Why Stick Shifts Are Going Extinct

this is a ferrari 488 pista and this is a lamborghini uracan and this is a mclaren gt all these cars have several things in common they are all quite rare extremely fast and very expensive but they have something else in common that might scare some car fanatics and that says a lot about today's automotive industry, none of them can be bought with a

stick

shift, a once ubiquitous feature that is now in danger of becoming

extinct

and a small but vocal tribe of die-hard drivers seems to be increasingly depressed . that every day you drive a car with automatic transmissions but you drive a car with manual transmissions, the vast majority of people in the United States rarely encounter a car with a manual transmission and the numbers suggest that the shifter becomes every getting darker as time goes by.

Transmission is an art and it is a method of driving that many people simply no longer enjoy because driving is more of a chore than anything else. Data indicates that the number of models available in the U.S. with a manual transmission is decreasing each year. year, less than two percent of cars sold in the United States in 2019 came with one, so why does anyone care? Good question for most of automobile history almost all cars on the roads have been powered by petrol or gasoline engines, an engine basically powers a car by turning a rod called a crankshaft which is ultimately connected to the wheels through of the automobile transmission, the speed at which the engine rotates that rod is measured in revolutions per minute or rpm, a revolution is a single turn of the rod between the engine and the transmission the transmission that regulates the amount of power that the engine delivers to the wheels an engine will spin at different speeds depending on how much the driver presses the accelerator when someone accelerates an engine which is the sound of an engine working harder engines have a specific speed at which ones they work best if an engine works too hard, It can overheat and break down, but if it doesn't work hard enough it won't move the car.

Somewhere between those two extremes is the engine's power band, which is the range in which the engine performs best. Efficiently balances power and speed A series of different sized gears helps achieve this balance The relative sizes of the gears can be changed so that the car can make the most of the power the engine produces at different speeds or under different conditions manual transmission accomplishes this well manually, the driver

shifts

gears using a shift lever and a clutch pedal, that third pedal on the left side of manual cars, the clutch temporarily disconnects the engine from the transmission, allowing the driver changing gears once nearly all cars were manual transmissions and are still common in some automobile markets around the world.

The advantages of manual transmissions are that they are completely mechanical and relatively simple. This has made them relatively inexpensive to produce and easy to repair, but many drivers also like manual transmissions because they give a feel. of control and connection with a car Manual transmissions allow drivers to change gears exactly when they want, which can be useful when driving at high speeds on a tight race track or on difficult off-road terrain. The problem with manual transmissions is that they require work. skill and constant attention and that is why many people say they have fallen out of favor over time, only decades after the automotive industry began to grow, especially in Europe and the United States, companies began to develop automatic transmissions, such as Many technologies and automobiles, automatic transmissions developed gradually over time, but some significant advances in the 1930s and 1940s began to bring mass-market automatic transmissions closer to reality.

Chrysler introduced a direct ancestor of the automatic transmission called the fluid transmission for the 1939 model year. General Motors introduced another fundamental system called the hydromatic transmission for the model year, this is commonly considered the first widely available fully automatic transmission, it was sold in older cars and cadillacs, there is no c because there is no clutch, no shifting, no job for the driver, nothing difficult to learn, just some of the old driving habits that need to be forgotten at first. The automatic transmission was a luxury, as many new technologies in cars consider it comparable in its time to certain cutting-edge options found in cars today, such as advanced safety features, large head-up displays or navigation systems. driver assistance, but over time automatic transmissions became more available and more popular for reasons that probably seem obvious to drivers now, they were more comfortable to use than manuals, especially in traffic or on hills, and did not require no special instructions or practices;

However, for a long time they were also considered less efficient. and less precise than an old shifter, but that has changed. Automatic transmissions have become more sophisticated and perform better every year. In the past, drivers often complained that automatics could take too long to shift from one gear to the next, but many say the systems are newer. They are smoother and more precise, these newer systems are usually controlled by computers and their proponents say they can change gears much faster than any human. Could these types of technological leaps suggest that the era of manual transmissions may be coming to an end, at least in developed automotive markets? and for the vast majority of drivers, the change appears to have been welcomed or largely ignored.

Customers in the market for a commuter car or family vehicle seem to have adapted quite well to the new reality, after all, if there were widespread demand for manual transmissions, the industry says. Observers, car manufacturers would be happy to sell them, the demand just isn't there, I think it's consumer demand, even consumer demand from the ultra rich, they don't necessarily want to have a manual transmission, they don't know how to drive one. manual. transmission is not for even supercar enthusiasts, the enjoyment may not be there, you know, it's something they would rather have maximum acceleration, maximum torque, for example, in 2006, 47 of the 305 models of Cars sold in the US offered standard or optional manual transmissions, but that number fell over time; a decade later, only 27 of the new car models offered manual transmissions in 2020, the number was just 13;

However, some car buyers have strong opinions about the decline of manual transmissions, a category of consumers often known as enthusiasts, this includes racing and off-road fans of European sports cars, supercars. , muscle cars, and high-performance SUVs and trucks, buyers have felt the biggest decline in manual transmissions in these areas of the market most strongly. The last few years have seen some notable car decisions. brands that cater to certain types of customers, especially those interested in sports cars or certain types of utilities – take the famous supercar brand Ferrari, for example. The brand used to be widely known for its manual gearbox, but Ferrari said in 2016 that it would stop producing cars with manual transmissions.

