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Visitors to the upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show will see supercars, hoverboards, self-propelling luggage and all manner of new transportation options.
But they'll be hard pressed to find a clutch pedal or a stick shift. Available in nearly half of new models in the U.S. a decade ago, the manual transmission is going the way of the rumble seat, with stick availability falling to about a quarter this year.
Once standard equipment on all motor vehicles, preferred for its dependability, fuel efficiency and sporty characteristics, the four-on-the-floor is disappearing from major car manufacturers' lineups — and subsequently from the sprawling auto show's floors.
Consider, too, that electric vehicles don't even have a transmission.
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The Disappearing Stick Shift: Less Than 3% of Cars Sold in the U.S. Have Manual Transmissions
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belief, n:
Something you do not believe.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:19AM
Who has money to buy a car in the post Bushbama perpetual recession economy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:32AM
Anecdote is not data but... old and small cars, if any, for workers, big and new for rich people. I'm sure their ultra fat SUV are very useful in their daily tarmac adventures. Even saw one of those Italian cars warm up the engine while the guy was putting the jacket in the back seats... yeah, I was soooooo impressed by the need of his car to vroom vroom for a full minute without moving. /s
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:38AM
Thank RMS. Give your hero Dick "Bathroom" Stall-Man a blowjob through the glory hole. You'll want to swallow, else you might not eat anything at all today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:42AM
I'm rich and I still buy used.
Well I plan too, I'm still driving my 2001 because its only got 55K miles on it (I work from home).
BTW, median US wages hit an all time high this previous quarter. [stlouisfed.org] Things have been looking up for nearly everybody recently.
Trump's gonna crater it. Because it turns out you did have something to lose.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @05:51AM
median US wages
The page says that it includes salaried positions.
When Satya Nadella walks in, the average income of the room goes up sharply.
The income of the 1 Percent may have been going up nicely but Joe Average keeps getting the short end of the stick.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @08:21AM
That's why he wrote "median", not "average".
Basically, line up all Americans from lowest to highest income, and pick the person in the middle. Their income is the median (of American income).
The claim is that that has been rising. Note that the median is not affected by the rich getting richer, nor by the poor getting poorer.
FakeBeldin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @06:53PM
A median makes it easier and quicker to see via a graph on the back of an envelope--without doing any complicated arithmetic:
You have a roomful of guys who make a Blue Collar wage of $50,000.
Their jobs get exported and the new jobs they find pay $30,000.
The graph shows that the median goes down to 60 percent of what it had been.
Now, ONE White Collar guy who is paid[1] $120,000 enters the room.
Inserting that ONE guy DOUBLES the median to $60,000.
Now, make the White Collar guy Satya Nadella whose compensation[1] was $1,692,031. [google.com]
The median now makes a giant jump to ~$846,000.
Suddenly, EVERYONE in the room is rich.
Even calculating a mean is a distortion of the current state of the typical working guy's downward spiral vs the 1 Percent since Dubya's economic crash (due in no small part to Slick Willie and exacerbated by Obama).
[1] Notice that I DIDN'T say that he -earns- that amount.
It appears that you have some schooling and learned a few words but you didn't actually acquire the knowledge.
You should have done the assigned homework.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @09:10PM
Hey --gweg_, you're babbling like an idiot, again.
YOU are the one who didn't actually acquire the knowledge, and should have done the assigned homework -- then you would know the difference between the median and the mean. I don't know what you think the median is, but you're saying "median" and then making statements that aren't true, and wouldn't be true if you had said "mean" either (for any number of blue-collar guys in the room). In both your examples, the median doesn't change at all, and won't change until you've doubled the number of guys in the room. (Unless your "roomful" is one blue-collar guy, then when you add one white-collar guy, the median is the same as the mean, $75k and $861k respectively.)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @10:12AM
Did you just admit to not understanding the definition of median?
As in 50% of the population is below and 50% of the population is above.
Man, you keep showing yourself to be dumber and dumber with every post.
And to believe that I once that you were insightful.
Turns out you are just a loud-mouthed innumerate.
Pretty soon I'll be agreeing with frojack and the mighty buttclench.
ALL BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO INTEGRITY.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday November 18 2016, @09:01AM
Don't we all?
My GT4 is 1996 and 141k Miles. Still does 0-60 in about 4.8 seconds.
Looking after your car isn't hard, it just takes a little time and some knowledge.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @04:37AM
Italian cars usually have smaller oil galleries (warmer climate), and require more of a warm-up before the oil is circulating fully.
