Actually there used to be another, more important reason:
Back in the old days, automatic transmissions accelerated pretty slowly. It was not possible to accelerate normally – or what we thought to be normal. No one in their right mind would pay ~5–10 % more (automatic transmissions used to be expensive) to get a lame car and annoy everybody at every traffic light. I don’t know when automatic transmissions got as fast as manual shifting, but this memo hasn’t reached Europe yet.
And, last but not least, and only still valid argument: automatic transmissions are still more expensive than manual ones. Why should I pay extra money for some fancy tech with no extra benefit that takes away my illusion of control and feels horrible to drive?
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 1 week ago
You’re operating from the incorrect assumption that an automatic is more convenient while it isn’t.
Try this: stand up, walk to the other side of the room and back. Was that inconvenient? Did you have to consciously place your legs and think about how to use your feet? No. You just want to go in a certain direction and your legs just move without you needing to think about it.
Driving a manual is the same. You don’t consciously operate the gearbox, you just drive. Shifting gears doesn’t require conscious thought. An automatic isn’t convenient, quite the opposite, as it gives you less control.
Why don’t you use a wheelchair? Surely rolling around is more convenient than balancing on two legs? It’s because balancing on two legs isn’t actually that inconvenient once you learned how. It was when you were a baby, but we help babies learn to walk instead of putting them in a wheelchair. Same goes for driving a manual. Once you learn to a point where you no longer need to think about it, it’s more convenient than an automatic.
Good analogy. Now go microwave a steak while I cook one over a wood fire, which steak do you think will turn out the most delicious?
ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
I mean, I have spondylitic arthritis, but okay. (Luckily I got on the good meds again.)
Ah but the question wasn’t quality, it was convenience.
Even if you argue that after a while the less convenient becomes familiar, that doesn’t really mean it was more convenient, it was just not inconvenient for you. But I have to say even if you’re a seasoned manual driver, not having to shift every 25mph is arguably more convenient than having to, even if you’ve gotten used to it.
People got used to climbing stairs, doesn’t mean we stopped using elevators.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 6 days ago
You keep assuming it’s an inconvenience that you have to ‘get used to’, that’s not the case at all.
Let’s us another example: typing. You have to learn to type, that’s inconvenient, right? When you first learn to type you have to look at the keys and hunt-and-peck to find the right keys to press. Why would you learn this when every modern computer and smartphone has speech-to-text? You can simply speak instead of typing, nothing to learn, much more convenient, right?
Except it’s not. Using speech as an input mechanism is annoying and inconvenient, it’s slow, it’s annoying to people around you, privacy is an issue in any shared space, etc. Typing by contrast is fast once you’ve learned it. You no longer consciously have to search for the keys on your keyboard or even think about it. You just think what you want to type and the words appear on your screen, your fingers move to the right keys with you barely aware of what they are doing.
The same happens in a car, even an automatic. If you want to go faster, the car goes faster, you aren’t really aware of your foot pressing the gas pedal. If you want to slow down, the car slows down, you don’t have to think about operating the break pedal, that’s just something that happens of which you are barely aware. The car basically becomes an extension of your body. The same goes for shifting, it’s not an inconvenience as you are barely aware that you are doing it. It’s like breathing. Sure, if you pay attention to it you notice, and you can consciously control it, but 99,999% of the time it’s just something that happens automatically.
As I said, the car becomes an extension of your body, and this is not something that happens ‘after a while’. it happens in the first 10 or so driving lessons. When you first get in the car on your first lesson, you are a person sitting inside a car operating it. By the 10th lesson or so you are no longer a person in car, you are the car. This happens whether or not it’s an automatic or manual. The only difference is that with a manual you have a little more control over this extended body than with an automatic. I’ve owned an automatic and that lack of control is a mild inconvenience. The automatic gearbox doesn’t know what is happening ahead of you, it can’t anticipate, so you get small annoyances like it shifting up when you know you need to slow down in a second to take a corner, and then it’s in the wrong gear and it has to shift down again when you need to accelerate out of the corner. The gearbox is not clairvoyant so it doesn’t know what I’m about to do and it’s always a little too late. It’s a small inconvenience that you don’t have with a manual.
ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
I mean, no modern automatic acts like this. It shifts up when you’re accelerating, shifts down when you’re decelerating. I guess if you’re a lead foot, it would make more difference. Or if you’re driving a race car. Not your typical road driving.