(no subject)

[randomness]

Alas, as many of you have observed, I made a mistake on the poll I just posted and must repost the poll question. (LiveJournal does not allow polls to be edited.)

We apologize for the inconvenience.

[Poll #1521474]

Comments

[jtdiii.livejournal.com]

Manuals no longer have any edge in gas mileage. New cars are better at shifting than people. All but maybe 1% or less of the population.

It may have uses for off roading, but how often do people really do that?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

You may be confronted with a car that has a manual transmission at some point, either because someone has a car to lend or to rent.

[jtdiii.livejournal.com]

I learned to drive standard on a farm tractor. I can do it in a pinch with the occasional stall.

I drive enough bumper to bumper traffic that a manual would be a major.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Sure. I was just coming up with a reason why one might want to know how to drive a car with a manual transmission.

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

yes.. yes it is. ugh.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Also, I disagree that new cars are better than shifting than people in the case of rocking a car out of an ice-covered space. Unless there is a new car that has a "get me out of slippery space" mode.

[ayrshire-of-elm.livejournal.com]

OMG, I just rocked my manual out of the icy ditch @ the end of my driveway an hour ago. So I'd have to agree. And my old ('98) manual got me 37mpg highway, which beats my roommate's 2008 cobalt any day of the week. New Car? Not good mileage in the week that I've had it and I facepalmed at the pump. Maybe when the snow goes away!

[totient]

Manuals no longer have any edge in gas mileage

http://www.fueleconomy.gov tracks manual and automatic separately, and says that for gasoline engine cars, actually they do. Manual transmission cars also typically get a few more horsepower delivered to the wheels, because an automatic transmission will not come closer than about 500 rpm to the redline no matter how far the driver presses the pedal.

[jtdiii.livejournal.com]

Yes and these are the same studies that regularly have MPG readings 10-20% better than experienced by real drivers. If the test vehicles leave the smooth track and get into real world conditions the difference is minor and if you deal with stop and go city traffic, the manual soon loses any efficiency gains it might have on shifting.

[totient]

Most (*) cars that have both manual and automatic options have more gears and a higher top gear ratio available on the manual than on the automatic. Both of these things cause the car to get better gas mileage. It's not about the torque converter.

[totient]

(*) Most measured by number of cars sold, not by number of models; many models of luxury and sports car offer 6 speeds for both the manual and the automatic but there aren't a lot of these cars on the road.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

New cars do seem to be better at shifting than people, yes, but that's with the relatively few gears you get on a passenger car. On an 18-wheeler with some form of semi-automatic transmission a good driver can still get WAY better gas mileage from shifting well than drivers who don't know what they're doing. Which is useless to the rest of us... but it's how my dad has the best fuel efficiency numbers in his company. (And he's a total nerd about it too. :) )

[milktree.livejournal.com]

I hate hate hate automatic transmissions. I wouldn't own one unless it was absolutely necessary.

I have yet to drive an automatic transmission car that didn't annoy me because it failed to shift at the "right place". The best I've driven only annoyed me a little bit.

By "right", I mean one that lets me control what the car does. I'm pretty sure I'm doing it "right" because I still get better mileage in my 16 year old car with 1/4 million miles on it than Honda claimed it could when it was new. And as palmwiz can (hopefully) confirm, I'm pretty good at pushing it in the "performance" arena too. Which is to say, I'm pretty confident I know what I'm doing, and the automatic transmission doesn't.


However, I've never driven a CVT or true auto-shift manual transmission car like an F1 car that actually has a true non-viscous clutch and a computer to hydraulically control it.