British supercar maker McLaren doesn't offer manuals, nor does Lamborghini. This has been one of the most surprising developments in the world of performance cars in recent years. Again, there are some purists, especially older ones, who insist that there really is nothing like the experience. of operating a shifter the steering wheel is one part of how you control the car and the shifter is the other um there are three pedals okay and my feet know what to do with those three pedals. I am completely involved in driving the vehicle and what happens. It's the human-machine interface, you become one with the car, but the manufacturers' own specifications suggest that drivers can get comparable or, more often, better performance with an automatic transmission.

Buyers increasingly seem to feel that a manual transmission is no longer a necessity, even in a sports car. For example, sports sedan pioneer BMW ended production of manual transmission versions of some of its M-badged performance cars, causing sadness among some long-time fans of the line and members of the automotive press. Lamborghini's similar decision to stop offering manuals was also due to the lack of a business case for them; In other words, it is too expensive to continue offering an option. Sophie Lambo buyers want. BMW still sells a manual transmission in some of its cars, such as the M2 and the M3 and M4, younger brothers of the now automatic.

Only Porsche M5 still offers manual transmissions in some of its cars and has even added manual transmission options in recent years. American Muscle Cars and Pony Cars also continue to serve the

stick

-shift buyer, the Dodge Challenger, Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Corvette. All can be purchased with manuals, some of these cars are only available with a manual transmission, such as the Ford Mustang Shelby GT350, which as of February 2020 started at a price of sixty thousand four hundred and forty dollars. Drivers who want a stickless Shelby will have to option the gt500 starting at 72,900 that car can only be purchased with an automatic the 2020 gt500 is the first in the model's history that a manual option is not offered another sign of the changing times likewise mid-engined widely expected by General Motors the Corvette will not have any manual options, almost no pickup truck sold in the US comes with a stick shift. 2018 was the last model year that any full size truck came with a manual transmission option and it was on the ram 2500 with cummins.

Diesel-powered and manual midsize trucks include some versions of the Jeep Gladiator, Toyota Tacoma, and Nissan Frontier. Industry insiders who spoke to CNBC said they expect manual transmissions to continue to fade into obscurity, although they may remain for a while in some high-performance cars. What increasingly remains is a range of automatic transmissions that attempt to capture some of the experience of a manual while offering the benefits of new technology. First on the list are standard automatics, some automatics are changeable, there are also automated manual systems that are similar to manual ones. transmissions and how they are built, but that function more like automatics, there are single clutch systems that are now rare.

Historical examples include BMW's smart 42 and smg system. Much more common is the dual-clutch transmission, sometimes abbreviated as dct or dsg, cars with automatic

shifts

or dual-clutch transmissions often come with paddles on the sides of the steering wheel that allow the driver to shift up and down in certain driving modes. driving; Alternatively, the driver can slide the gear lever to a different position and shift similarly to a traditional gear lever on some occasions. Brands use continuously variable transmissions or CVTs. These drives feature a belt that slides back and forth on two smooth tapered spools that constantly seek the best balance between power and speed.

CVTs have their critics, but they can save quite a bit of fuel and are often found in cars with smaller engines. engines For now, drivers stepping into a new car can generally expect to find a system like one of these. Despite this degree of choice, some enthusiasts say the manual's demise will alienate a small but devoted portion of buyers who are a vital ingredient in American car culture I believe that part of the population is underserved and in danger of being eliminated, but as this trend away from manual transmissions continues, another engineering change enters that will drastically alter the automotive market of electric cars because electric cars run on electric motors instead of gasoline there is no need to vary speeds at all there is no power band of the engine because there is no motor an electric motor can deliver maximum torque at any speed so No low or high gears are needed.

This is part of the reason why electric cars can achieve faster acceleration than combustion vehicles.Electric cars are a small portion of the market right now and industry observers think the internal combustion engine will still be around in one form or another for several years, but automakers big and small are making big bets. in electric vehicles and are increasingly trying to take advantage of the performance capabilities of electric powertrains to attract buyers. Electric vehicle technology is expensive, and many industry surveys show that ordinary buyers still have a number of concerns about electric cars that take longer to charge than they need to fill a tank of fuel.

Many drivers are also concerned about having reliable and convenient access to charging, whether at home or on the road, but electric vehicles already surpassed one group of cars in sales in 2019, manual transmission vehicles.