How Practical is This?

[Xerxys]

I was having this dream last night about Knight-Rider and I decided I was gonna build myself a virtual vehicle. I will begin with the transmission and I thought I would ask you guys before posting this in another vahicle forum.

The transmission would be both manual and automatic. These already exist in certain cars I have been in like the Hyundai and the pacific, also I've seen them in some Hondas. I have also seen the lambourghini has the transmission controls next to the steering wheel but with two sticks. One to increase and one to decrease. But in my concept fantasy car the trans would look like this.



The gears would be separated by a switch next to the hand brake that when set to manual, would release the clutch pedal. It would restrict you from setting it back to automatic unless you use your foot to raise the cluitch pedal, (not depress it like you usually would to change gears) and click it in place. I am also willing to substitute The Neutral position of the gear above to the center of the gear console for symmetry.

When in Manual mode, the gears 3-4-5 and Reverse would function just as they should in a manual vehicle. But when in auto mode, They would be replaced by the automatic functions and you would be unable to change to any other gears besides the reverse option. That is available for both settings.

So, this fantasy car of mine would possibly even cost me fantasy money. Now, have at it. What do you think? How practical is this and how much do you think it might cost?

[Jinn]

In terms of the diagram above, the alignment of the gates seems relatively intuitive. It would be nice to have the optional for manual mode while driving an automatic car, as you see in many of the manumatic crossovers, Audis, Mazdas, etc., with paddle or stick (clutchless) shifting. It's incredibly valuable to engage manual mode in an otherwise automatic vehicle for steep mountain grades, as I saw last weekend navigating Eisenhower tunnel in my girlfriend's car.

I think the user could ultimately get used to having both options, but I think most people who drive stick-shift cars comfortably will always use the manual mode, and people who prefer automatic mode would almost never switch to a clutched manual mode, except for perhaps 'racing' on city streets.

The real (unfortunate) downfall, I think, is the mechanical complexity of the transfer case / transmission itself. An automatic transmission is incrediblity complex, including a torque converter, planetary gears, automatic clutches/bands, valve body and the whole mess of hydraulic pressure necessary to operate them. They're much heavier than manual transmissions (in hundreds of pounds). To my knowledge, it'd be almost impossible to retrofit an automatic transmission to provide the 'manual' clutched experience, so you'd essentially have to have the entire manual transmission and the entire automatic transmission, in parallel. Lots of extra weight added to the car, which translates to handling, center of gravity, acceleration, and braking, among other things. If this were a middle-of-the-road "around town" type vehicle, that might not be a primary concrn, but it would also affect gas mileage.

---------- Post added at 04:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:28 PM ----------

Edit:

Is having the 'manual' gate arrangement really what's important to you about this design?

Out of curiousity, have you ever driven a clutchless automatic transmission? They really do give the benefits of both with similar weight considerations by removing much and adding a great deal of electronics. Especially in ones that allow you to toggle between modes essentially seamlessly, it accomplishes your goal without an entire new gear box and gate arrangement as you have above. There are a number of high price vehicles with incredible clutchless manuals, namely many of the Porsches and Ferrari's out there now. Likewise, some crossovers exist like the 370Z, which despite being entirely manual has rev-matching electronics, so down-shifts are always preformed precisely for engine speed and torque. My girlfriend's Mazda 6 has this:



Where the normal automatic transmission is handled with the standard column, but while in drive you can push it right into "manual' mode, which lets you force up and down gear shifts. When you come to a stop it automatically puts it into first to avoid sluggish starts, and it will automatically down-shift if you really bog it in too high of a gear. It handles the peculiarities, but it's incredibly useful to say, stick it in third gear for a steep 7% grade downhill on ice, something that would cause an entirely automatic car to navigate dangerously, forcing them to use their brakes to excess to keep the car from accelerating out of control.

[Daniel_]

Originally Posted by Jinn

In terms of the diagram above, the alignment of the gates seems relatively intuitive. It would be nice to have the optional for manual mode while driving an automatic car, as you see in many of the manumatic crossovers, Audis, Mazdas, etc., with paddle or stick (clutchless) shifting. It's incredibly valuable to engage manual mode in an otherwise automatic vehicle for steep mountain grades, as I saw last weekend navigating Eisenhower tunnel in my girlfriend's car.

I think the user could ultimately get used to having both options, but I think most people who drive stick-shift cars comfortably will always use the manual mode, and people who prefer automatic mode would almost never switch to a clutched manual mode, except for perhaps 'racing' on city streets.

