Man babies love their dumb vroom vroom toys.
I guess you gotta do what you gotta do so that dentists and insurance brokers still feel manly in their midlife-crisis-mobiles.
I absolutely hate that my CVT vehicle has a 1-2-D-N-R shifter with “Overdrive Button” because Nissan thought faux gearing would sell better. It randomly decides I must secretly rather hit 4000rpm+ than continue accelerating at a vaguely reasonable pace, and I say randomly because there is no discernable consistency re: pedal position, etc. The worst regular automatic I ever used was more consistent.
To be clear, I find anything over 3000rpm unnecessary and annoying. At least in this vehicle, most of the time I can still accelerate faster than most other drivers without hitting that. Its like its trying to shame me for getting to the speed-limit quickly so I can settle-in to cruising without a truck up my ass… for a few precious seconds anyways.
Are electrics not manly enough now?
This is pretty unsurprising considering it’s exactly on par with how most (all?) CVT vehicles have been programmed with fake gear shifts for years (decades?)
It’s surprising to me as almost all electric vehicles have a fixed gear ratio between the motor and the wheels. It’s essentially a single speed transmission. A CVT can modify the gear ratio on the fly so it can fake a gear shift if it wants to. But with a single gear ratio what are you going to do, blip the power so you get a bit of a lurch and play fake engine noises through the speakers?
It’s essential the same. Ideally CVTs operate at a fixed ratio. That ratio can be adjusted for optimum power or optimum efficiency. But consumers rejected those idealized ratios in favor of less efficient dynamic ratios.
In both cases consumers are rejecting objectively better performance in favor of a familiar feeling/sounding option.
That’s not what this is. This is a software minigame to play while driving. There’s a fake tachometer, with shift point lights, and fake engine noise in the cabin for you to push the shift paddles with.
CVT fake gears is using the CVT suboptimally to make the car sound more satisfying. This is a pure fabrication. A pantomime of a transmission.
The faux shifter seems pretty dumb.
I could see EVs making some noise for the safety of non-vehicle traffic though. It doesn’t need to be that loud and doesn’t need to be on on the highway, though.
This seems like a liability to be prohibited. Whoever proposed it and did it, should be sued - it is bound to cause accidents!
Not knowing a lot about cars, let a lone EV, why could this a dangerous idea? I think EVs are by default automatic, so would a virtual transmission add another unneeded point of failure on the cars speed regulation systems or is it something else?
Almost all EV’s skip-out on the transmission or gearing part entirely. They aren’t even adding one here, just simulating it with software. Some won’t even have differentials. Safety issue though? I doubt it.