The more you know, the less you look like an envious ass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @05:11AM
Yeah, pity that it was in a garage in warm climate place, few Km away from Italy itself... and only happens when someone is looking. Nevermind that modern cars are designed to start moving as soon as possible, or some seconds in the case of diesels.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 18 2016, @05:56AM
Oh, please, explain that to my wife. Her car is never ready to move for at least two or three minutes.
Me? I stick the key in the ignition, turn it, put the car in gear, and immediately raise a cloud of dust. I'm usually slowing down to go through town before the heater begins to blow warm air. Every minute spent polluting the air in the driveway is a minute of wasted fuel. Not to mention, a minute of wasted time!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:47PM
You should really give everything about 15-30 seconds after you start before you beat on the darn thing.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday November 18 2016, @05:21PM
What is it with women like that? WTF are they doing in there anyway? Messing around with their makeup or something?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 18 2016, @06:17PM
My folks have Hispanic neighbors who like to warm them up their vehicles for literally a half-hour in the winter.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday November 18 2016, @02:36AM
Funny thing is.... you're correct. There is a concerning trend with younger people to spend that money instead on cell phones, iTarded's, Internet, and mobile data plans.
Owning and operating a car was for their parents who were slightly less better of than their parents who had real union jobs shortly after a time when Ford's great idea was to make his product affordable to his employees.
That disconnect the Elites have, fueled by their avarice, results in the inability to figure out that we are quickly coming into an age where nobody can afford the products or services from their jobs. All of those living wage jobs were outsourced to people barely surviving in shanty towns, and those same people dragged us down to their levels in our own country (I don't blame them). Ford figured that out, but the wisdom was soon lost and never transferred to any of the other elites.
Cars are the first thing to go, but there will be a time when we cannot even afford an apple anything, including actual apples.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:54AM
When people can't afford, they steal, and then we'll all be living Les Miserables again. Fruit is easy to steal, I accidentally stole some from the grocery store the other day. Regrettably, that was unintentional. Data plans are easy to steal too, you think I paid a telco to post this comment? Nope, and that was intentional.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @04:29AM
torrents, GPL, Google Fiber, DMCA safe harbor
What were your other trigger words?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 18 2016, @05:27AM
That disconnect the Elites have, fueled by their avarice, results in the inability to figure out that we are quickly coming into an age where nobody can afford the products or services from their jobs.
China doesn't have that problem. Maybe you should wonder instead why that particular flavor of "avarice" is a supposedly growing problem in the US, but not in a lot of other places of the world.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday November 18 2016, @05:59AM
China does have that problem, and avarice isn't unique to the U.S.
What are you smoking tonight?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 18 2016, @01:48PM
China does have that problem
Not even close. Where did cars come from in China, if no one in China can afford them? There's plenty of pretty stunning before and after pictures on the internet showing a Chinese world that was devoid of cars 35 or so years ago [businessinsider.com], and has them all over the place [google.com] today. Why are we getting the narrative rather than the reality from you?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday November 19 2016, @12:44AM
I'm not sure what reality you are in. I never actually said people in China couldn't afford the cars. What I said was that there is a progressive trend towards people NOT being able to afford PRODUCTS that they themselves PRODUCE. The car is just an example, and fitting on SN. We like to use cars as analogies, units of measurement, etc. YOU used China as an example with the cars, while my overall point in the original post was far greater in scope.
I don't believe that average Chinese person right now can afford some of the iBullshit they're producing in their factories, and Foxconn is going full-auto and canning all those workers. So when canned, I think their purchasing power will be impacted.
Having been to China, not every Chinese person has a car, and not every city even has them. If you go rural, you can see the poverty first hand. I've been in cities that had 2% cars and 98% bicycles, 90% cars 10% pedestrians, 99.99% mopeds (seriously).
The reason why it hasn't had the same effect as it has on the US in some more developed and civilized countries is that they stood up to the corporations, drew a line in the sand, and said no further. Where you find strong organized labor and Progressive, or Liberal policies, you see workers afforded a living wage. So while I've seen many deride the EU and these more progressive countries, you cannot ignore the prosperity of their workers. For now. They will be dragged down too.
You used China, but I can use Mexico. Plenty of people in Mexican shanty towns next to the U.S border were living in slum conditions while making products for the U.S they could never afford. I can go on with other examples in Asia, and Africa.
