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Well, engine braking to the red light would have been more efficient. :) But indeed, automatic cars are less efficient. They do not know what you will do next,

Well, engine braking to the red light would have been more efficient. :) But indeed, automatic cars are less efficient. They do not know what you will do next, so they often make erroneous gear shifts that waste fuel and time. They don't know when to coast or when to engine brake (For older transmissions, the overdrive gear had permanent coasting, and could not engine brake at all), often have lossy pumps, etc. Dual clutch transmission are awesome, though.

speeder 10y ago
I am from Brazil, here the population hates "hydramatic" cars as they call automatic cars. I saw one accident that the cause was lack of transmission knowing the future: road crossing, bad road signs didn't made clear who had priority, so both drivers went forward. Both cars tried then to stop, but the automatic car instead had just shifted up, then as the driver tried to stop, it lurched forward and hit the other car, then it spun and crashed on the wall of a school. The automatic car was a sports car from the 70s though, so I guess the transmission was even more dangerous.
- 3poundkilograms 10y ago
  Automatic transmissions back then were quite the hydraulic maze, as they operated entirely on hydraulics. These days, they're electronically controlled. I don't think the failure rate has changed. In a manual, you can of course clutch out as long as your clutch cable (or hose for hydraulic clutched cars) doesn't fail, which is not an option you have for automatics. These kinds of failures do occur today, though. See the famous Toyota "unintentional acceleration" scandal, where a software error read "0% throttle" as "100% THROTTLE GO GO GO GO", causing death in a few cases. There's also a case of a person that was stuck in a car that could not stop, driving at constantly increasing speed on the highways of France, IIRC. He couldn't turn the car off or get it out of gear. You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake. Up here, manuals are normal (with automatics slowly getting more and more popular), mostly because everyone knows just fine how to drive them, and automatics are much more expensive. I, personally, can't decide which I prefer. I'd much rather drive fully manual than a "retrofitted" automatic like the one in a Lupo 3L, and I still have to try a dual clutch transmission, for which I might end up having similar opinions. They always seem to change wrong, the changes are rough and slow, and the clutch engagement is very binary, leading to odd engage/disengage. I like conventional automatics in cars that haul heavy loads (pushing a 4 metric tonne trailer over a curb in reverse at low speeds without the possibility of gaining some speed first make you worry a lot about your clutch in a manual), and our busses and trucks are generally fully automatic, with more gears than you would bother counting.
  - hx87 10y ago
    > You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake. The typical car has brakes that can dissipate 4x the engine power, so either the driver failed to press hard enough or the brakes failed in that case.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3poundkilograms 10y ago
      I suspect that your brakes will seize very quickly if you try to battle your engine at full power.
  - petre 10y ago
    Current VW DSG automatics are okay, butter smooth. I drove one from Germany this year. Too bad it's a VW, since I don't like their cars that much. My normal car is a manual Suzuki Jimny DDIS which drives like a tractor.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    There is no such thing as a modern passenger car with an engine more powerful than the brakes. All cases of "unintentional acceleration" where the driver "could not stop" are cases of driver error: the driver refused to use the brake pedal, or was pressing the gas pedal instead. The other thing these dummies are forgetting to do, in their panic, is to simply turn off the engine.
    - 3poundkilograms 10y ago
      In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error. Reasons that a driver might not simply turn off the engine: 1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast. 2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling. 3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything. Oil buildup in the intercooler (which any used car will have) that ends up sucked into the intake is a fairly normal way for a diesel engine to self-destruct if you're not quick enough to clutch in so you can keep the engine under control with some load. Reasons a driver might not be able to hold the engine at full throttle: 1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load. 2. Brake failure. 3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van that was idling in first gear using only the brake (long story), and that required a lot of effort. I would not have been able to do it if any throttle had been applied.
- Unklejoe 10y ago
  Not trying to be confrontational, but I have to say... I don't buy that story at all. Automatic transmissions back then didn't even have lock-up torque converters. You could always stop the car unless the throttle got stuck. The transmission can't suddently send the car screaming forward if the person isn't on the throttle. On another note, the main automatic transmissions of those days were probably the TH350 and TH400, which actually stands for "turbo hydramatic". That's probably where the name came from.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
>But indeed, automatic cars are less efficient. Browsing fueleconomy.gov looks like that's no longer the case. Looks like the newest versions of the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, and Toyota Corolla have better gas mileage with the automatic transmission, for example.
sbalea 10y ago
That was certainly true for older automatics. However, the tranny in my 2 yrs old bmw 3 seems to be freaking prescient. It seems to always be in the right gear at the right time and transitions are buttery smooth. I tried playing with manual gear control, via stick or shift paddles for old times sakes. But the result is noticeably messier. And btw, it's not a dual clutch.