The real (unfortunate) downfall, I think, is the mechanical complexity of the transfer case / transmission itself. An automatic transmission is incrediblity complex, including a torque converter, planetary gears, automatic clutches/bands, valve body and the whole mess of hydraulic pressure necessary to operate them. They're much heavier than manual transmissions (in hundreds of pounds). To my knowledge, it'd be almost impossible to retrofit an automatic transmission to provide the 'manual' clutched experience, so you'd essentially have to have the entire manual transmission and the entire automatic transmission, in parallel. Lots of extra weight added to the car, which translates to handling, center of gravity, acceleration, and braking, among other things. If this were a middle-of-the-road "around town" type vehicle, that might not be a primary concrn, but it would also affect gas mileage.

---------- Post added at 04:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:28 PM ----------

Edit:

Is having the 'manual' gate arrangement really what's important to you about this design?

Out of curiousity, have you ever driven a clutchless automatic transmission? They really do give the benefits of both with similar weight considerations by removing much and adding a great deal of electronics. Especially in ones that allow you to toggle between modes essentially seamlessly, it accomplishes your goal without an entire new gear box and gate arrangement as you have above. There are a number of high price vehicles with incredible clutchless manuals, namely many of the Porsches and Ferrari's out there now. Likewise, some crossovers exist like the 370Z, which despite being entirely manual has rev-matching electronics, so down-shifts are always preformed precisely for engine speed and torque. My girlfriend's Mazda 6 has this:



Where the normal automatic transmission is handled with the standard column, but while in drive you can push it right into "manual' mode, which lets you force up and down gear shifts. When you come to a stop it automatically puts it into first to avoid sluggish starts, and it will automatically down-shift if you really bog it in too high of a gear. It handles the peculiarities, but it's incredibly useful to say, stick it in third gear for a steep 7% grade downhill on ice, something that would cause an entirely automatic car to navigate dangerously, forcing them to use their brakes to excess to keep the car from accelerating out of control.

My "spare" car (i.e. my mother's car) has the same system - it's a Subaru Legacy Outback, and I love the gearbox on it. In a long dull drive it takescare of itself, but on hills or in speedy situations you can punch it down a gear to get the benefit.

win/win.

[MSD]

A manual transmission has pairs of input/output gears that are constantly intermeshed but normally disconnected from the output shaft, and dog gears that are actuated by the shifter to couple each pair to the output shaft when appropriate. An automatic transmission contains a sun gear, planetary gearset, a system of clutches, and a fluid that cools the transmission as well as providing both lubrication and friction for the moving parts. When the shift selector is in each spot, electronics and hydraulics cause voodoo and magic through direct hydraulic passageways to valves, openings, and dead ends that were included by the designer to make i8t more difficult to escape. Those wonderful "manumaitc" transmissions are just automatics with manual control over shift points and high end cars have sequential manual gearboxes that don't require you to touch a clutch pedal and are essentially the unholy marriage of a manual transmission and a retractable pen.

What it looks like you want to do is to turn a manumatic in to a simulated manual through actuation of an extraneous pedal and control systems including logic circuits, pressure switches, and that superfluous pedal to channel the voodoo and magic into the right hydraulic passageways. You'll also have to program and burn code to sets of ICs and run servos to replicate the actions of the shift lever that you disabled when you disassembled and reassembled it in a different pattern.

It's not practical.

[Hektore]

I'm a bit confused by the whole, manual/automatic combination. I mean, when you tell an automatic to shift manually, you aren't really shifting anything right? You're just telling the computer to use a lower gear?

[Xerxys]

^^ My car is a '01 Olds and it has gear 3-2-1 right below 'D' and I never use them. This is because I never rev the car fast enough to warrant that. And when I do occasionally go above 100m/ph I am usually still on 'D'. So I assume the answer is no if you are taking about an automatic transmission vehicle with a couple of independent gears.

On the other hand, manual/automatic transmission such as one in Jinns post would in fact involve communicating with the computer to step up/down a gear.

Jinn: I've driven two vehicles with the option of a manumatic transmission very briefly but not used the function. It may be almost impossible to create the alignment that I depicted above but I do not think it entirely impossible or necessary to have both transmissions side by side. I was thinking along the lines of rearranging the automatic transmission and adding a clutch to it. This additional clutch would separate the entire gearbox from the engine and the extra configuration would allow you to manipulate the gears that way. See where I am going with this, adding, more than changing anything else very much.

