They're great fun. Direct shift auto's with paddles are now becoming much more common in mainstream cars.
Not as narrow as UK lanes, but yes. Plenty of twisty roads around here... Interstates and major highways are usually pretty straight but side roads can be very twisty.
IMO; paddles are good for when you want an automatic override for gears but 97% of the time cars should be changing gear automatically. It's the 21st century FFS and if you're "driving" a modern car it's already doing most of the work for you so why pretend you're doing anything more meaningful than choosing the direction and hopefully avoiding hitting people anyway?
I agree to a point. Most of the time you'd not use them, but when you want to drive *ahem* more enthusiastically, then they're great, as the boxes can't see corners coming.........and will therefore only downshift when you're decelerating, which can leave you in the apex of a quick corner in too high a gear.
flappy paddle is fine if the change is crisp. but reversing... yeeek the thing is its more manual than manual itself. the dual clutch system is an engineering marvel, next gear is selected i nthe second cluthc before you change up. change down is a bit different as you are not meant to be hard on power changing down.. meant to be on brakes. manual grear box expereicne is old school and a pleasure to hit them just right though....
why? cos if you've ever driven a yank auto you'd know why.... I've countless times stamped on power and waited. the car tries to break itself. You can be far more efficient on fuel if you have manual yourself and you can be far more aggressive too.
oh and gears is a thing of the past really. an all electric car doesn't actuall have a gear train do they? you've infinite torque to accelerate at with the motor.
Not yet, but lane assist is already becoming a common feature so it's only a matter of time before that combined with GPS route planning and adaptive cruise control means your entire journey is planned perfectly and the driver only ****s things up. Plus front bumper cameras like on Fords means the car could be reacting to what's around a corner before you even see it let alone react.
Yep. The current cars could already run 'driverless' The technology is already virtually complete. There's various test cars running around the globe testing with full automation. The thing that might stop it becoming reality in the near future is the potential liability should it fail. Ergo if the systems failed and the end result was a multiple pile up with deaths etc, the manufacturers would face massive litigation. They'll run scared of it for a few years yet imo, as they'll have to test them under every possible condition and ensure that there's sufficient fail safes built in
and pesky deers and stuff o nthe road. the reality is radar on cars is needed and the google cars etc have not solved this yet. you'd like to think you can get things to do all this but the reality.... well as an engineer I can say computers are even more thick than your average chelsea fan they can do things like parallel park where its all controlled still objects to run a standard algorithm but.... if you've given control to a car and its got to decide can i stop on this wet road or will the guy in front stop or oh i didn't see the duck waddle out in the lane but the car in front did and slammed on.. or worse.. will i serve to avoid the pedestrian or the car coming. hmmmmm... I think you'll agree 70mph on a motorway governed by brainless maths equations may not be the ideal experience. the aim is to pack more cars in tighter.. thats all.. not make it safer. the idea is to have the margin of error for a computer reaction so we get more vehicles in a line and the piles ups will just be worse.
I haven't driven an American automatic. Any decent automatic should have a reliable kickdown. I had a hybrid hire car once It wasn't amazing on the motorway but for journeys around the city on electric with automatic gears was so easy why the **** would you spend 10 times the effort to **** off a gear stick? Theoretically you might be able to be more efficient with a manual if you are perfect but a couple of moments of laziness changing up and down and that's all out the window.
It won't work in the end. you can have a car train on a motorway but the thing is brainless so when they think they've got every angle covered they'll find 1000 other angles they don't have covered. You'd be amazed at how complicated programming a car to pick its way through traffic when a stupid builder drops his ladder off the roof of his van and runs down the motorway to pick it up.... i saw that only last week. the driverless car is merely a very expensive means to pack more people into the same road space.
Yes I agree. worse auto i ever got was in germany. i didn't ask for it but was given an opel corsa auto.. the thing was nightmarish in gear changes I had a toyota prius once and yes i agree on open road it was very poor. every bad for fuel. I totally agree that in a town an auto makes perfect sense. in the Us trucks do 70mph so thats the minimum speed on motorway irrespective of the 55mph signs. you don't need huge trucks flying by at speed thanks! so doing speeds in an auto is a pain. for over taking dropping it a great and flooring it is a must and autos are piss poor at realizing you've slammed the throttle until the engine is reving to red line and then it changes. the truth is fuel efficiency by coasting is best but illegal. you can't coast an auto.
