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I used to like driving manual cars, but with today's combination of heavy traffic for most of the day and week, idiots crossing the road all over the gaff (necessistating needing two hands on the wheel more often) and me not being the best at gear changing, I'd rather have the pleasure of a smooth auto box doing that work for me, even if it does sap some power and reduce performance.
I don't trust automated manuals or dual clutch autos as they aren't as smooth or reliable over the longer term and still make mistakes when shifting by guessing wrong, as well as (some at least) dangerously hesitating when moving off from a standstill, never mind additional wear as standard by creeping forward in traffic jams - the main reason why I would buy an automatic car.
As long as you've got sufficient power at your disposal, then a TC auto box is fine, and if it has it, you can still 'manually' up or downshift if your want to. The CVTs are probably fine if you don't need much oomph, but I don't like the high-pitched whine when you need to floor it and the revs go to max without much in the way of go.
My next car, assuming I can afford a brand new/nearly new one, will almost certainly be an auto, and a TC one at that. Driving is rarely a 'pleasure' these days for me, more of a chore with the occasional nice few minutes on a decent, empty, fast-flowing country road.
I'd rather have a comfortable, relaxing driving experience, hence why I've just changed by wheels and tyres (both needed changing anyway) from 205/55 R16 to 195/65 R15. Much more comfortable ride, no discernable drop in grip, hopefully a bit better mpg and better in snow (with CrossClimates on).
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As long as you've got sufficient power at your disposal, then a TC auto box is fine, and if it has it, you can still 'manually' up or downshift if your want to.
You can't "manually up" the TC auto box on my car, so I assumed they were all like that. Which cars with that type of box enable you to do? I'm not looking for a comprehensive list!
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As long as you've got sufficient power at your disposal, then a TC auto box is fine, and if it has it, you can still 'manually' up or downshift if your want to.
You can't "manually up" the TC auto box on my car, so I assumed they were all like that. Which cars with that type of box enable you to do? I'm not looking for a comprehensive list!
Most (if not all) TC autos change down if you 'kickdown' on the accelerator, for instance for overtaking. Even the DAF CV system of many years ago did the same.
Easing off the accelerator usually results in a change to a higher ratio if conditions allow.
Again, most TC autos have other lever positions than 'D', which set different change points.
I'm interested to know what your car is?
Edited by galileo on 12/05/2018 at 19:49
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I'm interested to know what your car is?
It's a Vauxhall Agila B. Does that have any relevance to my question?
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I'm interested to know what your car is?
It's a Vauxhall Agila B. Does that have any relevance to my question?
Yes, because you said you couldn't manually get it to change up or down, which suggests it doesn't have a 'kickdown' function, or D1/D2 on the lever, which is unusual.
Or have I misunderstood what you said?
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Or have I misunderstood what you said?
You've misread it. I said you can't manually "up" it - it has kickdown. It was the same in the only other TC auto I've driven - a Toyota Lucida.
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You can shift manually on an Agila, as you can with pretty much all auto's apart from electric. Here is a pic of an Agila B gear selector, which clearly shows 'L', '2', '3-D'. You can shift manually using these positions, but on a car like the Agila, there would be little point unless driving slowly on snow or ice, especially downhill, where you can control your speed to a degree without using the brake pedal.
vcarsdna.com/images/vehicles/81/large/e850e9f23083...g
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My impression is as follows:
Going up the gears, if you select 3, you are saying to the gearbox "Don't go any higher than 3rd gear". If you select D, you are saying "Change into top gear when the road speed is correct".
Going down the gears, if you've selected D and are going more than about 40mph (i.e. you're in top gear), selecting 3 will immediately make the box change down.
I've just been for a short, uphill spin in the car which seems to prove this. I put the box in 3, but moving the stick to D partway up the hill made no difference. The box didn't change to top gear until the road speed was correct.
Am I right?
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Sure, but you you were driving uphill in a manual car, you wouldn't put it into too high a gear for the engine to pull, so why would you in an auto?. If you are going uphill in 3, then select D, it isn't going to change into 4th unless the engine can pull it. But if you are driving along on the level at 40mph in 3, then do the same thing, it will change up into 4th. Same thing would happen at slower speeds going from L into 2, and 2 into 3.
Ergo, you can change manually.
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My car changes into top gear at about 40mph. As most of my everyday driving is urban, I'd have to break the 30mph limit to use top gear. I know very well, however, that the car engine would pull top gear at 30mph in many instances, so long as I was gentle with the accelerator. Engineer Andy's post seemed to be saying that some TC auto boxes allow you to change up to a higher gear at will. Hence my question.
