I’m stuck on this personally. I love my manual, I have a tiny little Mazda 2 and I have driven that thing absolutely everywhere because I can control it better than any automatic I’ve ever driven. But I’ve been casually looking for a new car and I’d love to have an electric, but I don’t want to lose that level of control and everything I love about a manual.
What do you all think? What’s your take?
I would drive an electric every day.
I’m excited for the idea of having a self driving car some day so I can wave goodbye to so much stress in my life.
I drive a Manual and a CVT.
I believe 1 pedal driving (take your foot off the gas and it applies the brakes) might be an interesting option for you.
1 pedal driving is one of my favorite things about my EV. I’ve always thought automatic transmissions are kind of silly for one reason: “What do you mean I can’t just not press the go pedal and have it not go? Why do I have to specifically press the stop pedal for it to not go? Why isn’t not pressing the go pedal enough for it to not go? Doesn’t anyone else see how silly this is?”
Almost. At some point I probably will, but I’m not quite ready yet (mpstly because I haven’t found an EV that fits my needs, and the infrastructure where I live is somewhat limited). So I am getting a gas/electric hybrid in a couple of months to replace my aging gasser.
I almost bought an electric vehicle recently, but ended up getting one last stick car. I will be buying electric, but I will hate giving up my manual transmission.
You can get the best of both worlds. Do an electric conversion, attach the electric motor to the existing transmission. Manual EV, enjoy the fun of the stick shift with zero emissions.
Shifting an EV is kind of pointless but if you enjoy it, you do you.
I just did this. Been driving manual in my personal car for 30 years. Someone crashed into my car and totalled it, and I took the opportunity to go electric. I won’t go back.
Electric has far, far more control because it’s controlling the motor millisecond to millisecond, and not trying to reign in explosions.
So quiet. So efficient. No loss of power. And now I’m saving $2k/year in fuel costs.
Isn’t there a large difference between automatic and electric?
The automatic still has gears, they’re just… Automatic. The EV doesn’t have any kind of traditional gears. Unless, perhaps, if they have a variable frequency drive or something similar.
Either way, I haven’t driven much automatic nor electric, but I’ve heard that the control of an electric should be unparalleled.
If anyone knows more, then please feel free to correct me.
Aside from the obvious, an automatic and how they handle shifting makes a difference in how acceleration is handled vs an electric. CVT transmissions, if they were allowed to operate how they are suppose to instead of adding fake shifting to stop idiotic complaints, would perform more like how an electric accelerates without the torque. Being able to just accelerate without the transmission deciding what gear to be in is a big advantage of electrics, but largely unimportant to typical driving.
The Porsche Taycan has 2 gears, but you don’t control the shifting. I don’t know if the incomming Porsche EVs will also have gears. I expect electrics to go to some number of gears to increase efficiency to extend range, but maybe everyone is banking on battery tech improving to avoid the additional cost of adding gears.
I’m not sure what you mean by “control”. Do you mean handling?
Thank you for the elaboration.
I ended up mixing two definitions of “control” in my tiredness, whoops.
I intended to refer to OPs “control”, which I imagine is supposed to be the ability to use low/high gears as the situation requires, such as going a gear lower when overtaking, or using a high gear when cruise on the common roads for better fuel efficiency. Automatic often (always?) allows or perhaps even forces these modi, but it doesn’t always feel satisfactory when you’re used to stick, at least not the older models.
I guess I ended up using “control” as “ability to handle varying power and speed (aka. torque) requirements”, which gives the EV a clear advantage as it can change speed and power while maintaining a constant torque.
I’m a daily rider/commuter by motorcycle and I’d love to get an electric bike. I don’t think I’d miss shifting gears at all, but (and I’ve been thinking about this) I think I’d like to have some kind of electric “clutch” that doesn’t work at all like a regular clutch but performs a similar function. In this case it would adjust the throttle map. Clutch full in = throttle does nothing. Clutch full out = aggressive or linear throttle map. I have not actually ridden any of the high end e-motos to know if this is necessary, but in my mind I would miss the ability to feather the clutch.
If you do a lot of off road riding you will probably eat shit with an electric bike at least at first due to having clutch-feathering muscle memory, and that functionality not being there anymore. That, or if you like to do wheelies you are undoubtedly going to loop yourself the first time you try it on such a hypothetical bike with loads of torque and no clutch.
I had a manual for about 75k miles, mostly liked it, but have had an automatic since then (inheritence coming into play, free car = free car). I had a little Chevy Spark EV for about a year that was a joy. Honestly, not having to change gears at all is AWESOME. You don’t think about the motion caused by even the best of manual shifts (let alone terrible CVT shifts) until it’s not there. It’s so much smoother to get up to speed and I loved it.
Waiting for battery tech to get a little better and running out my current car (Shoutouts to Toyota), then will be going back to an electric car.
I went from a manual ‘08 wrangler to a’ 23 model 3 and I gotta tell you, I’m so much happier with it. Granted, I live in the city now and driving a stick shift in and out of parking lots daily was a major pain in the ass, but I still think I’d be happy back in the suburbs. Here’s my first thoughts:
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Electricity is wayyyyy cheaper than gas. Plus you can charge whenever you aren’t using the car if you have a garage.
