Toyota has a new manual transmission patent for electric cars

[FROSTYBALLS]

See https://www.thedrive.com/news/44261/toyota-has-a-patent-to-recreate-manual-transmissions-for-evs

[Cyker]

That is the stupidest thing I have read today! I can only hope they've patented it with no intention of using it and in order to stop anyone else doing it either...

[Stopeter44]

Well, I do know at least one person, who bought a new car less than 6 months ago, who specifically bought a manual transmission car because they did not want to learn anything new.

They were afraid an automatic transmission would be too complicated to learn to use !

I thought they were about 6 weeks too early with the announcement, though😉 ?

[Big_D]

Sounds interesting, but after driving manual cars for most of my life I've reached that stage in my life where I'm happy with an automatic. I think I'll pass.

 

 

[Cyker]

I'd not mind if it brought any of the benefits of a manual transmission like low-speed clutch tricks or being able to mechanically decouple the transmission in the event of an emergency etc. but it doesn't so it's just a very expensive dumbing-down device.

I just... If you read it, it sounds like an April Fools joke. This is even stupider than them putting 'steps' in CVTs to make them feel like they are shifting gears instead - At least *that* I can understand to a certain extent as, if you're used to something with gears, the false-feedback you get from a CVT is disconcerting as it sounds like there is something wrong with the transmission, but you just learn to live with it, and re-learn to associate engine rpm with engine load instead of speed.

*This* just makes no sense at all - Why not just put a manual transmission in an EV then? It would have saved the no doubt millions of pointlessly wasted R&D money they've spent on this, which could have used to make the cars BETTER, and a manual box would potentially make the motor more efficient as you wouldn't need to run it up to high RPMs where PMM motors start to get significant back-EMF, so everybody wins, albeit for the price of a small weight penalty.

This just seems like an incomprehensible and ridiculous waste of research budget - It even simulates stalling, so presumably you'd have to 'start' the car again?? Why would you make the car worse!? It sounds like you get none of the benefits of a manual transmission and all of the downsides!!

They should be spending that money on making batteries better instead of wasting it on something so silly.

If you could take a manual license test with this system then that would be the sole benefit I can think of, but as it isn't it would never be classified as one anyway.

This is so wrong-headed I can't process it!

[Stopeter44]

11 minutes ago, Cyker said:

If you read it, it sounds like an April Fools joke.

Like I said, announcement about 6 weeks early.

[Catlover]

35 minutes ago, Cyker said:

This is so wrong-headed I can't process it!

Well, it looks as if you have!  😁

[Stopeter44]

11 hours ago, Cyker said:

They should be spending that money on making batteries better instead of wasting it on something so silly.

Compared with Battery development, I think a bit of onboard software is going to be very cheap.

[Catlover]

Toyota are spending millions on Battery development already.