See, I agree with all of this, but in reality:
- Manuals are brutal in traffic
Unless you have a racing clutch or no leg muscles, traffic isn't usually that big a deal unless it drags on for hours (traffic jam creeping along at constantly changing slow speeds). Of course, if you keep stalling constantly, I guess it would
seem brutal to you.
- A huge portion of the population can't drive them (a huge problem if your life depends on your car for whatever reason)
Correction. A huge part of the
US population can't drive them. It's not that way in most of Europe. This is a good thing in the US, however. It means your manual car is less likley to be stolen or car jacked.
- The various DCTs and PDKs and the like are just so good now, they represent a good compromise for most performance oriented drivers because DCTs are just faster shifting and smoother than manuals.
And how many cars have DCTs and PDKs? Less than 5%? The REALITY is MOST cars have CVTs and 6 or 8-speed automatics these days. CVTs are here to stay. The idea that THOSE shift "smoother" than a competent person with a manual transmission is quite literally
laughable. My Turbo 2015 Forester is smoother than old school automatics in "I" and "S" modes (it's downright jerky in S# mode that simulates a normal automatic that revs to red-line), but it's FAR from perfectly smooth and perfectly smooth is what a manual transmission is when you darn near perfectly rev-match your shifts. It's so smooth the passengers literally could not tell you shifted by feeling with their eyes shut. No CVT or traditional automatic is that smooth. CVTs still shift RPM zones based on acceleration and other parameters. They are
not silky smooth when they suddenly shift. A Porsche with a PVK or a Ferrari with a DCT might do a bit better, but those are super cars and damn well
should do better.
- Reality is manuals will be gone, but self driving cars will ultimately be the final answer to the texting/drinking and driving problems.
Manuals will be around as long as there is a market for them. As for self-driving cars, they are not an "answer" to anything but a mindless race of texting zombies that would die the moment the power grid went out for more than a couple of hours. Those of us that actually enjoy driving would never accept a self-driving car run by some computer. Computers are only as good as the programmers and they can be hacked as a certain Jeep Cherokee recently proved. A hacker hacks your self-driving car and suddenly your "Johnny Cab" drives you off a cliff. People who think computers connected to the Internet can't be hacked are living in a dream world. Some of that self-driving technology is not only scary, it's downright fool hearty. We live in a world that is constantly under cyber attacks these days and until a Messiah or alien race FORCES people to behave themselves, it will continue to be the way it is. I have seen evidence younger generations are more likely to be both spoiled and naive and have unnerving social habits that will get them into endless trouble (i.e. joining Facebook is like throwing your Fourth Amendment rights to the wind, as if they haven't already been eroded by hacking and electronic document keeping on an unsecure Internet. Connecting the power grid to the Net in more and more involved ways ia a virtual guarantee of a future disaster. People are always asking if they CAN do something rather than if they SHOULD.
While I respect and share your perception, the reality is you are NOT a better driver/gear changer than the computer car. It's hard to believe, but true.
That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read. An automatic run by a computer is only as smart as the programmer who programmed it. What does "better" mean anyway? When I want to accelerate NOW I can do that in a manual. If I know it needs a downshift, I can immediately do it. My Turbo Forester hesitates. It's not sure how fast I want to go because it only has my foot movement on the accelerator pedal to give it an idea of what I WANT. After all, it's what I want that matters, not what it wants. Most CVTs and the like are programmed for maximum fuel economy. That is not very conducive to a "better" driving experience if you want performance. "Sport" modes are still compromises and no computer is a mind reader to know exactly the level of performance you WANT at a given time. Sequential shifting also takes TIME. I can't immediately get to 2nd gear in manual mode on a CVT. I have to tap-down and it's frustratingly slow. In a stick shift, you simply put it straight into the gear you want and off you go. If you don't get the acceleration you desire, it's YOUR fault. If I don't get the acceleration I desire in that Forester, it's often the computer's fault. And again, I point to the jerky shifting of ALL forms of automatics including CVTs compared to a competent driver in a manual.
Thus, I can only conclude that a computer controlled transmission drives better than YOU could drive. How a car does in a straight line "drag race" at maximum acceleration does not cover real world driving situations.
I'll agree with this. Modern automatics/DCTs are almost always in the right gear at the right time. This is quite evident in all the cars with the ZF 8 speed or a great example of a DCT that is always correct is PDK or BMW DCT.
WTF is a "right" gear??? Maximum fuel economy? That is the ONLY "right" gear I can think of for a computer to consistently pick as it cannot possibly know what level of acceleration you WANT at a given moment as I have indicated above. So how then can it be in the "right gear" ? Perhaps if accelerator pedals were more like fighter jet throttles that are linear from one end to the other it could choose the right gear to get a given acceleration curve, but in reality, that would be a pretty long throw pedal and difficult to gauge by your foot alone.
Really, all I see are "It drives better than me" arguments. I miss my 5-speed every time I drive my Forester. The level of CONTROL is sorely lacking by comparison. And no 6-speeds aren't automatically "better" than 5-speeds. The WRX puts the extra gear between 1st and 2nd, making a 1st gear that is so short it's pointless, yet slower to accelerate skipping it for that leg and requiring an extra shift (time) if you don't skip it. That is why the 2009-2014 5-speed WRX is consistently FASTER to 60mph than the STI variant. It's one less shift. If they had put the extra gear after 5th as an extra overdrive gear, it would have been useful for fuel economy at least. But the way I see so many people just "want" a 6-speed tells me most of them don't have a clue what they're looking for. More is not always better. In fact, if I could get better acceleration curves and fuel economy with 4 gears, I'd take it. Hell, ONE gear would be BEST if you had a linear engine and didn't have to deal with engines flying apart at high revolutions.