MSD: Huh??? j/k

Originally Posted by MSD

What it looks like you want to do is to turn a manumatic in to a simulated manual through actuation of an extraneous pedal and control systems including logic circuits, pressure switches, and that superfluous pedal to channel the voodoo and magic into the right hydraulic passageways. You'll also have to program and burn code to sets of ICs and run servos to replicate the actions of the shift lever that you disabled when you disassembled and reassembled it in a different pattern.

This pretty much sums it up very well, except the part about the "IC's". Whats that? I don't think it would be extraneous though. When I set up the virtual reality simulation I will show you how I intend to manipulate the gears by bypassing the existing clutches in the auto configuration while in manual and vice versa.

[Jinn]

I think having the clutch pedal not mechanically linked to an actual clutch would not feel quite right. Much like power steering.. since the introduction of power steering, they've tried many times to make it entirely 'fly by wire', where the power steering simply controlled electronic input to a processor which handled the steering angle. But everyone who tries it thinks that it feels 'unnatural' because you don't get the 'feel of the road' through the wheel - that back pressure (and force feedback) is pretty essential for feeling grip and the tightness of corners, etc. In the same way, having an essentially aesthetic pedal that was linked to the manumatic only by electronics would not feel quite right. The engagement and disengagement of the plates would not be felt, and the tactile response of meshing the gears would be totally lost. To me, that's half the fun of driving a manual transmission.

I'll admit that automatic transmissions are still a bit of voodoo to me, but I can't think of a way to provide actual movement of gears and engage/disengage in a tactile way like you get with a manual transmission without simply removing all of the hydraulics, valves, and planetary gearsets that make automatic transmissions work in the first place. At that point, it'd simply be just a manual transmission.

IC is an abbreviation for integrated circuit, by the way.

[Xerxys]

I had not considered that. By adding the clutch for separating the gears from the engine I meant to achieve the same effect the clutch a manual transmission vehicle achieves. The separation would be reversed once the clutch is disabled by switching it back to auto mode. I never once considered it would loose the maneuverability gotten from sense/intuition (feeling).

[Hektore]

Originally Posted by Xerxys

^^ My car is a '01 Olds and it has gear 3-2-1 right below 'D' and I never use them. This is because I never rev the car fast enough to warrant that. And when I do occasionally go above 100m/ph I am usually still on 'D'. So I assume the answer is no if you are taking about an automatic transmission vehicle with a couple of independent gears.

Ok, now I'm really confused, why would you tell the car to downshift when you're going faster? I mean, going 100+ and dropping to 3/2 would end in disaster, if the car would even allow you to do it.

[Xerxys]

You would not tell the car to downshift when you are going faster, rather than when you want it to go faster but that was not the point I was making. I was saying,. on my auto car, I don't use the independent gears. For those who do, it's because they want to go faster or garner more power for slopes, terrain purposes. Also, in an automatic car that has independent gears but is not manumatic (such as mine), you actually shift the car to the gear specified, you do not "tell the computer" to do so.

[Hektore]

Ok, at this point, I'm just going to have to take responsibility for both being and idiot and for asking a piss poor question, without really reading what I posted.

I apologize.

Now, forget what I said earlier.

Every AT vehicle I've ever driven has had a shifter lever that allows you to select between, overdrive, drive and low or some such set of gears, however they are labeled(with numbers or letters, or some combination of the two). They have also all behaved in the way that Jinn describes his gf's Mazda 6 behaving.

I don't understand the difference in what happens inside the transmission between a regular automatic and a 'manumatic'.

To tell the truth, I don't think there is any, it's just a clever trick by marketers that by changing the way you interface with the transmission, they make people think they're getting something new and/or better.

So that's really my question, how is the 'manumatic' different from a standard automatic, in terms of the operation of the transmission?

I ask, because without this information I cannot answer your question, and I think that with, it I could.

[Daniel_]

Originally Posted by Hektore

Ok, at this point, I'm just going to have to take responsibility for both being and idiot and for asking a piss poor question, without really reading what I posted.

I apologize.

Now, forget what I said earlier.

Every AT vehicle I've ever driven has had a shifter lever that allows you to select between, overdrive, drive and low or some such set of gears, however they are labeled(with numbers or letters, or some combination of the two). They have also all behaved in the way that Jinn describes his gf's Mazda 6 behaving.

I don't understand the difference in what happens inside the transmission between a regular automatic and a 'manumatic'.

To tell the truth, I don't think there is any, it's just a clever trick by marketers that by changing the way you interface with the transmission, they make people think they're getting something new and/or better.

So that's really my question, how is the 'manumatic' different from a standard automatic, in terms of the operation of the transmission?

I ask, because without this information I cannot answer your question, and I think that with, it I could.

