into the cabin, fake transmission shifts, it all seems so pointless and a waste of engineering effort.
Honestly a fan of the idea of EV Conversion, because at least I would be 100% in control of that car and that it would have no unnecessary gimmicks added to the car. (Even better that you don't have to pay any subscription.)
Before I got my EV, all my vehicles were manual transmission vehicles except for one truck. That truck's transmission was such a piece of shit and I had to have it rebuilt 2x while I owned it.
EVs have no transmission (well, I've seen some conversions that do but that's a little different). At first I thought it would be like driving an automatic but it's really not.
In an automatic, the transmission starts pushing you forward as soon as you let off the brake. In a manual and EVs, when you take your foot off the brake, nothing happens.
In an automatic, there's not really a good way to decelerate without pressing on the brake. In a manual you can downshift (I know you can kindof downshift in an automatic but it's really not the same) and in an EV you have the regenerative braking.
Accelerating in an EV is just better than anything because it's just smooth acceleration right to wherever speed you are going to. Manuals can be fun to shift but I would say that EVs are better in this regard. Automatics still shift, they just shift for you and will often do it at the wrong times and can sometimes feel jerky if trying to accelerate quickly.
Really I think some people are just hesitant to adopt something new, especially if they feel like it's being forced upon them as some sort of agenda. I think as they drop in price and more people try them, they will like them. Then there's just the issue of range. I think if someone could get a $20-30k car with 300+mi range, it would be super popular.
In a manual and EVs, when you take your foot off the brake, nothing happens.
That depends on the car's software - my mother's Renault Zoe slowly accelerates to about 5 km/h if you take your foot off the brake.
My Volt and Mach-e also will creep. In the mach-e it's an option, same as 1 pedal driving. The cool thing about EV's is being able to change the behavior with options to suit your preferences.
I had never heard of one pedal driving until you mentioned it here. After reading about it that sounds like a pretty interesting feature. Do you get to use it very often or is it pretty niche?
I think it's really cool feature for two use cases:
- If you're mostly doing freeway cruising
- If you have any mobility issues with your feet or legs
But I tend to drive a lot on streets with stoplights. And after having a couple real rough stops when the lights turned yellow right before my go/no-go line, I turned it back off. I just couldn't get used to the abrupt force of the brakes in that mode. I'm sure you could get used to it though, and I might enable it on the freeway for road trips.
I use it all the time in urban settings with my Chevy Bolt. It will slow to a complete stop and there's a paddle on the steering wheel I can use to engage it if I'm not in one pedal mode, or make the Regen braking more aggressive if I am.
My fiat is the same...they really made the transition from ICE to EV extremely minimal, everything feels/act the same.
The thing that gets me is without gears shifting as you accelerate you don't instinctively know how fast you're actually going...I feel like if you've been driving long enough your brain already has some map built in.. like the back of your brain is keeping track and the car shifted 3 times so you're probably going around x speed. I pull away from a light and can't help punching it a little bit but by the time I let off and look down I'm going 58 in a 35!
I don't want to sound like one of those super EV fan boys and I've only had mine for 3ish months...but once you drive an EV for a while you start to wonder why haven't cars always been like this? It makes so much more sense this way! I learned to drive on a manual and always got my cars with manuals so I do miss the engagement/connection to the driving experience but honestly EV is sooo much better (except down shifting into a turn)
The Taycan has a two speed transmission (for forward gears) but your point still stands for most other EVs.
I saw one recently account starting 35k, with federal rebate making effectively 27.5k and has 260 range. It's getting there at least.
I live in a country where manual transmission is the default. I drive a manual and I'm fine with it. This idea of fake manual transmission is bizarre to me. Who is it for? Car enthusiasts will know it's fake and avoid it and surely your average driver will not care and would actually appreciate the simplicity of automatic transmission.
> I live in a country where manual transmission is the default.
Basically, the world except USA/Canada.
I learnt and drove manual for my first 8 or 9 years, then switched to auto, in the beginning it's quite strange I agree. Then, yes, manufacturer added paddle on the steering wheel or a +/- shifter. I have one and my latest car, never used it, it's always on "D", and as it's an hybrid I'm not sure playing with fake gears will help saving gas.
My biggest pet peeve are auto manufacturers adding fake shifts to CVTs.
Not only it feels and sounds awful, then what's the point of a CVT then? I know "regular" drivers aren't used to it but it's a freaking CVT. That's the whole point.
What about a car with an electrity-powered engine but with an actual manual transmission? Like, just replacing the combuation engine with an electric one...
There's no reason to do that with an electric motor (as far as I know). It would only reduce the efficiency. Maybe it's something that the car enthusiasts could get on board with though?
It's not completely pointless, e.g. the Taycan has a two-speed transmission: One to have ludicrous torque to start rolling, the other to be more efficient at higher RPMs. Most EVs aren't Porsches, though, and Taycans aren't stick-shift.
That's possible. Unnecessary moving parts, but possible.
I hope the fake engine noises are a voice recording of someone going "vrem! vrem!"
Mine just makes the UFO sound and I'm into it.
That's the one feature I'm onboard with for security reasons, but it would be cool if we could gradually switch to new, less annoying noises.
