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EVs are now outselling manual transmissions in the US
The manual transmission continues to have a pretty tough time here in America, with buyers avoiding manual-transmission cars in record numbers. Such record numbers that now EV sales have surpassed sales of vehicles with manual transmissions, according to data from J.D. Power and reported recently by Driving.ca.
Why is that important? Well, the venerable stick shift has been around since someone decided that cars needed more than one gear. While its previous popularity has been eclipsed by the automatic transmission for decades, the manual transmission has managed to hang on.
According to J.D. Power, manual transmissions have approximately 1.1% market penetration in America, which for many enthusiasts is a fairly grim figure to see. Comparatively, electric vehicles -- which have really only been commercially available to the public for the last decade or so -- now represent 1.9% of car sales in the US.
A big chunk of the reason for this likely lies in good old-fashioned availability. The manual transmission used to be the cheap transmission of choice. It was what you got when you were buying a small, affordable car and didn't want to shell out several thousand dollars for an automatic.
Now, most of those same small, affordable cars are only sold as automatics. The manual transmission was also traditionally the way you'd go if you wanted to buy a high-performance car because old automatics were often slow to shift and shifted at the wrong time. That's also changed, with many of the most high-performing models from companies offered with either paddle-shifted dual-clutch transmissions or performance-tuned automatics.
It was only a matter of time as fewer and fewer cars with manual transmissions are being manufactured at the same time as more and more electric vehicles are being built. Who here saw this coming so soon?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 09 2019, @11:33PM
Admittedly I'm firmly clamped onto the back porch of technology. Dual-clutch trans... oh wow, that's pretty cool. Here's an interesting one: https://www.magna.com/products/power-vision/product/dual-clutch-transmissions [magna.com] Wonder how much they cost...
So yeah, I still don't know the answer, but a clutch pedal with some kind of spring for feel, and a sensor (potentiometer) and the PCM could actuate the clutches for you. It looks like the concept is that you're shifting, or pre-selecting the next gear, then hit the clutch and you switch to the other clutch which drives that gear, with very minimal decouple time.
Hmmm... too new to me, so I'll have to study more, but I've occasionally gone from like 2 to 4, and with the DCT, one would have to decouple the even-gear clutch, shift, and re-engage the same clutch. So you lose the advantage of the minimal decouple time the DCT gives you. Gotta think some more when more awake...
Automatics have come such a long way. 7-speed is not uncommon. The gas mileage is usually higher with automatics these days. I'd have a stick for a fun car (well, I have one but who knows if I'll ever get it on the road...)