Automatic Manual Transmission
I notice that a lot of vehicles have what they call an automatic manual transmission. From experience, which is the better transmission to get? I understand that it can have a jerky feel at low s...
Forum Discussion
Automatically shifted manuals in today's cars are generally European based and actually start from a manual transmission. When their customers started demanding "automatics" they trended toward a manual trans that is automatically shifted. In the US, our car fleet was primarily automatic trans based (torque converter and planetary gear set as one of the others mentioned. So when our customers wanted a more manual feel, we started providing a manually shifted automatic with either paddle shifters or a +/- button on the shift lever. Either of these only came about with the advent of electronically controlled transmissions.
Dutchmen - your truck and Equinox are the manually shifted automatic type - Automatic transmissions that they let you shift manually when you move the selector to "M". The electronics will not let you over-rev the engine but you can manually keep the auto trans in a gear as long as the brain knows you are within the parameters to not cause damage to the engine or trans. If you leave it in normal mode and go WOT (wide open throttle) it will shift automatically at about the same max RPM that the brain will let you go to in manual mode. It just gives you the ability to manually shift up or down what is really an automatic trans in the normal sense of the words.
The automatically shifted manuals start out as a manual and add the electronic controls to be able to operate the clutch and be smart enough to know when to shift up or down based on a bunch of parameters such as load, throttle position, engine power map, and a host of other stuff.
Which you get in a particular vehicle is probably more dependent on where it is from - US has most expertise in automatics , Europe has traditionally had more manual trans in their fleet so they start form that base.
This is based on 43 years in the powertrain side of the auto industry.
Dutchmen - your truck and Equinox are the manually shifted automatic type - Automatic transmissions that they let you shift manually when you move the selector to "M". The electronics will not let you over-rev the engine but you can manually keep the auto trans in a gear as long as the brain knows you are within the parameters to not cause damage to the engine or trans. If you leave it in normal mode and go WOT (wide open throttle) it will shift automatically at about the same max RPM that the brain will let you go to in manual mode. It just gives you the ability to manually shift up or down what is really an automatic trans in the normal sense of the words.
The automatically shifted manuals start out as a manual and add the electronic controls to be able to operate the clutch and be smart enough to know when to shift up or down based on a bunch of parameters such as load, throttle position, engine power map, and a host of other stuff.
Which you get in a particular vehicle is probably more dependent on where it is from - US has most expertise in automatics , Europe has traditionally had more manual trans in their fleet so they start form that base.
This is based on 43 years in the powertrain side of the auto industry.