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The answer is still the same though. Apart from electric cars, which usually only have one gear, the only auto cars i can think of which doesn't offer some measure of manual control, are some Rolls Royce's. But pretty much every TC auto, including your Agila, does give you the option of shifting manually. Most modern TC auto's will have paddles for changing, some of them (i think) will give the driver complete control, including changing up when you shouldn't, but most, as far as i am aware, won't allow the driver to shift manually to a higher ratio than the engine can pull.
As a bus driver, i often found myself doing late town service on a bus which was well past it's best, and producing somewhat less power than it should have been. I didn't mind as it was an extremely dull shift, and having so little power meant having to concentrate more to keep to schedule, which made the shift pass quicker!. This would entail me shifting the gears manually to extract the most of what little there was before shifting up. If left to its own devices in drive, the gearbox would change up earlier, and be even slower!.
Our Honda Jazz is a CVT and as such, does not have actual gears, but it is electronically stepped, to mimic having 7 gears. I have tried it a few times, but to be honest, it was much more of a faff than i expected, even with the paddles, possibly because there are so many (fake) gears. So i just leave it in drive, which works fine under all circumstances apart from on icy or snowy roads, when i will shift manually just for that little bit of extra braking when slowing to a stop.
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Most modern TC auto's will have paddles for changing, some of them (i think) will give the driver complete control, including changing up when you shouldn't ...
Back to my original question then - which are they?
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Most modern TC auto's will have paddles for changing, some of them (i think) will give the driver complete control, including changing up when you shouldn't ...
Back to my original question then - which are they?
Mitsubishi Outlander has steering wheel paddles, which I rarely use - very occasionally to pre-select a lower gear for acceleration, or for long steep hills to avoid continual braking.
The Outander doesn't, but some have a 'tiptronic' sequential change position using the selector lever in a second plane. Some have tip and paddles. I think the first I drove with tip was a Honda Stream.
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Most modern TC auto's will have paddles for changing, some of them (i think) will give the driver complete control, including changing up when you shouldn't ...
Back to my original question then - which are they?
TBH I couldn't name a particular car, I read so many car magazines. I'm not even 100% sure that you get any, but if you do it's likely to be some kind of high end sports car. Though I'm puzzled as to why you'd want the ability to change up an auto box when the engine wasn't able to pull the higher gear?.
I'm pretty sure that isn't what engineer Andy meant by his comment, only that a TC auto allows manual control within the parameters of the engine and gearboxes ability, like your Agila.
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I've got two Saab 9-5's out on the drive at the moment. One is a fairly recent Aero estate with auto and flappy paddles to play with. The other is an older 2.0 with manual gearbox. One gets a reasonable drive out of both. The Aero is a geat motorway barge as you don't need to think about gears at all. The 2.0 has enough torque to drive around locally pretty much in 3rd gear.
The only small problem is remembering which one I'm in. I have (very occasional) stalls in the 2.0 forgetting that it's the manual one ....
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BBD said "... I'm puzzled as to why you'd want the ability to change up an auto box when the engine wasn't able to pull the higher gear?".
I did a speed awareness course when I had my previous car - 1.6 petrol/manual box. One of the things impressed upon us was keep the car in a low gear in urban environments to avoid exceeding the speed limit. That's pretty obvious, of course, but it uses more fuel and that led me to experiment. I found that, in certain circumstances (e.g. flat road, driver only, no luggage), the car could pull top gear without strain, so long as I changed down a gear if I wanted to accelerate away suddenly.
As I said, most of my everyday driving is urban and a lot of it is in the circumstances indicated above. I suspect the Agila's 1.2 engine could also pull top gear in the same circumstances. That's why I latched on to Engineer Andy's statement which implied that some TC auto boxes can be changed into a higher gear when the driver chooses. It would appear, however, that our interpretations of the word "manual" do not coincide.
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I did a speed awareness course when I had my previous car - 1.6 petrol/manual box. One of the things impressed upon us was keep the car in a low gear in urban environments to avoid exceeding the speed limit. That's pretty obvious, of course, but it uses more fuel and that led me to experiment.
Keeping a car in a low gear in an urban environment doesn't use more fuel. The engine is revving higher, but you're using a very light throttle opening (hence less fuel) to maintain speed.
It's like riding a bike. If you ride along a level road in a low gear, you are pedalling faster but it is easier than trying to pedal against a higher gear - you are having to push harder and will use more calories. Likewise with an engine and gearbox.
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When i started working at a Saab dealer in Aberdeen in 1990, the 'classic' old 900 was still on sale and the auto versions of that still had only 3 gears. The 9000 series at the time had 4 gears, then when the 'new' (vauxhall based) 900 came along, it also had a 4 speed auto, along with sport and winter mode's. I never had the chance to try the clutchless manual (i think it was called sensonic) as i'd moved on by then.
