Quickly becoming a moot point. EVs don’t even have gears to shift. Single speed forward or reverse. Shifting gears will eventually be like dialing a rotary phone.
I'm not sure if that's the most efficient use of resources. EVs can only be gearless if they have over a half-ton of batteries providing huge amounts of power to their electric motors.
PHEVs, such as Prius Prime, Volvo or other cars (US Market, sorry I don't know UK market too well), do have an EV-only mode. But the smaller batteries force them to use CVT or other automatic transmissions so that their torque/horsepower bands can be better matched.
I'm not convinced that having all of our cars filled with half-ton to 1-ton batteries is the best design.
I’m going to knock your socks off… The vast majority of “normal” EVs don’t have gears as such. There are one or two supercar EVs that have a high and low gear but that’s it. Many hybrids don’t have gears either. My Accord Hybrid has an “eCVT” which is just marketing bullshit for covering up the fact that it’s functionally an EV with a gasoline powered generator. Honda has programmed the ECU to do fake shifts to make boomers feel more comfortable with the new technology. It’s only imitating an automatic transmission with software trickery. The gas engine isn’t even mechanically connected to the wheels for like 95% of the driving I do. IIRC that tech was borrowed or heavily influenced by the Prius.
I'm well aware of the larger torquebands across wider RPMs of electric motors vs ICE motors, especially the high torque available at 0 RPM. But that doesn't change physics or chemistry.
Porsche Taycan isn't a supercar, and it has this high/low gear / Two-speed transmission for its EV, because at higher RPMs even an EV will run out of torque, and it becomes a good idea to convert RPM vs Torque through the use of a gearbox. Gearboxes / Transmissions have been used for a hundred years. They are among the most sophisticated parts of a modern car, and are made with cheap steel and highly automated manufacturing today.
Every motor will have a limit to their useful torquebands. EVs have the widest torque vs RPM in existence ever, but even the biggest motors and biggest EVs have problems.
This is complicated by the fact that Hybrids are far smaller electric-motors with far less battery power than the pure EVs like a Porsche Tycan. As such, the incredibly popular Toyota Prius Prime opts instead for a proper CVT transmission. And I'm willing to bet that Prius Prime 2024 is getting a better driving experience in practice.
Furthemore: there's something to be said about sophistication of dumber / simpler metals. Steel is found everywhere. Trading cheap steel for Lithium, Copper, and Cobalt sounds like a bad idea to me in general. I guess that copper/lithium is lighter than Steel so saving on weight is helpful, but there's some crazy bad environmental problems associated with these rarer and more complex metals.
I've decided to do some research on eCVT. I was surprised at its actual implementation. Toyota Prius, Ford Escape, and probably Honda Accord does this.
Its basically planetary gear magic. A computer can control two or three inputs, while the outputs are hooked up to the wheels of the car. By changing the speed of the variable input (likely the electronic engine)... the effective gear ratio of the "constant" input (likely the ICE engine) is modified. In the most extreme case, the variable input runs backwards to have the "overdrive" gear ratio.
It seems like the Honda Accord is a planetary gear eCVT system. Planetary gears are always so cool, I didn't realize that a CVT could be implemented with one (albeit with a hybrid vehicle where you have 2 or more powered inputs).
EDIT: it appears that you are correct. Honda's Hybrid system is different than what I'm familiar with (which is what the above video demonstrated).
So you're right with regards to Honda Accord Hybrid. Very interesting. Its always surprising to me how different car companies are with their implementations.
I’m so glad you found that video! I’ve seen it before and was having trouble finding it again to post a link here. Since you’ve already fallen down this rabbit hole, might I suggest you watch some reviews of the new 11th gen Accord. Honda is not only adding fake shift points to an eCVT that does NOT HAVE FIXED GEAR RATIOS but they are matching those fake shifts with fake engine noises piped through the speakers inside the cabin. They’ve also regressed from the elegant push button gear selector in my 10th gen to a completely unnecessary shift knob protruding from the console in the 11th gen. It’s actually embarrassing how much they’ve had to dumb the car down for people who are either stuck in the past or people who are weekend race car drivers. Mercifully, most of this garbage fakery is only really noticeable if you really flog it or put the car in “Sport” mode.
It shows a laziness and a lack of interest in the skill of driving! I bought my first automatic last year. I generally like it, with auto hold and cruise control it makes driving very easy. I don’t like it on ice and snow, no idea what the car is doing. Similarly pulling away quickly, never quite now which gear it’s going to choose when or when the turbo is going to kick in which can make things a bit unpredictable.
