[romanoderoma]

It's not about soul, it's about safety

Engine braking is an important part of driving safely because it avoids losing control of the steering wheels and can be used to drive at constant speed or slow down on slippery surfaces (snow, ice, water etc.)

There's a reason if trucks are still mainly manual and even the automatic transmission in trucks is not the same used in cars (it's much more advanced and it's more a computer activated gear than simply automatic)

[gambiting]

I don't understand your argument at all. Again, every single electric car(including my own) has a regenerative mode, where the car applies gentle resistance to the electric motors when you lift your foot off the throttle - I can absolutely guarantee that if you drove one you wouldn't see any difference between this and engine braking with a manual. It provides the same level of safety in slippery conditions as a manual would.

The reasons why trucks don't usually have automatic transmissions is that the torque needed to move such a huge mass would destroy nearly every traditional hydrokinetic transmission, only recently dual clutches have started getting good enough to be installed in trucks, and indeed most new tractors you can buy now from Volvo, Mercedes or Scania are all automatic. It has nothing to do with safety, it was a technical limitation. And for braking trucks have a separate engine retarder that has nothing to do with the transmission.

[romanoderoma]

> where the car applies gentle resistance to the electric motors when you lift your foot off the throttle

are you chosing it or how much?

the answer is no.

you can't become an expert if you aren't allowed to control the parameters.

> The reasons why trucks don't usually have automatic transmissions is that the torque needed to move such a huge mass would destroy nearly every traditional hydrokinetic transmission

that's another point, automatic transmission is more expensive, less robust and increases the cost of the vehicle without adding any other benefit than being 'easier' to operate.

would you fly on a plane where the pilot only knows how to use the autopilot?

that's where safety comes in, when things take more time to master, people tend to become better at them

Manual gear is not stupid, it is simply technically superior (it costs less and lasts more).

That doesn't mean we should have levers and clutches, that's the simplistic view of wannabe futurists, trucks have something much more similar to a semi-automatic (with 10, 12, 13 gears) than a full automatic one.

Truth is car makers need to sell more cars and will gladly make them do all the work "automatically" so people don't have to learn how to do it properly.

If they don't do something now, the 15 years old of today will grow up without cars and in a generation cars would be a thing of the past (that would be great!).

How to make them survive? Well, first of all don't make them useless, make them electric and costly and cover the added cost with people taxes that go directly in car company's pockets.

Secondly make them "easy" and "cool" and "sexy" so that a teenager doesn't have to learn to drive, that's scary and dangerous, like... do you really still practice to learn? what are we, cavemen?

And make them as complex as possible, so that the price won't ever go down and a Renault Zoe will cost as much as a Tesla (a Model 3s cost about 35k, a Zoe around 33k. It's just ridicoulus!).

We live in the era of the iPhones where the promise is that anybody can do what any other people can do, even though there are people that spent their lives learning something and other that did not (I did not, for example).

Of course it is possible when what you can do is dictate by the manufacturer, because "it dangerous out there, think of your old parents! would you give them a smartphone that let them do whatever they want? of course not"

Would you give your children an ICE car?

With manual transmission?

Are you a criminal?

The whole idea that you don't know how to not destroy the planet and the car needs to teach you how to drive responsibly, while the same car has been built by those that profited from destroying the planet's environment, always fascinated me.

How did it become a good idea in people's minds?

[gambiting]

>>are you chosing it or how much? the answer is no.

Uhm, yes of course you are, at least in most cars you can chose the level of regenerative braking, the same you would in a manual car. The effect is the same as if you were going downhill and decided to stay in 4th, 3rd, 2nd or even 1st gear - it's up to you. The mechanical result of it is exactly the same as when using engine braking, so I'm really not getting what you're trying to argue here.

>>you can't become an expert if you aren't allowed to control the parameters.

Except that you are, I honestly think you aren't very up to date with what the current designs are, and almost certainly you haven't driven an electric car.

>>that's another point, automatic transmission is more expensive, less robust and increases the cost of the vehicle without adding any other benefit than being 'easier' to operate.

Again, you operate on "common knowledge" from at least 10 years ago. The "traditional" hydrokinetic automatic - absolutely, sure. But those aren't really being used in most cars nowadays. Modern Dual-Clutch automatic is as light as a manual, marginally more complex than one(because in fact is is a manual in operation), and indeed, has other benefts like improved fuel consumption and vastly faster shift times than any manual transmission can even dream of having. Again, I doubt you have actually driven one recently or at all.

