That phrasing suggests that my use was wrong in some manner.

In most cases, an auto/CVT simply enables people to pay less attention to driving. When driving a gutless car with a manual transmission, if you're in traffic you must pay attention to the flow of traffic, to your place in the car's rev range, etc. If I'm in traffic, I'm totally in tune with everything, making me quite a safe driver at such times.

Except they don't have ratios

I don't like how they jump in RPM when driving uphill at constant speed, whereas if I'm cruising along in fifth in a 5MT, at 60 MPH I'm turning 3k RPM, meaning if I put my foot down, I'll accelerate without any delay waiting for the engine to get into a meatier piece of the powerband.

I agree in most cases. Some cars (Honda S2000, Mazda RX8, 911 GT3, etc.) need more gears because of their high revving, narrow powerbands; but bland stuff do not need more than five. Generally their power peaks are stuffed way down low in the rev range anyway, even the Fit's little 1.5 redlines at what, 6500 or something depressing like that?

 

Keith Code wrote an excellent book called "The Soft Science of Roadracing Motorcycles." In it he explained that each person has a certain "account" of attention that he quantified as money. You start with $10 and then spend various sums on the things you pay attention to. Steering, shifting, keeping your head steady, and the discomfort of maintaining the racing crouch all deduct from that $10. Overdraw the account and bad things happen.

On the street the same things apply. Not having to shift leaves more attention for driving tasks.

You are displaying your ignorance. CVTs have an infinite number of ratios.

In other words, you don't like any transmission that acts differently from the one you are used to. Many people are unwilling to adopt new technology unless it assumes a "survival form," a resemblance to older technology. That's why the first cellphones closely resembled wired phones and why some manufacturers simulate fixed ratios with their CVTs. Eventually people will get used to the new technology and the design can be better optimized for performance rather than to encourage adoption.

 

If you don't have the mental capacity to shift while driving and still be capable of actually driving you shouldn't be driving a car.

If it has an infinite number of ratios, does it really have ratios at all?

No, I'm willing to adapt to things I don't have experience with; I'm not willing to adopt something that is needlessly complex and does a worse job of optimizing a car's engine than the classic manual gearbox.

 

Then you as a lifelong M/T driver shouldn't even be thinking about shifting. It's just something that happens automatically. Muscle memory attached to hearing and balance. The only time I really actively think about what I'm doing is when the stupid shifter is being notchy and won't go into first, and then my brain is like "Wake up for a sec, k? Something didn't work right, try it one more time".

I got into the habit of shaking the shifter in neutral to make sure I was neutral in one of my old cars that had beat up gates. I don't have to do that with the Fit, but I still do. I tried to actively stop doing it but gave up.

You know what RPM the car is at by engine sound. I mean, people don't usually look at the Tach? The only time I glance at the tach is when I know i'm close to the limiter.

So if your ears and hands and feet and the human body and the brain work as one integrated machine, there's not much thinking, just doing.

Just my personal view, I don't know how other people are, but that's how I am.

There's lots of positives about the CVT to some drivers, and it definitely has it's place in the world. But saying operating a M/T takes away attention from driving is kind of silly, unless you're brand new at it.

 

My grandfather would have said the same thing about adjusting the spark and mixture levers. To him they were nothing, but they did occupy part of his attention budget and could be dangerous if used improperly. Manual transmissions, like it or not, do require part of our attention to operate. Get into a dangerous traffic situation and normally we forget about shifting until the danger is past. That is where a lack of response due to incorrect ratio selection can be dangerous.

Yes. Many different ones!

Your knee-jerk condemnation of CVTs simply because they don't behave like manual transmissions doesn't sound like a willingness to adapt. You also don't seem to understand the nature of the device. CVTs are no more complex than a 6MT and, outside of the inability to "launch" the car by storing energy, perform on a par or better.

 

You wrote that you shift up through all 6 gears to go and down through all 6 gears to stop. If that's how you drive a light duty MT built within the last 20 years at least then you're doing it wrong. Maybe that's how it was done or required in ancient times, I don't know, but these days no.

 

The CVT stays at the rpm that makes max horsepower while you are going full throttle. Isn't that the right part of the powerband you are talking about?

Perhaps you are talking about every other part of the rpm band where the car does not make max horsepower. **Scratching head**

 

OK, how do you accelerate to highway cruising speed? 1-2-3-4-5-6 or do you skip a few or leave a couple off the end? I'm sure that someone could use only 2-4-6 or 1-3-5, but what would be the point? This car isn't like a Corvette where the top gear or two are there to accommodate a top speed pushing 200MPH. 6th in a Fit is spinning pretty fast at highway speed.

Shifting down, I can see omitting first, but I'd probably visit the others on the way down. It's not terribly safe to leave the car out of gear while decelerating and you never known when you might need a bit of acceleration.

Concerning attention budgets, most of us can shift without much conscious thought, but even the most die-hard stick driver can't shift without removing a hand from the steering wheel!