But the van i currently use for work, a VW Caddy 2.0 SDI (non turbo), can be driven almost as an auto around town, with 3rd gear happily pulling from walking pace!.
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Most modern TC auto's will have paddles for changing, some of them (i think) will give the driver complete control, including changing up when you shouldn't ...
Back to my original question then - which are they?
Mazdas, but perhaps only auto Sport versions - a CX-3 2.0 petrol auto I tested last year had steering wheel paddles as well as a 'tiptronic' style gear lever up and down shift. I'm presuming this feature is the same on all Sport auto models for other Mazdas (at the very least the CX-3, 3 and upwards).
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Most modern TC auto's will have paddles for changing, some of them (i think) will give the driver complete control, including changing up when you shouldn't ...
Back to my original question then - which are they?
Mazdas, but perhaps only auto Sport versions - a CX-3 2.0 petrol auto I tested last year had steering wheel paddles as well as a 'tiptronic' style gear lever up and down shift. I'm presuming this feature is the same on all Sport auto models for other Mazdas (at the very least the CX-3, 3 and upwards).
Perhaps I didn't spell it out enough, but the crucial question for me is whether the controls allow an upchange at a time the driver decides or at a time the technology decides is appropriate.
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Most modern TC auto's will have paddles for changing, some of them (i think) will give the driver complete control, including changing up when you shouldn't ...
Back to my original question then - which are they?
Mazdas, but perhaps only auto Sport versions - a CX-3 2.0 petrol auto I tested last year had steering wheel paddles as well as a 'tiptronic' style gear lever up and down shift. I'm presuming this feature is the same on all Sport auto models for other Mazdas (at the very least the CX-3, 3 and upwards).
Perhaps I didn't spell it out enough, but the crucial question for me is whether the controls allow an upchange at a time the driver decides or at a time the technology decides is appropriate.
Yes - otherwise the tiptronic or padel shifters would be useless...
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Yes - otherwise the tiptronic or padel shifters would be useless...
Sorry to be pedantic, but is that "Yes, they allow an upchange at a time the driver decides.."?
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If you have an auto in drive mode, it will be in the highest usable gear for any given situation anyway, so i'm not sure what you are getting at?. Going back to our Jazz for example, there is a town half way between mine and my parents where there is a long straight, level section of road which is a 30mph limit. If i drive along this stretch with just enough throttle to maintain that speed, the engine speed will drop to under 1500rpm. It will be quite happy there until the elevation starts to climb, or i press the throttle a little harder. Now i'm not sure which of the Jazz's 7 artificial ratios is being used, but it certainly isn't 7th, and there wouldn't be any point or benefit being in a higher gear as you wouldn't be using any less fuel. This brings me to your comment,
"One of the things impressed upon us was keep the car in a low gear in urban environments to avoid exceeding the speed limit. That's pretty obvious, of course, but it uses more fuel and that led me to experiment."
This is only partly true as your economy is dependant not on revs, but throttle opening. So you may find yourself in a situation in your manual car where you can maintain 30mph in 5th, but if you are pressing the throttle further down than you would need to in 3rd or 4th, you will be using more fuel despite the engine speed being lower.
But at the end of the day, if you want that much manual control, you really should be driving a manual!
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Indeed, though I suspect John Boy wants an automated manual (no clutch control required), which don't have a great reputation. And to JB, to answer your question, again, yes, otherwise it would be pointless having the facility if the auto box always overrode the manual mode.
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You seem to be trying to persuade me that manually over-riding the timing of the upchanges on a TC auto gearbox is undesirable. That may be so, but my question was "Is it possible and, if so, which cars have it."
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" I suspect John Boy wants an automated manual (no clutch control required), which don't have a great reputation."
No, I'm not looking for another car, I'm just wanting to understand more about automatic gearboxes.
Edited by John Boy on 13/05/2018 at 16:50
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Having had extensive experience of driving different automatics It has always been the case that changing up, even manually, is governed by load and speed. This means that the associated electronics will not allow an up change if the load and speed conditions would put undue strain on the drivetrain.
Automatic boxes generally speaking put you in a gear that is suitable for the manner the vehicle is being driven, press the throttle hard and it will change down to give better acceleration, ease off the throttle and it will select a higher ratio to give better economy. It will not allow a higher ratio if the speed and load is not sufficient to be economical and/or ease the load on the drivetrain.
Being in too high a gear ratio for the given conditions will increase fuel consumption, this apples to both manual and automatic transmissions but in an automatic this situation just doesn’t arise as the electronics override that possibility.
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Yes - otherwise the tiptronic or padel shifters would be useless...
Sorry to be pedantic, but is that "Yes, they allow an upchange at a time the driver decides.."?
