@ratchet freak said:
@PJH said:
@joe.edwards said:@Lorne Kates said:Thank fuck auto manufactures aren't (always) designing UX like that. I mean, "99.9%" of people don't use D3, D2 and D1-- so let's engineer it away because it might confuse someone when they're trying to find "D".
I've never driven a car with D3 D2 D1. My car just has D. I had to look it up.
Just looked it up myself (having driven nothing but a manual) - aren't those pretendy type selections to make it seem you're driving a manual instead of an automatic without going to the trouble of buying a car with a proper manually operated clutch? If you want that much choice, why not buy a manual to begin with and be done with it?
Because if you have a manual clutch you need to finagle the car into motion without stalling by finding the biting point each time. It's much easier to just take your foot of the brake and step on the gas.
In other words; an automatic is a convenience for people that don't want to bother with the intricacies of mastering the driving of a car or have tried and failed miserably.
A manual gearbox typically has less wear than an automatic, is far cheaper to replace when it does eventually gets worn too far (both due to less complex components involved in the gearbox) and when driving manually the driver will typically be able to better anticipate road and traffic conditions and shift gears to keep the engine RPM and output revolutions closer to optimal for both engine lifetime and fuel consumption. That's the price of convenience for you.
The various subcategories of the D setting do serve an actual function though; they block off the automatic transmission from using certain gears. It's similar to when a driver in a manual would decide to not shift into another gear and let the engine's RPM fall low or climb higher instead. It's typically bad for the engine and bad for fuel consumption when you sustain this for longer times, however it is also bad for the transmission to shift constantly. That means locking out certain gears can also be good a thing. E.g. when driving in a city a manual transmission with 5 gears would also typically not see its 4th gear being used all that much, because the driver would then constantly have to shift back to 3rd or 2nd for bends in the road or hitting the brakes and going back to 1st at traffic lights. Instead a driver can opt to stay in a lower gear for a bit longer and rev the engine a little higher. (Shifting into 5th is pretty much reserved for roads outside the city. You'd be nowhere near the optimal speed to switch to 5th when driving within city limits unless you were seriously breaking traffic regulations...)
It's still nowhere near what a manual transmission gives you, but this kind of control already helps an automatic transmission to substantially reduce wear due to shifiting and it helps improve the car's fuel consumption rates due to pegging the transmission down to a more optimal range of ratios between engine RPM and output RPM.