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I know jeeps aren’t sporty cars but my model 3 feels 100x more responsive than a jeep. Consider that electricity starts working immediately. To start a manual you need to take your foot off the clutch, push in the gas, let that gas get to the engine, ignite, and then the car moves. Sure that process takes less than a second but it’s hard to overstate how fast electric cars can go immediately
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Electric cars are all inherently newer and have a lot of cool new features. Auto parking, self-driving, adaptive cruise control, voice activated commands, driver profiles, and more made it feel like I went from the stone age to the industrial revolution overnight
That’s not to say it’s all sunshine and roses. Some downsides:
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I’m definitely a worse driver now. Manuals keep all 4 limbs focused on driving and make it really hard to get distracted. This is kind of a wash because the self-driving feels way safer on the highway than a human driver
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Recharging is not as easy as refueling. As long as you plan ahead this isn’t an issue but you can’t lazily say “oh I’ll get gas in the morning on the way to work” and you have to spend longer on road trips. During my day to day I actually save time because I just plug in when I’m going to be home anyway. Plus some places have free charging
And lastly this is kind of medium:
- People can borrow my car. I like having a car my girlfriend can actually drive when it’s relevant but other people want to try to drive my car and sometimes it’s a little annoying
I don’t think we’re ready for everyone to go electric but if you’re the type to not drive everyday and live in an area with decent access to chargers I think it’s worth considering
Just to clarify, you don’t have to hit the gas, you can just let off the clutch
What a weird nitpicky thing to argue about. Sure you can start a manual by easing off the clutch properly but that’s obviously not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the differences between driving manual and electric and that’s clearly the use-case people will have 95%+ of their driving time. What do you think you’re adding to this conversation?
He’s not arguing? Why so negative, that’s a good tip. I wish someone told me that when I was learning, I just sort of figured it out later.
They’re being pedantic when the main takeaway is “it’s more complicated” and this person is going “well, actually… You do X, not Y (in this chain of events that’s still more complicated than just pressing the gas pedal)”.
Is being pedantic a sin here? I see nothing to suggest that they disagree with the overall point, they just want to build a more complete picture.
I could just be overly optimistic about their intentions though
The conversation is people who already know how to drive stick and their opinion on electric. People just learning to use stick aren’t relevant and nitpicking over EXACTLY how a stick works isn’t relevant when the main topic is “how does it feel compared to an electric?”. “Oh, well the clutch can actually make you go just by releasing it and you’re able to crawl” is completely irrelevant and only stated to critique and sound superior. I can crawl too in my automatic car by letting off the brake. That’s not relevant here either.
Thank you. I wasn’t saying they were wrong, I was just asking what compelled them to say what they said. It doesn’t add to the conversation, it isn’t for anyone who would be reading this discussion, it just seemed to be a comment made to make them feel better about themselves for being superior to other internet nerds
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I would convert a manual transmission car to electric, and hook the electric motor up to the input shaft on the transmission just to be perverse.
Many people do just that. There are whole companies that will sell you adapters to allow you to do this. You can even go without a clutch to save a lot of rotating weight if you don’t mind having to finesse the pedal a bit when shifting.
Electric > manual > automatic.
Manual’s only advantage over automatic is better control over shifting for staying in the power band or downshifting for long slopes. A proper CVT electric can always have the optimal power band for the speed and regenerative braking takes care of the long slopes.
I’ve never seen an electric car that used a CVT, normally they are just direct drive. Like the motor spins a reduction gearbox, which is directly connected to the wheels. There is only one gear, not even a reverse, the motor just spins backwards to move the car backwards.
That is also why smaller electric cars typically top out around 80-120mph, and you need a very powerful one to go 150+ like a Tesla.
The issue is that at low speed the motor has to spin very slowly which requires immense torque. This is generally overcome with a reduction ratio. The less reduction the faster you can go, but if your motor is not powerful enough then you won’t have enough torque on the steepest hills etc.
Recently had an electric Fiat 500 as a replacement while my car (Mazda 3) was in service and I absolutely loved how it drives. Nice consistent acceleration, immediate reaction to the throttle. Much better than the automatic transmission cars I drove before. 3 problems though:
- range (duh): I often need to drive for 280km in one go, vast majority of EVs can’t do that reliably (with AC and going 130km/h). If you can survive a day on one charge it is awesome though: plug it overnight and you’re ready to go in the morning
- the price of the car (it felt waaay too simple and plastic-y inside compared to 30K euro price I googled)
- big brother software on the headunit, although there is no escape from it with any new car these days
Having owned a manual for a long time and also a bunch of different automatic cars but never an electric and also having been an enthusiast and participating in motorsports. I would honestly prefer taking a train and riding a bike than driving. I hate driving on the road. I hate other drivers and having to pay attention while I go somewhere. I hate driving long distances and l hate dealing with car issues and I used to be a mechanic for awhile. The whole thing is stupid as hell. I like driving go-carts, that’s fun. Cars are dumb as hell.
I absolutely understand this. I’ve been traveling to Vancouver, BC a lot and my god, it’s so easy to get around without a car. I’m sure it’s not the golden standard, but it’s sure great
We occasionally zoop to Chicago on the Amtrak. Buy a 24 hour transit pass for $5 and we’re good to go for the weekend. I’m much more relaxed, it cost less than driving and parking. No worries about the car getting broken into. It’s pretty great.
I have only once willingly purchased a car with an automatic, a 2020 VW GLI with DSG. It was awesome. I just traded it in a couple of weeks ago on a 2024 VW GLI with a six-speed. I doubt I go back to DSG even though they are technological marvels.
I’m old enough that this might be my last vehicle. I’ll be fine shifting my own gears until they take my license away.
When I bought my current car, I was looking for an electrical solution, but there was none. All tiny matchboxes on wheels, no space, no comfortable height to enter or leave the car for people with handycaps.
I have now seen the ID Buzz. Big enough? Just about. But it cost three times what I paid for my car, with half the options, and is butt ugly on top. As if it was designed to look horrible.