I am presuming so, but I don't work for Mazda, nor did I ask about this at the dealership at the time I tested it. As I said in my earlier post, it would be a rather silly function if the car over-rode it every time it thought a gear change (up or down) was needed, wouldn't you say? The gear lever has a separate position to be selected for this 'manual mode'.
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My Astra 1600 automatic drops into top gear on a light throttle at 45mph and back down again at 42mph so that when driving on a 40mph limit road it feels to a manual driver of my generation brought up on four speeds that your in the wrong gear. The standard advice after servicing a Cortina was to retard the ignition until slight pinking could be heard when accelerating from 25mph in top. Enthusiasts knew when you had filled up with cheap petrol because it sounded like someone hammering on the bonnet when you put your foot down. Electronic engine control systems now largely negate the requirement for the driver to have mechanical sympathy which was once a large part of roadcraft. This has contributed to the early demise of many turbo wizzbangs. An automatic will not allow you to grind along in a tall gear to its mechanical detriment and increased fuel consumption.
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Electronic engine control systems now largely negate the requirement for the driver to have mechanical sympathy which was once a large part of roadcraft.
Careful, common sense attitudes like this tend to get one accused of all sorts of ills, next thing you'll be telling us that 20+k mile oil change intervals combinded with thrashing the living daylights out of a cold engine and switching off turbos when they're still glowing red don't lead to a long trouble free engine life :-)
You're absoltuely spot on though, couldn't agree more.
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Yes - otherwise the tiptronic or padel shifters would be useless...
Sorry to be pedantic, but is that "Yes, they allow an upchange at a time the driver decides.."?
I am presuming so, but I don't work for Mazda, nor did I ask about this at the dealership at the time I tested it. As I said in my earlier post, it would be a rather silly function if the car over-rode it every time it thought a gear change (up or down) was needed, wouldn't you say? The gear lever has a separate position to be selected for this 'manual mode'.
The specific situation given by John Boy was driving uphill under load, where his Agila auto wouldn't allow him to change manually up from 3rd to 4th. I'm not 100% sure, but i have my doubts the Mazda you mention, or pretty much any other TC auto, would allow you to shift up under these conditions unless the engine was able to pull the higher gear, for reasons explained better than me by coopshere.
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Yes - otherwise the tiptronic or padel shifters would be useless...
Sorry to be pedantic, but is that "Yes, they allow an upchange at a time the driver decides.."?
I am presuming so, but I don't work for Mazda, nor did I ask about this at the dealership at the time I tested it. As I said in my earlier post, it would be a rather silly function if the car over-rode it every time it thought a gear change (up or down) was needed, wouldn't you say? The gear lever has a separate position to be selected for this 'manual mode'.
I can tell you with a fair degree of confidence what happens.
In manual mode, the driver can select the gear if his choice subject to
- if he selects a gear that will over-rev the engine, it will not be engaged
- if he selects a gear that is too high for what would be the resultant rpm, it will not be engaged.
This seems to me to be fairly sensible and acceptable.
Kick down (not strictly kick down any more, as there is no switch, it's all based on algorithms) is the worst way of selecting a lower gear. Far quicker and safer to do it with the paddle in preparation for the overtake or whatever.
I struggle to imagine a situation where I would want to force a higher gear while driving in auto, the car seems to use the highest possible gear most of the time. The exception to that is that it will change down early when braking downhill (algorithms again).
Now and then (in a Mitsubishi, not a Mazda) I will select a still lower gear for a steep descent. All that is necessary is a pull of the '-' paddle. As often as not, I will then leave it to its own devices. As soon as the gear becomes unsuitable (below c. 800rpm ) the car will drop back into auto mode on its own.
To force a change from manual back to auto, I just hold the '+' paddle for half a second or so. This is a fairly common feature.
So it isn't completely manual, more drive by-wire. You send your request to the gearbox, and it decides what to do with it. Just like the accelerator does in nearly every newish car
In practice, on most drives I will not touch the paddles at all as there is no need. I also have an instinct that the less the gearbox is overridden, the longer it will last. I think this is particularly applicable to DSGs. I have absolutely no data to back this up.
Edited by Manatee on 14/05/2018 at 14:39
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Sounds like a sensible feature to me, a bit like the rev limiter on a manual car protecting the engine parts. Only an idiot would select such a daft gear anyway. I'd be interested to see what it did in snowy/icy conditions, where drivers of manuals are supposed to use higher gears than normal to reduce the chances of wheelspin, i.e. to stop (if at all possible) an auto stalling the engine by selecting to high a gear.
I did see the late Tara Palmer-Tomkinson stall an auto car (I think it was a flashy car) when going for a spin in it with Clarkson on Top Gear some years ago; whether newer cars can stop this happening (he was surprised when it happened) today, I don't know.
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