How open-minded are you feeling today? Pretty open? I hope so, because what I’m going to propose here will require that openness. But I think the end result will be worth it, because it could allow you to see an entire category of car in a whole new light. What if – and, again, I’m calling on your openness here – what if all-electric cars with one-speed transmissions are actually manual transmission cars?
Take a moment. Breathe. Just pause before responding, because I think you need to hear this out. Let’s just look at the facts: because of the nature of electric motors, and how they can produce all of their torque from zero RPM and up, they don’t really need the sorts of multi-speed transmissions that combustion-engine cars use. Generally, they have transmissions with one ratio, like, for example, the Tesla Model 3, which has a gearbox with a 9.03:1 ratio.
A Hyundai Ioniq 6 has a single-speed transmission with a gear ratio of 2.263:1. A Volkswagen ID4’s one-gear transmission has a ratio of 2.96:1, and so on, you get the idea. Now, you could think of these one-gear transmissions as automatic transmissions, because you put them in D and then never have to think about them again, at least not until you want to stop or go backward.
But! The whole point of an automatic transmission is that it automatically changes the gears – that’s the whole point of an automatic transmission – and in the case of these EV one-speed transmissions, they are not doing that, because there are no gears to shift into. They literally can’t change gears.
A CVT has no gears, technically, but there are computers and mechanisms still changing gear ratios automatically – that’s why a gearless CVT is still an automatic, because some force other than the driver is deciding to change the gear ratios.
Now, what if we think of these one-speed transmissions as manual transmissions? You are manually are putting the car into gear, and while you may be doing that by pushing a button or sliding a finger on some silly touchscreen control or moving some little lever on the steering column, it is still a physical, manual action that starts the process for the car to engage the motor to the gearbox. The car didn’t do this on its own; you made the decision, and you took the action to make it happen.
Now, there’s no clutch, of course, but there have been manual transmissions with automatic clutches before; think about the Volkswagen AutoStick (also called the Sportamatic when bolted into a Porsche)– that was a manual transmission with an automatic clutch, but you still had to shift it.
I made a whole video about that transmission way back:
Anyway, nobody would consider that an actually automatic transmission: it’s a manual, with an automatic clutch.
I think we can look at these EV transmissions in a similar way. The only reason we’re not shifting gears on them is because there are no more gears to shift into. But that shouldn’t exclude it from manual transmission status! Let’s say you have an old car with a screwed up transmission where only second gear works. If you got in that car, put it in second gear, and drove, that’s the same experience you’d have in an EV, getting in putting it in D, and driving, at least in terms of the gear-shifting actions you take.
So, all I’m saying is that we should be free to think of nearly all EVs as having one-speed, clutchless, manual transmissions. Is there a good reason for this? No. No, there isn’t. In fact, it’s pretty stupid, if we’re honest. But it somehow feels more fun. Think about how much better it’ll feel when you end up owning some EV, but you can somehow satiate your old-school gearhead urges by reminding yourself that at least you still drive a manual.
A one-speed manual with no clutch you never have to shift and feels for all the world like an automatic. But still a manual.
Because, again, in these one-speed transmissions, the driver still chooses what gear to go into. Always.
That’s a manual transmission.
Okay, now you can call me an idiot in the comments, or – and I encourage you to at least consider this plan – join me. This way, we can keep manual transmissions alive! Sort of.
If it doesn’t have 3 pedals, and I can’t accidentally money shift it, it’s not a manual in my book. Saying that you are “manually” selecting the gear by putting it in D is no different than putting an old school slush box in 1, 2, or 3 and calling it a manual. Heck, paddle shift DCTs should be considered manuals by that logic.
So what’s a pickup with a Turbo-Hydramatic, and a two speed transfer case?
Nope. Not buying this one for a dollar.
EVs not having multispeed transmissions is a cost-cutting compromise, and an efficiency/performance tradeoff. Electric motors very much have an ideal rev range, just like ICE do – it’s just a much wider range. And while they can make peak torque at 0 rpm, they cannot do it for long as a rule, and torque falls off with rpm. Not much of an issue on a typical car, but potentially an issue on a truck and definitely an issue on a performance car. Note that some of the highest performance EVs DO have multi-speed transmissions, even if it is only high and low. Worth the efficiency hit if your goal is ultimate acceleration AND ultimate top speed.
Precisely. In fact the electric motors used in EVs are most efficient in the mid-high rpm range. Due the increased combined vehicle weight range many higher weight class vehicles use automated manual transmissions in their BEV setup. They are typically 2 or 4 speed. This enables grade-ability at full weight rating while also providing better efficiency by shifting by rpm rather than motor load. Essentially they won’t shift until near max rpm is reached, regardless of load.
So what are most* motorcycles? If you shift with your foot it’s obviously not a manual transmission.