You can keep acting like it isn't a trend, but there is an actual saying going around. "I'd love to be the Ands, instead of the Ors". That means that they can pay bill A, or bill B, or bill C, while a person with a living wage (or 200x that) lives with bill A, bill B, bill C, and bill D. This is a problem growing to catastophic proportions since for many it has reached the point where you can't buy all the food you want, or the quality you want, but need to settle for a much smaller window of affordable food. Far less entertainment, less indulgences, and then robbing Peter to pay Paul which is exactly what predatory and avarice filled pay day loan companies love to find and exploit.
Continue sticking your head in the sand about the real conditions of workers world wide, especially in the U.S. I don't blame you, it's pretty scary once you realize the true levels of exploitation in the world, and that Americans are coming towards being the highest levels soon. We've reached, or are within moments of reaching the breaking point in America. What kept us together was hope for the future, but that has been utterly removed from our hearts and replaced with stoicism and determination to fight to death so that we don't lose the last of what we have.
How about ask the tens of thousands of homeless people across California set to go to concentration camps (excuse me FEMA camps) because of their destitution. Then please tell me how it is their fault, how they were deficient in character, few in skills, and low in intelligence. Then further explain how that could possibly be when many of them are older people who worked at HP for 20 years in a skilled field, but are now too old to compete in IT?
As usual, full of shit dude. I can understand that you are probably still doing well, and congrats. But... ummm.... when your "society" you love so much is mostly filled with desperate hungry people crowding around you while you go about your day (like places in India and Africa) will you still be so confident in your knowledge about what is actually going on? Or is that the future you desire in the first place?
Your willful ignorance allows you to be a useful idiot to those in power as a barrier powered by your indifference and lack of empathy.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 19 2016, @01:35AM
I never actually said people in China couldn't afford the cars. What I said was that there is a progressive trend towards people NOT being able to afford PRODUCTS that they themselves PRODUCE.
Like... cars?
So we should be concerned because employees can't afford to pay for industrial scale pumps, new high rises, or multi-billion dollar mergers? Not every demand is small.
Taking any economic scheme, here the demand-driven economy, to an irrational extreme is going to result in travesties of thought.
The reason why it hasn't had the same effect as it has on the US in some more developed and civilized countries is that they stood up to the corporations, drew a line in the sand, and said no further. Where you find strong organized labor and Progressive, or Liberal policies, you see workers afforded a living wage. So while I've seen many deride the EU and these more progressive countries, you cannot ignore the prosperity of their workers. For now. They will be dragged down too.
Cart before the horse. Strong economies allow a society to afford strong, organized labor and such. You can't have those policies and magically get the strong economy. China had the the strong policies, but it didn't get anywhere until it adopted freer and more capitalist policies wholesale.
Continue sticking your head in the sand about the real conditions of workers world wide, especially in the U.S. I don't blame you, it's pretty scary once you realize the true levels of exploitation in the world, and that Americans are coming towards being the highest levels soon. We've reached, or are within moments of reaching the breaking point in America. What kept us together was hope for the future, but that has been utterly removed from our hearts and replaced with stoicism and determination to fight to death so that we don't lose the last of what we have.
Again, this is just delusional. For example, even in the US [pewresearch.org] wages have been increasing since about 1994, which incidentally follows the end of the Japanese miracle. I believe a similar thing will happen when China grows to near parity with US wages. This whole drama has been due to globalization. And those businesses are running out of cheap global labor to exploit.
Notice in my link above that the US wages peaked around 1973 around the time of the first oil crisis and the beginning of Japanese competition in the US auto market. Then there's a long downward trend to 1994, which is after the end of the 1990-1991 recession which was a recession for both the US and Japan. Then there's been steady growth in wages since, despite growing competition from China.
And of course, there's my favorite graph [voxeu.org] (figure 1) which shows over a recent two decade period that two thirds of the world improved their income by 30% or better and the median global income increased by over 60%! You won't find another twenty year period in our past with that kind of global wealth gain.
How about ask the tens of thousands of homeless people across California set to go to concentration camps (excuse me FEMA camps) because of their destitution.
Not happening. Trump is not some magic bogeyman who will do every wicked thing you can dream up. Even if he did have such designs, you're not going along with them, right?
But... ummm.... when your "society" you love so much is mostly filled with desperate hungry people crowding around you while you go about your day (like places in India and Africa) will you still be so confident in your knowledge about what is actually going on?
Yes. My view wouldn't be impaired at all. The world is changing for the better in elimination of poverty and making everyone's lives better. Too bad you can't see that.