 

Actually, with the fancy dual clutch ones with paddle shifters, anyone can. Because it's not about the clutch pedal or the stick, it's about driving instead of passenging. I don't like filtering my engine's power through a torque converter and I don't like having to select gears with a pretty please and a prayer, but that doesn't mean I'm against automation. Those cars just tend to be out of my price range is all.

That's all been mentioned above, but maybe because this thread is about shifting it's overwhelmed some attention budgets.

 

You can even do it on the Fit!

Oh darn, but that's only with the CVT.

I haven't heard much good about the reliability of dual-clutch automated transmissions.

 

Drove my aunt's CVT Subaru Outback a couple nights ago.

Gosh that drives poorly. Worse than the GK, although because the interior is better isolated from the drivetrain's NVH, it doesn't have that appalling moped sound.

 

Are you shifting gears in a CVT or are you just moving a belt back and forth like with my lawnmower? The throttle never changes, but there's a lever with a turtle at one end and a rabbit at the other, and what you're operating is the transmission.

CVTs seem to be designed to deliberately miss out on all their efficiency benefits so that you can pretend you don't have one. It just seems counterproductive.

I wouldn't expect dual clutch transmissions to bee completely reliable yet. Give them another ten or twenty years. Until then, if you want control of the performance and reliability then you need two hands and two feet. Or a backup car.

 

To answer your questions on CVT:

Why You Should Learn to Love the Transmission That Never Changes Gear - Popular Mechanics

 

A CVT is closer in basic design to your lawn mower (or to a snowmobile), but there are of course many details in the design that are changed or improved. Unlike the lawn mower, but like a snowmobile, the gas pedal in a car controls the engine throttle/speed. (To be technically precise, the lawn mower throttle is controlled by a governor which keeps the engine running at more or less the same speed regardless of its load. On a lawn mower, this is useful because it keeps the blades turning fast enough to cut the grass properly.)

I'm not sure why you assume it would be inefficient; it permits the computer to keep the engine turning at the most efficient or effective speed for whatever amount of power is needed at the moment. If you need a lot of power to accelerate quickly, it can (and usually does) adjust to have the engine producing its maximum power. If you are just cruising along, it lets the engine turn at a more efficient, lower speed.

I think the main reason at least some people dislike CVTs is because they aren't used to their behaviors and so they don't seem normal. (Other people, of course, simply enjoy working a manual transmission. That's a different thing altogether, a personal preference and nothing more.)

There's no real reason why a dual clutch transmission should be any less reliable than a traditional manual transmission, since it's basically just two manual transmissions with two clutches arranged side by side such that only one clutch will engage at a time. That's not to say that all the current ones are reliable, just that the technology very much exists today to make them as reliable as any manual transmission—and probably more reliable, since they eliminate the possibility of riding the clutch or of occasionally muffing a shift.

 

Who in the world merges onto a highway from a complete stop and needs all 6 gears to do so? I'm sure there are places where that may be necessary due to construction interference or antiquated infrastructure. 9 times out of 10 where I drive, I'm already in 6th merging on to any hwy since the car can cruise nicely in that gear all the way down to about 30mph. If anything I might downshift to 5th for some extra grunt to accelerate into an open spot. Merging into high speed traffic has never been difficult for me.

Again, if you're downshifting through all 6 gears to stop then you're just making way more work for yourself than necessary and I've already explained why. Being out of gear while decelerating for the last 10 - 20 feet needed before a stop is no different than being out of gear for the last 5 or while sitting still. Or do you sit with the clutch pressed for the whole light too?

Not only that, if you need to suddenly accelerate and can't get it in a gear quick enough to do so then maybe you shouldn't be driving a MT in the first place.

Just because you can and have doesn't mean you're any good at it. Just saying.

 

I'm a bit puzzled by this question. When I leave a stop light on an onramp I'm in first, and I do indeed visit every gear on my way to cruising speed, at which point I put it into top gear for efficient cruise.

I suppose that one could do first and second and then go straight to 6th and lug it up from 30MPH as you are apparently suggesting, but the acceleration would be sluggish at best.

 

Is shifting 5x really that hard?

America, when burning 5 calories is just too much work.

 

What's the point? Get something where you don't have to shift at all. You aren't gaining anything by from all the extra work. It's a complete waste of time.

 

Except fuel economy, enjoyment, reliability and performance.

Such a waste of time, and the manual is less expensive!

But why bother arguing against someone who worships at the alter of driving without being involved in actually driving.

 

It has better fuel economy. I enjoy it a lot. I have not had any problems with it. Not sure what you mean by performance. ???

I enjoy driving immensely. Don't be upset because I can eat a bag of chips and talk of the phone and beat you while you are banging away at the gears. There's no enjoyment in that.

I use a Bodymedia armband and I burn about 5-6 calories a minute while moderately using an elliptical. You mean to tell me I need to burn this much every time I shift six gears in a manual? This will give older folks a heart attack after 15 minutes of driving.