5 Reasons You Shouldn't Buy An Automatic Transmission Car

hello everyone and welcome in this video we are talking about five reasons not to buy an automatic transmission in other words five of the big disadvantages of automatic transmissions we are sitting inside of a 2019 mustang bullet so this is basically a mustang gt that's a little bit beefed up um you know a few tweaks with the engines things like that but they only offer it with a manual transmission unlike the regular mustang gt which you can get with a 10-speed automatic or a six-speed manual and so you know why would you only offer manual transmission and what are the advantages of manual transmissions so the first three that i want to get into are going to be a direct comparison between two different model cars and so the first one we're going to talk about price because generally speaking automatics are more expensive it's an added cost option uh it's very rare that both the manual and the automatic cost the same in the example of this mustang gt it's sixteen hundred dollars to get the 10-speed automatic over the six-speed manual another example is the subaru wrx which you can get a cvt if you would like for nineteen hundred dollars more than the manual transmission so generally speaking you're going to be paying more for an automatic transmission so it's nice to have you know i think something which is more fun to drive and you pay less for it now the second reason is efficiency and i don't want to get this confused with fuel economy because they are different things so when you have a torque converter in automatic or you have a clutch based transmission in a manual transmission vehicle then the torque converter when it isn't locked and most modern torque converters will lock but when you're accelerating for a step from a stop when it isn't locked and as you're starting to get up to speed that torque converter is turning some of its power into heat into that fluid and so as a coupling a clutch is much more efficient at transmitting power than a torque converter now again modern torque converters will lock up and you know once you get into higher speeds and so as you get into those higher speeds they are matching efficiency and then there are also other reasons why an automatic could be more efficient so for example with the mustang it has 10 gear ratios to choose from rather than six with the subaru wrx it's got a cvt so it can put the engine wherever it wants so even if the transmission itself is less efficient at transmitting power it can put the engine in a spot that makes it beneficial for fuel economy now that said the 10-speed mustang gt gets the same highway fuel economy as the six-speed manual which is pretty crazy because you would think that they would be able to have a bit wider range of gear ratios there also it only gets one better in the city so 16 miles per gallon versus 15 in the city 25 25 on the highway and in the case of the subaru wrx what's crazy to me is that that vehicle gets three miles per gallon better in both city and highway with the manual transmission rather than the cvt so just showing you know from an efficiency standpoint a manual transmission which is just coupling uh this clutch this clutch disc to the transmission it's a very efficient way of transmitting power now the third thing is weight and this is perhaps part of why that subaru wrx is getting worse fuel economy the cvt on the subaru wrx adds about 150 pounds it's like having an additional passenger uh if that passenger weighs you know about as much as i do maybe slightly more not revealing any secrets here uh but in the mustang they actually did a pretty good job with it so either the manual this six-speed manual is either really heavy or the 10 speed is really light and i think what they did is they made a decently light 10 speed it's only a 30 pound difference about a 30 pound difference between the mustang gt with the manual six-speed uh 30 pounds lighter than the 10-speed automatic now the fourth reason not to buy an automatic is the fact that if you're out in the middle of nowhere you're stranded and either your starter fails or your battery dies with a manual transmission you have a last-ditch effort to get that engine started again so you turn the ignition on uh you know into the on position at the equivalent of it and then you start pushing the car and as you're pushing the car you then push in the clutch put it in gear generally people use second gear that's because it won't spin the engine up quite as high as first gear you could do it in either but second gear tends to be a smoother process put it in second gear you've got the clutch pressed in you release the clutch once you're actually moving at you know a slow enough speed maybe three or four or five miles an hour you release that clutch that spins up the engine and then you quickly press the clutch back in and hopefully it's enough to get that engine started and then you're off your way you've got your alternator which is providing current to you know your spark plugs and so everything works out so that's a cool thing about manual transmissions is that in the scenario that maybe your starter dies or your battery dies and you're just absolutely in the middle of nowhere no one's around you can't jump it things like that it's a nice option to have that in the back your mind knowing you know worse comes to it i can probably start pushing my car hopefully get it started and then get back uh if something were to happen so that's a nice benefit to manual transmission vehicles look at all these uh triple wheel tricycle bicycle i don't know what they're called anyways ride bro no i don't okay so our fifth and final point uh why not to buy an automatic transmission this is simply the fact that automatic transmissions can't read your mind and the good news is a lot of modern transmissions are starting to come with paddle shifters or at least a stick shifter where you can choose what gear to put the car in the bad news is that if you specifically bought that automatic so you don't have to shift gears you don't have to think about it worry about it do anything then you know that automatic transmission is going to do its best job of trying to predict what gear it should be in based on mostly your throttle input and so that's how it's going to decide you know what gear should i be in and it's not always going to have it right you know if you're crawling up to well let's say there's the light turns yellow and you want to accelerate through it but you don't want to downshift because you know that'll take extra time well it doesn't know that so if you give it too much throttle it's going to downshift it's going to take up more time you maybe you don't get quite through that yellow intersection you shouldn't run red lights uh i hope that's obvious or perhaps you're going downhill and it doesn't choose the right gear for engine braking and so you know it's nice to be able to in a manual transmission you just choose whichever gear applies the the right amount of engine braking in an automatic hopefully you can select the gears but if you can't you know it's not going to necessarily do it for you and some modern ones will if you use cruise control they'll start to actually use engine brake as a way of not letting you go too much over that cruise limit that you set but regardless an automatic transmission is doing its best job to try and pick what gear it thinks the core should be in the thing about a manual transmission is you can never complain about what gear you're in because if you don't like what gear you're in we'll just shift to a different gear [Music] you only have yourself to blame that's the beauty of a manual transmission now i personally think they're also more engaging and they're simpler but i'm not going to necessarily say like a blanket statement across the board that a manual transmission is going to be more reliable if you don't drive it well replacing a clutch can certainly be expensive but i think there is certainly a benefit from a driver engagement standpoint where you have more to do in a manual transmission than an automatic and it makes driving a bit more fun so thank you all so much for watching and if you have any questions or comments of course feel free to leave those below [Music] you

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 1,498,994

Keywords: automatic transmission, how to drive an automatic, don't drive an automatic, automatic vs manual, don't buy an automatic, manual transmission, manual, transmission, don't do this, how to drive, never do this automatic, advantages of manual transmission, best transmission, manuals are better, how it works, engineering explained, how transmission works, engineering, science, technology

Id: 3M65dOQPhrA

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 07 2018