See also me ranting about calling unboosted brakes “manual brakes” and power steering vs manual steering.
*IE non Vespas
I think if you were to divide transmission types between torque converter and belts that slip, and transmissions that don’t slip it would be more rational (pun unintended but a good one!)
Turbo-Hydramatics Chaparral 2Es and CVT belts belong to the slippery group.
Manual M22, T5, Hewland crash boxes, Wilson preselector, Toyota eCVT, and electric vehicle transmissions belong to the non slippery group by virtue of meshing gears from end to end.
I am still skeptical that a single speed transmission is ideal for an EV. It seems more like with a sufficiently large motor you can get away with a single speed transmission., and the complexity of an extra ratio would be an avoidable expense.
Obviously, there are some gear ratios that are so numerically low that the motor wouldn’t be able to get the vehicle moving, and other ratios that are so numerically high that at high speed the rotor would spontaneously disassemble itself.
As far as efficiency multi speed transmission would be better for EV. Implement shift by RPM controls strategy in place of by load and keep the motor in higher rpm and higher efficiency zone.
I normally like pedantry and technically correct is the best kind of correct.
But this is like a slap to the face.
Manual or automatic.
If you decide not to choose, you have still made a choice.
Did you start your day with a mimosa? If you’re not manually moving mechanical parts, then it’s just not a manual transmission. That’s the manual part, not the setting of direction by button or other non-mechanical method.
So if motorcycles aren’t manuals because you shift with your foot, what are they?
Manuals they are. I never said they weren’t. However, my Piaggio MP3 500 has an automatic. In other words, motorcycles can be both, just like cars, but the foot shifters are absolutely manuals.
Well manual means “by hand” the word for “by foot” is pedal.
Well that’s news to me. What is it called when I shift gears with my penis?
Pedals are flat BTW. Manual bikes have foot levels. 😉
Middle English manuel, from Anglo-French, from Latin manualis, from manus hand; akin to Old English mund hand and perhaps to Greek marē hand
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manual
Noun
borrowed from Middle French pedalle “pedal of an organ,” borrowed from Italian pedale, earlier, “base of a tree trunk,” going back to Latin pedālis “one foot long” (as noun pedāle “footwear”) — more at PEDAL entry 2
Adjective
borrowed from Latin pedālis “one foot long,” from ped-, pēs “foot” + -ālis -AL entry 1; (sense 2) from attributive use of PEDAL entry 1 — more at FOOT entry 1
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedal
pedos?
That’s Greek, not Latin.
Not a manual unless I can bomb it by shifting into reverse at highway speed instead of getting a chime and a warning message, regardless of how many gears it has.
It’s not an automatic transmission, nor a manual transmission. It’s just a transmission that is always in its singular gear.
Face it. Nowadays, they’re all just standard transmissions.
At dentist getting implant pulled.
A manual trans is about control. When you are in gear, the engine is linked directly to the wheels. When you let off on the theottle, you engine brake. You always maintain that relationship.
One peddle driving provides this exact same relationship. You are always in control of the relationship between the power source and the wheel.
I agree with you, but for different reasons.
This I can actually almost see
Thanks!
Back home, implant removed, sheep bone installed, still numb…
When I drive an automatic, I feel completely out of control of the vehicle. It makes me feel very uncomfortable, and I don’t like or prefer it. When my Bolt EV is in “D”, it behaves exactly like an automatic. It’s kind of spooky how good they did it.
But, when you pop it in “L”, aka One Pedal Driving, I have more control over the vehicle than when I do driving a manual. I drove manuals exclusively my whole life, never owned an auto. Now that I have driven the car for 3 months, and I know “how to use it”, it is so much better than a manual.
That said, it’s why I support the suggestion that an EV is a manual transmission. Sure, I miss rowing through gears, but after a while I realized it was the control that I liked, and that’s really what we are after when we drive manuals, IMHO. Until you daily one for a while, you won’t know. I certainly did not expect this.
Completely unrelated, but why did you need the implant removed? I’ve been out since yesterday prepping for implants. Had 8 baby teeth (!) and two wonky adult teeth pulled, now I’m recovering before I spend $35k on implants in the spring. This entire process has been deeply unpleasant.
Torch… my man…
Disagree. EVs use fixed ratio transmissions, not manual transmissions. There is an unspoken “selection” in manual transmission that implies the user can select a different gear ratio via manual means. In an automatic, different gear ratios are selected via automatic means, but there are still different ratios to be used (including reverse!). In an EV you have one non-switchable ratio, with forward/reverse being handled by swapping polarity of the motor.
I am sympathetic to the argument that mechanical characteristics more accurately describe different transmission types than user interface does (for example, a dual clutch/DSG transmission is accurately characterized as a manual transmission despite it’s lack of a third pedal), but fixed ratios with no means of discrimination are very different from adjustable ratios, and thus should not be called the same thing.