In my experience, the manual override of the automatic transmission allows you to drive in a sporty style, and allows you to drive in certain dangerous conditions (steep, poor traction etc) with more control.

I hardly use it, but it is handy to downshift and overtake, and is faster (therefore safer) than trying to use kickdown on the full auto.

[Xerxys]

Originally Posted by Hektore

Ok, at this point, I'm just going to have to take responsibility for both being and idiot and for asking a piss poor question, without really reading what I posted.

I apologize.

Now, forget what I said earlier.

Every AT vehicle I've ever driven has had a shifter lever that allows you to select between, overdrive, drive and low or some such set of gears, however they are labeled(with numbers or letters, or some combination of the two). They have also all behaved in the way that Jinn describes his gf's Mazda 6 behaving.

I don't understand the difference in what happens inside the transmission between a regular automatic and a 'manumatic'.

To tell the truth, I don't think there is any, it's just a clever trick by marketers that by changing the way you interface with the transmission, they make people think they're getting something new and/or better.

So that's really my question, how is the 'manumatic' different from a standard automatic, in terms of the operation of the transmission?

I ask, because without this information I cannot answer your question, and I think that with, it I could.

Not a stupid question at all.

Earlier you were right. In a manumatic transmission, when engaged in changing the gears by yourself, you actually tell the transmission control to switch to either a higher or a lower gear. If you do so, the computer will respond accordingly BUT, if terrain or conditions dictate otherwise it will change to the appropriate gear. For example, you can take off on second gear but are at a very high slope. You would need first gear, the computer will comply and shift down to second but after judging by the vehicle's band and available power it will shift back to first automatically without your permission or compliance. This is the only difference between a manumatic and regular auto trans.

In an auto, however, the independent gears are actually gears and not interface control. I fond they are somewhat pointless but I have been in a car wtih this crazy chick who knew how to use them to cut people off the highway and send your heart up your throat. It was not funny.

[Lindy]

I can't see any reason to get a car that's a stickshift wanna be (AKA manumatic, etc.) unless a particular vehicle just doesn't offer a true manual. Then I'd look at a different vehicle. A true manual is a transmission that has a clutch pedal as part of the deal. A manumatic, tiptronic, what ever you call it just lets a driver delude himself into thinking he's sporty. Worse, it lets the manufacturers get away without offering a real manual.

There should be a law against Porsches, Corvettes, Miatas, BMWs, any car with sporty performance pretensions, even offering automatic transmissions. Automatics belong in and are fine in Buicks, Lincolns, Minivans, Excesspeditions, and Chevy Aveos. If you don't know how to drive a real stickshift, and won't learn, get one of those.

If you know how to drive a manual, buy one of the cars that offers a real one, which will encourage those manufacturers to continue to offer them.
I learned how to drive with a stick (old Volks Beetle)I've driven a couple of fakesticks and they just feel so awkward and nonintuitive.
Manumatics are to real manuals as silicone breast implants are to real tits.:
C'mon, which would you rather have?
There, I feel much better now.

Lindy
on the road in my 2002 SAAB with a REAL manual

[Xerxys]

Originally Posted by Lindy

I can't see any reason to get a car that's a stickshift wanna be (AKA manumatic, etc.) unless a particular vehicle just doesn't offer a true manual. Then I'd look at a different vehicle. A true manual is a transmission that has a clutch pedal as part of the deal. A manumatic, tiptronic, what ever you call it just lets a driver delude himself into thinking he's sporty. Worse, it lets the manufacturers get away without offering a real manual.

There should be a law against Porsches, Corvettes, Miatas, BMWs, any car with sporty performance pretensions, even offering automatic transmissions. Automatics belong in and are fine in Buicks, Lincolns, Minivans, Excesspeditions, and Chevy Aveos. If you don't know how to drive a real stickshift, and won't learn, get one of those.

If you know how to drive a manual, buy one of the cars that offers a real one, which will encourage those manufacturers to continue to offer them.
I learned how to drive with a stick (old Volks Beetle)I've driven a couple of fakesticks and they just feel so awkward and nonintuitive.
Manumatics are to real manuals as silicone breast implants are to real tits.:
C'mon, which would you rather have?
There, I feel much better now.

Lindy
on the road in my 2002 SAAB with a REAL manual

I don't understand, you are saying it isn't practical then?

The thread is about a manual AND an automatic. The term "manumatic transmission" has already been defined thus why I am trying to make something else.

Unless you were just ranting, which is also quite fine.

P.S. I like all tits and am strongly against discrimination against birds.