What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

Re:What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the W... by Swizec on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @03:23AM (#15958623)

There are transmissions other than automatic. And I agree, they’re better if you know what you’re doing.

But modern high-end automatics are in fact smoother than most humans. Racecar drivers might be smoother still but even they use flappypadle automatic sequential gearboxes at the very top end of racing because even the best trained humans are just too slow.

Curiously, racing electric cars use gearboxes too.

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Re:What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the W... by gambiting on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @03:40AM (#15958684)

Yep. ZF 8 speed automatic, Mercedes new 9 speed dual clutch, are probably the smoothest transmissions available on the market. I've got years of experience of driving manual cars and I can't even pretend that I would be able to change gears as smoothly as those boxes. And I drive a Mercedes-AMG with a 7-speed dual clutch and under hard acceleration that box changes gears within 100ms(actual number supplied by AMG) - there's no way a human could change gears that quickly.

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Re:What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the W... by clouddrover on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @03:59AM (#15958764)

> Curiously, racing electric cars use gearboxes too.

Some do and some don't in Formula E:

http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2016/october/insight-how-...

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Re:What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the W... by hodgesrm on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @11:58AM (#15961593)

Speaking as a manual transmission fan I agree fully with your assessment about current automatics. My BMW 328d xDrive ships with an 8-speed automatic transmission that shifts at least as well as I can myself under normal road conditions. It really changes the equation for manual vs. automatic.

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