>>would you fly on a plane where the pilot only knows how to use the autopilot? that's where safety comes in, when things take more time to master, people tend to become better at them

Sure, if your goal is to have everyone on the road be a professional driver, then yes, I 100% agree with you. I think people should be trained like in Germany, where a part of training is going on the Autobahn and driving at 200km/h+ for a little bit. I'd love that. I also think that my opinion on this topic is irrelevant because like I said earlier for most drivers this level of skill is unnecessary. Funnily enough, the exact same argument has been used to argue against autopilot in planes though - that its introduction will lead to pilots becoming inept and unable to act in emergencies. And that has actually happened in at least one documented plane crash - the autopilot disengaged and the pilots couldn't figure out why and the plane crashed. But....that doesn't change the fact that overal the introduction of autopilot has decreased the amount of accidents by several orders of magnitute - it made flying safer for everyone, even if it meant that pilots are now slightly worse at flying without it.

>>Manual gear is not stupid, it is simply technically superior (it costs less and lasts more).

Yeah except that in practice it doesn't, because people wear out manual transmissions all the time by being crap at using it. My dad used to have a car repair shop and someone who isn't "passionate" about cars will destroy a manual by just being an idiot at how they shift gears. People constantly break them by not using the clutch properly, shifting at the wrong moment, staying in the wrong gear for too long.....you physically cannot do this in an automatic, because you don't get to change the gears yourself - so in practice and for "an average consumer" they last longer.

Besides, I just want to point out - I love how you took my argument against a blanket ban on ICE cars, and you turned it upside down into an argument about manual cars and the love of driving. I have started by, and continued to argue that the ban is stupid because: 1) people will need ICE cars

2) There are enthusiasts who should be able to keep driving them if they already own them

For my enthusiast driving needs, please give me a good MX-5 or a roll cage equipped Impreza, any day please. But for most cars for average consumer shouldn't be anywhere near like that. They should be electric, they should be full of safety tech, and they should baby their drivers and passangers. Like, again, like I said multiple arguments ago - these are not mutually exclusive positions to take.

[romanoderoma]

> and almost certainly you haven't driven an electric car.

Of course I did.

And if you compare features and prices, they offer a way worse experience than a traditional car.

I've also driven rally cars professionally and on track sometimes with semi automatic gears.

I just lack the vocabulary to talk thoroughly about it in English (sorry, I studied business English and then computer science, not mechanical engineering...)

The state of the art is absolutely better and has been for decades, but the state of the art is not what people drive everyday.

The most popular EV right now in Europe is the Renault Zoe, which honestly is good, but far from great (and you can buy the same exact car with an ICE engine for 10k less, it's 30% less!)

Smart EQ is on the rise given the small size which is a great quality in many EU cities, it's as bad as the ICE one. At least it's affordable.

Except for Tesla all the other offer a very bad experience for the price, even the BMW i3 is not what you would expect from a 40 thousands euros car.

> People constantly break them by not using the clutch properly, shifting at the wrong moment

As I said I grew up in a repair shop too, imagine what they do to their cars when the same people think that an automatic is easier to drive so they put even less effort to it.

They destroy every other piece of the car, irresponsible people will be irresponsible.

I am not rooting for ice cars, but for letting cars go as a necessity and think of something else.

Electric cars are just another way to keep producing the same old product in a slightly different way.

They give a false sense of security and of progress.

But we are gonna have a black market for hacks and modified parts (batteries probably) anyway and they will be as dangerous as the traditional cars we have right now for pedestrians and other road users.

The problem with cars is barely the pollution, it's the effect that they produced on our environment, especially the highly dense urbanized areas of the World

If they were harder to drive and operate there will be less of them around

We got rid of people dying by falling from horses by not riding horses anymore as a standard way to travel

How many people do you see flying a plane?

A Cessna is not more expensive than a high end Tesla

P.s. flying without autopilot is barely possible, using an autopilot without mastering flight first is unimaginable

P.p.s. the same people not using the clutch correctly are going to mess with the engine controls on their new electric cars. How is that going to be better? Are they magically going to be better at operating machinery? Or will they care less because "EV are the future they almost drive themselves?"

P.p.p.s. the number of fatalities is constantly going down because there are more and more mandatory safety devices on cars, but the number of accidents is almost steady (at least in Italy) also considering that the number of km driven went down due to 2 global economic crisis and a pandemia in 20 years and the increase of restricted areas in cities. But, and this is the bad news, there were more cars in Italy in 2019 than ever before, 1.4% more than 2018.

In red goal for 2020 victim reduction, in black actual number of victims

https://www.pneurama.com/ew/ew_articolo/images/weekly_it/ima...