Thank you, I’ve been saying this for years.
Once we have multi-gear EVs then they’ll just be automatics.
Huh?
I think the aftermarket should come up and a manual transmission simulator for EVs. Put in a clutch pedal and a gearshift, like from the old Hard Driving arcade game, and wire them into the ECM. Then the entire manual transmission experience can be done in software, complete with stalling and grinding gears. You could even pipe realistic engine sounds into the sound system and allow drivers to pick their simulated engine on-the-fly. You could go from a K20 to a flat-plane Ferrari V8, to an old Chevy small block at the push of a button, complete with the rev range and torque curve of the modeled engine.
The Ionic 5N comes very close to delivering this kind of experience, including hitting the rev limiter in the middel of a turn when none of your hands are near the shifter paddle. One thing that annoyed me with it though is that you cannot adjust the fake gear ratios, so that in most Norwegian speed limits you’ll never reach the rev limiter in 3rd and keep your license. Also it had no trailer hitch. And there aren’t enough sounds to choose from.
I see the impairment effects of taking a chainsaw to car batteries are starting to manifest.
Gold.
I agree with this take. I’ve owned manual cars for the past ~25 years – and when i get in to a regular automatic I always find my left foot or right arm reaching for pedals or shifters that aren’t there. Now – we’ve also had a model 3 and ioniq 5 – and in my opinion driving those is nothing like an automatic. You are never in the wrong gear, never hunting, and the torque is always right there ready to go. I never find my foot or arm making sub-conscience moves to make a downshift. I get frustrated driving even the best automatics – whereas driving most EV’s don’t bother me in the slightest. I’ve always thought that my brain just registers EV’s as a single speed manual….
Agree!!!!
See my post above.
This reeks of “Is a hot dog a sandwich?” Nothing good can come of this argument.
Hot dogs are a sandwich.
The real question is “can all food just be divided into: soup or sandwich?” The answer of which seems to be yes.
Wrong. A hot dog is clearly a taco.
Tacos are also sandwiches.
I assume you are aware of the Cube Rule?
Jason, I love you, but no. Just.no.
This would make the Taycan both an automatic (rear) and manual. That is unacceptable. Besides, the allure of a manual is the selection of gearing (different torque to the wheels) and the manual matching of revs to tires.
None of that is here. I reject your reality and substitute my own.
The problem with this theory is that selecting the gear isn’t the defining feature of a manual transmission. If it were, every auto with paddle shifters would be a “manual”. For me, the clutch is the defining feature (and yes, that means I don’t consider the Porsche to be a manual if you’re using the auto-clutch trick). A single-speed EV with a clutch would be more of a manual than what we have today.
I’ve had some people question me about how I could buy an EV when I have been pretty vocal about not liking for automatics in the past, so I must say i agree completely.
My car is never in the wrong gear, it responds immediately to any input, in the ‘medium one-pedal setting’ it feels just like natural engine braking, and it takes half the time to do a three point turn on a hill compared to a classic ‘dumb’ automatic transmission. Also I don’t get cramps in my left foot from braking all the time in slow traffic or long downhills.
Some people I know think all EV’s are boring, but again some of those drive diesel cars with autos, which makes the fact that they even have opinions on cars just weird to me.
Electrification fixes so many of the problems with automatic transmissions. The best “auto” I’ve ever driven is the eCVT in my Prius, for a lot of the same reasons you mentioned. There’s never a harsh shift, power is available at the tap of my toe, and it never gets confused about which gear it should be in (or if it does, the electric motor covers for it until it sorts things out).
And I say this as someone who has driven a ZF 8 speed for the past decade, one of the best-regarded auto transmissions ever. It still doesn’t hold a candle to the eCVT.
I always considered EVs to be vehicles without transmissions.
I don’t consider gear reduction to be a transmission. Otherwise, rear axles, transfer cases and portal hubs could be considered transmissions.
Gear reduction is exactly what a transmission does. Just variable gear reduction.
You have a point, though. Where I come from a non-variable gear reduction device is a “gear reducer” not a “transmission”.
No, they are absolutely transmissions, just fixed ratio transmissions. It’s a quirk of automotive nomenclature to refer to only the box controlled by some stick thingy you grab as a transmission, but in general machine design any component that transfers power and torque from one place to another while deliberately changing the ratios of input torque and power on the output is a transmission.
By this argument the drive shaft and differential is a transmission. Technically correct everywhere but in the vernacular of the kingdom of motor vehicles.
This. Whatever gearing the electric motor has is most closely related to the pinion & crown gears attached to the differential.
There are some EVs with transmissions (e.g. the Taycan has a two speed auto) but most simply don’t have anything of the sort.
The equipment that connects your wiper motor to the wipers is a… transmission.