speeder 10y ago

I am from Brazil, here the population hates "hydramatic" cars as they call automatic cars. I saw one accident that the cause was lack of transmission knowing the future: road crossing, bad road signs didn't made clear who had priority, so both drivers went forward. Both cars tried then to stop, but the automatic car instead had just shifted up, then as the driver tried to stop, it lurched forward and hit the other car, then it spun and crashed on the wall of a school. The automatic car was a sports car from the 70s though, so I guess the transmission was even more dangerous.

3poundkilograms 10y ago
Automatic transmissions back then were quite the hydraulic maze, as they operated entirely on hydraulics. These days, they're electronically controlled. I don't think the failure rate has changed. In a manual, you can of course clutch out as long as your clutch cable (or hose for hydraulic clutched cars) doesn't fail, which is not an option you have for automatics. These kinds of failures do occur today, though. See the famous Toyota "unintentional acceleration" scandal, where a software error read "0% throttle" as "100% THROTTLE GO GO GO GO", causing death in a few cases. There's also a case of a person that was stuck in a car that could not stop, driving at constantly increasing speed on the highways of France, IIRC. He couldn't turn the car off or get it out of gear. You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake. Up here, manuals are normal (with automatics slowly getting more and more popular), mostly because everyone knows just fine how to drive them, and automatics are much more expensive. I, personally, can't decide which I prefer. I'd much rather drive fully manual than a "retrofitted" automatic like the one in a Lupo 3L, and I still have to try a dual clutch transmission, for which I might end up having similar opinions. They always seem to change wrong, the changes are rough and slow, and the clutch engagement is very binary, leading to odd engage/disengage. I like conventional automatics in cars that haul heavy loads (pushing a 4 metric tonne trailer over a curb in reverse at low speeds without the possibility of gaining some speed first make you worry a lot about your clutch in a manual), and our busses and trucks are generally fully automatic, with more gears than you would bother counting.
- hx87 10y ago
  > You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake. The typical car has brakes that can dissipate 4x the engine power, so either the driver failed to press hard enough or the brakes failed in that case.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3poundkilograms 10y ago
    I suspect that your brakes will seize very quickly if you try to battle your engine at full power.
- petre 10y ago
  Current VW DSG automatics are okay, butter smooth. I drove one from Germany this year. Too bad it's a VW, since I don't like their cars that much. My normal car is a manual Suzuki Jimny DDIS which drives like a tractor.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  There is no such thing as a modern passenger car with an engine more powerful than the brakes. All cases of "unintentional acceleration" where the driver "could not stop" are cases of driver error: the driver refused to use the brake pedal, or was pressing the gas pedal instead. The other thing these dummies are forgetting to do, in their panic, is to simply turn off the engine.
  - 3poundkilograms 10y ago
    In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error. Reasons that a driver might not simply turn off the engine: 1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast. 2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling. 3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything. Oil buildup in the intercooler (which any used car will have) that ends up sucked into the intake is a fairly normal way for a diesel engine to self-destruct if you're not quick enough to clutch in so you can keep the engine under control with some load. Reasons a driver might not be able to hold the engine at full throttle: 1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load. 2. Brake failure. 3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van that was idling in first gear using only the brake (long story), and that required a lot of effort. I would not have been able to do it if any throttle had been applied.
Unklejoe 10y ago
Not trying to be confrontational, but I have to say... I don't buy that story at all. Automatic transmissions back then didn't even have lock-up torque converters. You could always stop the car unless the throttle got stuck. The transmission can't suddently send the car screaming forward if the person isn't on the throttle. On another note, the main automatic transmissions of those days were probably the TH350 and TH400, which actually stands for "turbo hydramatic". That's probably where the name came from.

nommm-nommm 10y ago

>But indeed, automatic cars are less efficient. Browsing fueleconomy.gov looks like that's no longer the case. Looks like the newest versions of the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, and Toyota Corolla have better gas mileage with the automatic transmission, for example.

sbalea 10y ago

That was certainly true for older automatics. However, the tranny in my 2 yrs old bmw 3 seems to be freaking prescient. It seems to always be in the right gear at the right time and transitions are buttery smooth. I tried playing with manual gear control, via stick or shift paddles for old times sakes. But the result is noticeably messier. And btw, it's not a dual clutch.