So the return of the crazy frog
The author of this article just seems to fundamentally misunderstand (or deliberately ignore) why people like to drive. Just a lot of, "I don't like it so nobody should."
But isn't the point of the manual transmission to be closer to the machine and integrate yourself into the actual driving experience, as well as perform better in edge use cases where a traditional automatic has little or no advantage over a skilled driver? This is literally the opposite of that, adding an imaginary layer of control and artificial sensory feedback that works against the drivetrain. Driving a manual is an exercise in market inertia and value engineering in Europe, and it's barely more than an enthusiast hobby in the US. I don't see either group wanting to "play pretend" for long.
I like to drive because it gets me places. If you are driving fast for fun, that’s reckless driving. It should only be on a racetrack. People who drive like they are in The Fast and Furious are dicks. People who ride loud motorcycles to draw attention to themselves have mental health issues.
Not all "fun driving" is reckless driving. Endangering other people is never right of course. But the majority of people with car hobbies are very safe drivers.
If driving is not really your interest, that's totally fine. I don't personally see much appeal to it either. But that doesn't mean you should yuck other people's yum.
If (hypothetically) taking a taxi was free, some people would still rather drive the car themselves, even though both things get you to your destination. Some people simply enjoy switching gears on a manual...
Yes and Id like to put in my two cents. I love driving. And it’s been my experience, having owned both manuals and automatics, that it is way more attainable to achieve fun engaging driving experiences safely when I drive manual. It’s far more difficult to attain that safely when driving automatic. The reason is that automatic cars are usually only fun when accelerating, turning at high speeds, or recklessly speeding. Manuals can be fun pretty much no matter what you do. So it’s perfectly reasonable for me to expect to have a good time when driving safely in a manual, and in my experience there is little to no motivation to pull unsafe maneuvers in the name of having fun. Point is there are in fact people who drive for fun who don’t feel the need to drive recklessly.
Given the state of this world, there's better things to do than to add such gimmicks in EV. There's enough energy and matter wasted in useless widgets to at least spare the new generation of such stupidity. I could get behind a new kind of recycled ICE vehicles, operating on captured-carbon fuel and paid at a premium for those who need to love the rumble of a well-tuned engine, but that should stay a fringe hobby.
Time's for a compromise on the length of the fuse is over, we, as a whole, should be focussing on preventing the climate bomb to do too much damages to humans.
Or maybe we should double down, extract and burn even more fuel, produce and discard even more plastic, without forgetting to have it circle five times the Earth before before it hands in the customers' hands: it wouldn't be the first mass extinction and the planet will get through. Us humans, though...
If the goal is to completely phase out ICE vehicles, shouldn't we be welcoming technology like this? Some people are eager to embrace electric vehicles, which is great. Other people are more hesitant for many reasons.
If someone doesn't want to buy an electric car because they'd have to give up a manual transmission (which many people prefer), this technology might change their mind. More people would buy electric cars.
And if you don't really care about having a manual transmission in your car, then you can just ignore this technology altogether and buy a regular EV. Which is exactly why this article comes across so strangely - the author is complaining about tech that doesn't really affect them whatsoever.
It's a big waste of money that could be used to improve the vehicle or reduce costs. Plus you could glue a fidget spinner to the dash for the same functionality.
I'd say that if you really feel like you need a fake stick shift and arcade noises, you'd be better suited with an Xbox.
People simply live on their own bubble and don't try to understand others who may be different.
Humanity is narcissistic.
Ignore the fake stick shift, what the hell happened to Toyota? They used to make reliable, economic, no-bullshit cars. They invented (or popularized) the hybrid.
So Toyota missed the EV trend. We'd all be crazy rich now if we had predicted the rise of Tesla, so I guess this one can be forgiven.
I'm not a car-enthusiast. What I want from a car is less controls and distraction. A stick shift is more work for the driver, but logical. It exists for a reason. You can argue that automatic is a better solution for the problem, but when you learned to drive a manual, it works.
Also, 99% of the time, the stick works the same one any model from any manufacturer. It is expected.
I don't get why people would want such gimmicks. The Toyota fake stick may be extreme and doesn't fit the brand image at all; but many carmakers tend to treat EVs as toys; not real cars...
After 2035, the EU wont aprove new cars with combustion engines. But what about the people that want to drive a stick shift? I actually thought about fake stickshifts in the past. Amazed to see that car manufacturers are actually doing that...
It's not impossible to have gears and stick shift in an EV. Not required, but possible. Some (niche) companies are retrofitting ICE cars with EV motors. The stick shift continues to work and you can drive any gear in a much wider RPM range.
When I got an EV I admit I was put off by the dial replacing the stick. I shopped around trying to avoid it in fact. I did get used to it, but it was off-putting at first. because I'm so used to resting my hand on the gear shift. Tactile things are part of the UX for cars.
Their hybrid’s CVT transmission already doesn’t do upshifts, haven’t for a long time.
So, the question is, why now?
So… cars are toys for grownups?
//astronauts-meme.png//
It's kind of adorable.
that sounds so incredibly stupid, but at the same time I'd want to rent one for a day, as long as it has RWD and I can disable the traction control
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