No, they can't. :) Seriously, driving fuel powered cars -- manual or not --, do not get close to the experience of driving an electric car.

Caveat: I am from Germany, have driven manuals all my life.

Every time I even drove a Citroen C-Zero shared car from Multicity for 10mins, getting back into a manual car -- even one of the nice CLA Mercedeses that car2go now offers --, feels like going back from the 21st to the 19th century.