<story><title>Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions</title><url>http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/laautoshow/la-fi-hy-disappearing-stick-shift-20161115-story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rimantas</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;gt; when automatic transmissions are consistently 
  &amp;gt; outperforming humans at fuel efficiency
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
What? So far each data sheet has shown higher fuel consumption for automatic vehicles.</text></item><item><author>henrikschroder</author><text>I got my driver&amp;#x27;s license in Sweden, and the official driving handbook completely worships manual transmissions, and makes several untrue claims about how much better they are than automatics.&lt;p&gt;You can choose to do your road test in an automatic, but that&amp;#x27;ll earn you a restriction on your license, barring you from driving a manual. It&amp;#x27;s probably fair, but almost everyone (myself included) chooses to practice in manuals, and do the test in a manual to not have that restriction, which further skews the stats in favor of manuals.&lt;p&gt;An obligatory part of the road test is so called &amp;quot;eco-driving&amp;quot;, where you have to demonstrate your ability to drive efficiently, and one way of doing that is to skip a gear when shifting in certain situtations. It&amp;#x27;s absolutely insane to force people to learn this, when automatic transmissions are consistently outperforming humans at fuel efficiency. If the traffic authorities &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; cared about fuel efficiency, they should instead sing the praises of automatic transmissions, but they don&amp;#x27;t, because they have an irrational love of manuals.&lt;p&gt;And the final kicker: Road tests are done in official traffic authority cars with double controls, and I did mine in a nice, modern, manual VW Golf, that had a gear-shift indicator in the dash. And since the car is most often better than you at knowing when you should shift gears, why have the manual transmission in the first place? It&amp;#x27;s a complete farce.&lt;p&gt;The silver lining is that electric cars will just decide this issue once and for all.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>henrikschroder</author><text>I should probably have qualified my statement with an &amp;quot;over time, in real driving conditions&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In a measured test, with a skilled driver, who does the right thing for the entirety of the test, it is most likely that he or she will be more efficient with a manual transmission than with an automatic.&lt;p&gt;However, in real life, for real humans, over a longer period of time, the drivers with modern automatic transmissions will be more fuel efficient than drivers with similar cars and manual transmissions, because the automatic transmission is a reliable machine that will do the same thing, every time. It doesn&amp;#x27;t care if you had your morning coffee or not, if some asshole cut you off, or if you got distracted or bored or spaced out and forgot to change your gear to the right one.&lt;p&gt;And, disregarding the disruption the EVs will be, technology constantly improves, while human skill is fairly constant, so it was just inevitable that automatic transmissions would one day overtake manual transmissions in terms of speed and efficiency. Arguing otherwise is just irrational nostalgia.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions</title><url>http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/laautoshow/la-fi-hy-disappearing-stick-shift-20161115-story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rimantas</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;gt; when automatic transmissions are consistently 
  &amp;gt; outperforming humans at fuel efficiency
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
What? So far each data sheet has shown higher fuel consumption for automatic vehicles.</text></item><item><author>henrikschroder</author><text>I got my driver&amp;#x27;s license in Sweden, and the official driving handbook completely worships manual transmissions, and makes several untrue claims about how much better they are than automatics.&lt;p&gt;You can choose to do your road test in an automatic, but that&amp;#x27;ll earn you a restriction on your license, barring you from driving a manual. It&amp;#x27;s probably fair, but almost everyone (myself included) chooses to practice in manuals, and do the test in a manual to not have that restriction, which further skews the stats in favor of manuals.&lt;p&gt;An obligatory part of the road test is so called &amp;quot;eco-driving&amp;quot;, where you have to demonstrate your ability to drive efficiently, and one way of doing that is to skip a gear when shifting in certain situtations. It&amp;#x27;s absolutely insane to force people to learn this, when automatic transmissions are consistently outperforming humans at fuel efficiency. If the traffic authorities &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; cared about fuel efficiency, they should instead sing the praises of automatic transmissions, but they don&amp;#x27;t, because they have an irrational love of manuals.&lt;p&gt;And the final kicker: Road tests are done in official traffic authority cars with double controls, and I did mine in a nice, modern, manual VW Golf, that had a gear-shift indicator in the dash. And since the car is most often better than you at knowing when you should shift gears, why have the manual transmission in the first place? It&amp;#x27;s a complete farce.&lt;p&gt;The silver lining is that electric cars will just decide this issue once and for all.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>silon7</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s only correct for modern automatic transmissions. Plus sometimes start&amp;#x2F;stop.&lt;p&gt;Probably not for old &amp;quot;3 gear with torque converter&amp;quot; or similiar.</text></comment>