[HN Gopher] The stick shift might survive the electric revolution
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The stick shift might survive the electric revolution
Author : rntn
Score : 24 points
Date : 2022-11-18 22:02 UTC (57 minutes ago)
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| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I love driving stick and I've done so with all my cars...but I'm
| okay seeing it go. I'd prefer the options to be more
| environmental, and there are other joys in life. It's not good to
| be attached to such things.
| fhood wrote:
| It's really stupid, but you can't tell me that the idea of a
| manual electric doesn't appeal to the less rational parts of
| your subconscious.
| hinkley wrote:
| I haven't driven stick in years, having bought a DSG car, but I
| still prefer 'driving one-handed' the way you do with a stick
| shift, and it's clear at this point that some people don't
| remember being passengers in a manual transmission vehicle, let
| alone driving them.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I recently switched from 10 years of driving stick/standard to
| an EV and the sensation of instant power dwarfs the fun of
| selecting gear for me. I might just still be in the honeymoon
| phase, and I barely drive preferring to bike around everywhere
| instead. But having ample power in every situation from highway
| acceleration to hill roads pretty much obsoletes everything I
| used the stick for. I guess I do miss the habit of clutching
| and heel-toeing but with an EV I get all the benefits with none
| of the fiddliness. This was not the case when driving anything
| but the top automatics.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| Seems like a nicely balanced perspective. I don't drive much,
| but when I do, I much prefer 'manual' (translation of 'stick'
| to non-US English), and take pleasure in smooth heel-and-toe
| changes. I'm mostly a motorcyclist and similarly enjoy getting
| better at smooth braking with changing down and rev-matching.
|
| But if electric motorbikes become usable and affordable to me
| within my lifetime, they will offer different pleasures
| (ubiquitous torque, quiet). And outside of driving/riding,
| there will be enough pleasures to experience and skills to
| learn for many lifetimes.
| quantified wrote:
| I have always seemed to get better mileage out of a stick than a
| CV or automatic and definitely performance that matches my
| desires, like engine braking on a downhill. But it really only
| pertains to a combustion engine. A stick on a EV seems like a
| rotary dial on my smart phone.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| There is absolutely a good reason for transmissions in an
| electric vehicle, it's just that most EVs elect to remove them
| for simplicity instead.
|
| I will leave the interpretation of this graph as an exercise
| for the reader.
|
| https://i.stack.imgur.com/HRUva.gif
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Manual transmissions are more efficient than automatic because
| there is more energy lost to unproductive sloshing in the
| torque converter in the automatic, whereas the manual has a
| clutch that makes a near-lossless linkage. Nowadays, I'm sure
| we could software-automate a mechanically manual transmission
| to have the same driver experience as an automatic...
| bbarnett wrote:
| But was the rotary ever fun to use?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| My grandparents had a rotary phone and I always thought it
| was fun/neat to play around with (they'd unplug it first,
| obviously). I was about 8 years old when they got rid of it
| so no idea if it's still "fun" to an adult.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I can very much see it as fun, when it is unusual.
|
| It isn't fun as a daily driver.
| dottedmag wrote:
| It definitely was.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Try saying that when using it in real life, making many
| calls daily, with an exchange such as 908-.
|
| Then, the tone dialer appears.
|
| I was not interested in interacting with my telephone. I
| just wanted it to place calls.
| chinabot wrote:
| Its basically petrol heads who prefer manual transmissions, I
| doubt any of them have economy in mind, I have a manual
| transmission on my hilux EV conversion unless I'm going uphill
| or have a big load it stays in 3rd from start to finish
| nimbius wrote:
| as a heavy diesel mechanic the only application i can see is
| heavy trucks. current slushbox automatics in the latest series of
| long hauler over the road rigs is absolutely useless on grade and
| costs triple to replace and service compared to existing manuals.
| you dont want an unprovoked shift in the rain or snow when youre
| dragging forty tons.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even those can likely be replaced with hybrids, after all a
| locomotive pulls a lot more (900,000 tons of steel according to
| the poet, but I think he's off a bit) and you can't build a
| transmission for that.
| Animats wrote:
| Well, you can, but the history of locomotives with gearshifts
| is not a happy one. British Rail in the 1950s had a Diesel
| road locomotive (not just a railcar) with a manual
| transmission. The shifting was powered, but not automatic.
| Hitachi has built some switching locomotives with geared
| transmissions and a really big 12-plate clutch.
|
| But no, you don't want to do that.
| nimbius wrote:
| i think youre right and i think the market will adjust, but
| the current application is just trying to take what works on
| local and regional beer haulers and ups vans and scale it up.
| very myopic and leads to a lot of frustration when logistics
| companies realize their drivers arent qualified to leave the
| state with bigger loads because they never learned stick
| Clent wrote:
| I think this is why is would take off in trunks; probably
| anything that hauls.
|
| As the article states in the article, there is no engine to
| stall. This is more like vehicles with D, D1, D2. It's
| optional efficiency.