For those who do care about driving, I’d agree. Where I am in Europe currently, I can hear many cars out of the proper gear, I can see it from the exhaust too. So many people stall trying to park, at stop signs and cross walks. Automatics are smarter and more efficient than humans now- for the majority of people the better choice, since they are lazy, distracted, and/or lack interest in the skill of driving.
Manuals are cheaper, more responsive, lower maintenance than wet-automatics. So even here where automatics are common, knowing that my skill gap vs you is literally saving me thousands in maintenance costs is definitely a big portion of my superiority complex.
However, with the dawn of CVT automatics, this is no longer true. CVTs are nearly maintenance free, have instant response, ideal power delivery.
So technology has changed, but not everyone recognizes the new era of advanced automatic transmissions.
But I'll absolutely still look down on any old-style wet clutch / torque converter based automatic.
I can't say I'm a car buff unfortunately, so I can't say I've experienced that particular transmission yet.
Reading up on the transmission: it sounds like the torque converter could be replaced with mild-hybrid electric engines to help kickstart the transmission. This is very interesting to me, and I think that's a great way around the problems of traditional torque-converters.
I'd imagine that Mild-Hybrid ZF8 (torque converter replaced with electric motor) would be a serious contender in feel and response.
There's too many different cars with the ZF8 and too many different configurations to generalize. It seems like a promising design, but I'm going to bet that mild-hybrid ZF8 is the best feel. There's just a lot of downsides to the traditional wet-clutch / torque-converter frontend of transmissions IMO.
I don't personally have experience with a diverse multitude of cars (and transmissions) as a whole either, but i've heard plenty of good things online about the zf8 as probably one of the best torque converter automatics on the market for sporty driving (e.g. having very responsive shifts). It supposedly does not feel like a "slush box" which i'm assuming exhibits many of the behaviors that you're describing for a typical torque converter automatic.
In terms of drivetrain choices for daily driving, fully electric bevs seem to be the best fit. Instant torque, lots of torque, probably lower maintenance(?). And i say this as a lover of manual transmissions (my miata is currently in the shop though 😢)
CVTs are always "in gear", and quickly adapt to whatever torque vs RPM band your engine needs. At no point is your engine every "out of gear". Their "noise is wrong" to anyone used to older transmissions, but their performance cannot be denied or ignored. I'm very impressed with their tech. Its just a matter of getting used to it IMO.
Manual transmissions can "shift ahead of time", so with enough brainpower and paying attention, you should usually be in the correct gear for any situation. But any particular gear-shift takes time to accomplish. The exception are 0-60 kind of drag-races (erm, 0-100km/hr for yall Brits), where the manual effort to gearshift is unavoidable, but typical driving with a manual is very pleasant because normal roads are far more predictable and no one is trying to drag-race around every corner on public roads.
Traditional Automatic transmissions all take time, and the clock starts after the user pushes the pedal (unlike manual which starts when the driver notices that another gear would be useful, often ahead of time).. So automatic transmission is always slower.
And yet any time you change throttle input they change gearing and have horrible "lag". While they may be always engaged they're never in the right "gear".
Manuals are also an effective anti-theft measure here in the US, as most of us (myself included) don't know how to drive them properly.
I've read multiple stories of thiefs realizing they were stealing a manual transmission, and literally just giving up after driving a few feet. Pretty hilarious.
This answer hits the nail on the head.
Autos used to be really shit, in a country where fuel is expensive, and distances smaller, you'd only get an auto if you physically couldn't use the clutch.
Nowadays, they're much better.
If I don't end up fully electric on the next car, it will definitely be CVT.
A lot of the CVTs I was thinking about when I wrote that post were eCVTs like the Prius Prime.
I didn't realize that eCVT for Prius Prime is very different than... other... CVTs. There's probably more kinds of CVTs out there than any other transmission.
Prius Prime has two powerful electric motors (!!) for spinning two different parts of the planetary gear system, +1 ICE engine (so 3x total powered inputs) to the power split device. Toyota calls it eCVT, because CVT is emulated by computers controlling the 3x inputs. When one of the electric motors spins in reverse, it increases the effective gear ratio of the other parts of the power-split device, leading to a feeling of instant torque that's powered by the electric motor.
Honda Accord's eCVT is completely different, as I've discovered through discussion later down with another poster. Honda's Hybrid is closer to a pure electrical system and... they say eCVT for some insane reason but its just an electric motor really.
So its different than what other car manufacturers called a CVT. I didn't realize how many kinds of CVTs there were today when I wrote that post.
Automatic cars used to be slower and less fuel efficient than manual. This is of course no longer true, but public perceptions are very slow to change.
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