|
| For an electric vehicle, switching between them doesn't
| stall the vehicle, but it could be used to increase
| distance between charges.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I'm a big fan of manual transmissions, but if it adds more things
| that need adjusting and that can break on an EV, I wouldn't want
| one on my next (electric) car.
| jmcphers wrote:
| This went in a different direction than I'd guessed. As someone
| who still drives a manual transmission car in the US, my guess is
| that non-electric cars will eventually be a category for
| enthusiasts.
|
| Those for whom a car is an appliance will gravitate towards
| increasingly cheap, subsidized, low-maintenance electrics, but
| there will probably always be a market for gas models for those
| who can afford them, and my guess is those will increasingly
| feature stick shifts since they're targeted at the enthusiast
| crowd.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I taught a 16-year-old (not my son) to drive a stick. It was
| easy. I checked online and there's a place that will teach you
| the basics for $295. I'd do it for half. There's not much demand
| for that, unfortunately.
|
| The biggest magic tricks to teaching were (1) teaching him to
| _think_ about gear changes before actually doing them, and (2)
| being relaxed about mistakes.
|
| For (1) I would drive, and have _him_ tell me when to shift. This
| gets over the intellectual hurdle of coordinating engine speed
| with road speed.
|
| For (2), I just said, "OK, you're _going_ to stall the car, and
| you 're _going_ to grind the gears. Everybody does. It 's no big
| deal. Here, watch, I'll do it." Then I'd stall & grind the gears,
| show him to get out of the grinding, and laugh about it. I think
| anxiety is the biggest problem.
|
| I'm sure if it's your own son or daughter, it gets more
| complicated :)
| convolvatron wrote:
| don't forget the first time you have to start on a hill. or
| brake. first time I had to brake hard I forgot to put in the
| clutch and that was the whole front end.
| sprior wrote:
| Correct me I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that EV's
| like Tesla don't really have a transmission as in gears to
| change, so as much as I'm a diehard manual transmission fan I
| figured that was where it ends. Now a clutch pedal that simply
| allows the vehicle to coast with regenerative breaking disabled
| sounds like the best compromise to me.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| if your only use case is to disengage the regen braking you
| should probably just have a regen braking disable function, a
| clutch is an awfully complicated way to achieve that. You could
| literally have a software 'clutch' pedal that did nothing other
| than disable the regen if that was your goal.
|
| Although on the other hand the clutch does have a nice
| property, which is that it works regardless of the state of the
| control system of the vehicle. If my MCU decides it wants to
| accelerate me at 500 mph into a wall a hardware clutch would be
| a nice thing to have!
|
| W.r.t gearboxes in EVs: there is definitely a reason to have a
| transmission in an EV, it's just that most manufacturers don't
| include one for simplicity .
|
| https://i.stack.imgur.com/HRUva.gif
| NegativeK wrote:
| You're correct; Teslas (and most EVs) have a gear reduction but
| no ability to change any gears, since they don't really need
| to. Coasting comes by feathering the accelerator, similar to
| how you can slowly decelerate in a manual transmission.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsa-SxpiCU0 has Ken Block
| talking about how different driving a high performance EV is,
| though, since you have full wheel speed range without shifting.
| On one hand, you don't need to work a clutch to keep turbos
| spooled up; on the other, you have to be much more precise
| because you can't let the clutch slip for additional control.
|
| In consumer EVs, though, the car won't really let your wheels
| slip.
| hinkley wrote:
| If memory serves from the test drives, the new Hyundai/Kia
| electric vehicles (built on a common platform) have paddle
| shifters that only manage regenerative braking, similar to how
| you would use engine braking.
|
| One of the subtler features of my DSG vehicle is that on most
| downhills it will automatically downshift to maintain speed. On
| a really steep hill it will start to race, but feathering the
| brake for 5-10 seconds will convince it to downshift once more.
| I haven't driven it in the mountains hardly ever, but that's
| one area where manuals often win out - no melted brake pads, no
| heat-warped calipers.
|
| In fact I put way more miles on the first set of brake shoes on
| this car than I would have dreamed possible, to the point I
| started having mechanics check their records to make sure we
| didn't change them while it was in for something else.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Like a record player, if there's demand, it'll get built.
| gtvwill wrote:
| I just wanna see racing ev's with straight cut dog boxes.
|
| Audio Volume Warning. Turn sound way down.
|
| https://youtu.be/dmJH84FnQa8
| seqastian wrote:
| Will be pricey though.
| zwieback wrote:
| For a long time there was a perception that Europeans are real
| drivers with their stick shifts and
|
| _" didn't everyone in the world think that American people were
| babies--with their innocence, their Disney, their inability to
| drive a stick shift?"_ (Elif Batuman)
|
| but maybe with EVs and modern automatic transmissions the day
| really has come to say goodbye to manual transmission. Our family
| cars have them and my daughter just bought a new manual Civic but
| not for any real rational reason.
| Gare wrote:
| No, the reality is that we were (and still are, though a bit
| less) poor compared to the Americans. I can afford myself a
| nice automatic car and it is a blessing for me, but most of my
| compatriots still can't.
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