The end of the manual gearbox – Ian Bogost

I drive with the manual gearbox. Sometimes it is a pain. Using the clutch and downshifting in traffic wears you out. My wife cannot drive my car, which limits our transportation options. And when I’m behind the wheel, I can’t hold a delicious and refreshing cold granita in one hand, at least not safely. But despite the inconvenience, I love the manual gearbox. I adore
the feeling of being me maneuvering my car, and not just driving it. That’s why I have been driving with the manual gearbox for the past twenty years.

This tradition may soon end. When the time comes to replace my current car, I probably won’t be able to find another one like it. In 2000, more than 15 percent of new and used cars sold by car dealer CarMax were equipped with a manual transmission; by 2020, this percentage had dropped to 2.4 percent. Of the hundreds of new car models on sale in the United States this year, there are just about thirty manual gearbox models.

Electric cars, which now account for more than 5 percent of car sales, don’t even have gears. Mercedes-Benz is said to have plans to retire all of its manual transmission cars by the end of next year, worldwide, a decision dictated in part by electrification; Volkswagen is rumored to do the same by 2030, and other brands are sure to follow. Manual transmission has long been a niche market in the United States and will soon become extinct.

Save the manuals
It cannot be said that we have not been warned. For years, the decline of the manual gearbox has been lamented. In 2010, the automotive magazine Car and Driver launched the ‘Save the manuals’ campaign, insisting that drivers who ‘learn to manage the car as a whole’ will have more fun and do it better. . The hashtag #SaveTheManual followed.

For its supporters, shifting gears on your own isn’t just a source of pleasure or a way to hone your ride. A manual car is also less likely to be stolen, as fewer people know how
drive it. It’s cheaper to buy (at least it used to be) and had lower running and maintenance costs in the past. A manual car can be push started if the battery is low, which makes it less likely to get stuck somewhere; gears can also be used more easily to brake the engine, which can reduce wear and make driving downhill easier and safer.

But the main appeal of the manual gearbox comes from the feeling it gives to the driver: the feeling, real or imaginary, of being in control of the situation. According to Matthew Crawford, business consultant, motorcycle repairer and bestselling author, cultivating this feeling isn’t just a habit. Humans develop tools that help them move, such as tame horses, carriages, bicycles, and cars, and then extend their awareness to these tools. The driver “becomes one” with the car, as they say. In his 2020 book, Why we drive (Because
let’s drive), Crawford argues that a device becomes a prosthesis. The rider merges with the horse. To move the instrument means to move oneself.

Crawford argues that this cognitive enhancement is only possible when you can interpret the components of the tool you are using. Just as the rider must perceive the horse’s gait, so the driver must understand how the engine works. But modern automotive technology tends to inhibit this feeling. Power steering, electronic fuel injection, anti-lock systems and, yes, the automatic transmission hinder the “natural links between action and perception,” Crawford writes. They inhibit the driver’s ability to interpret the condition and possibilities of the car through a healthy cycle of action and information.

To illustrate this point, Crawford says he tested a 400 horsepower Audi Rs3 with all options, including automatic gearbox with steering wheel paddles. It was powerful and functional, she says, but “I couldn’t get in tune with the car”. This characterization is common among manual transmission lovers, a way of saying that the human operator and the machine are not in tune.

The manual gearbox has become the object that embodies this disappearance par excellence. When manual transmission was the norm, drivers had to constantly touch and manipulate the transmission, along with the clutch, while driving the vehicle. Passengers witnessed this action and shifting gears became a meaningful practice. It represented the charm of the road, with all its strengths and weaknesses, and embodied the control of the human being over a large, hot and dangerous car that bit the asphalt. The imminent demise of the manual gearbox is a disturbing possibility, not (only) because shifting gears in a car is fun and sensual, but also because the gearbox is, or was, a powerful cultural symbol of the human body in motion. in unison with the engineered world.

Crawford admits he could have tune in to Audi had he spent enough hours behind the wheel. But even knowing it, “that car left me indifferent,” he writes. In part, this is because the gross sensations one gets from driving a fully electronic vehicle may be, or seem, too subtle for a crude human mind. The
automobiles have become, in a sense, far too sophisticated. Human understanding slips off their shell, like ice from a hot bonnet.

To lose control
The separation of human beings from their tools of guidance will deepen in the years to come. If the automatic transmission has made the manual transmission a monument to loss of control, the autonomous (self-driving) vehicle aims to do the same for the steering wheels. At that point, the disappearance will be so complete that it may not seem so alienating. Any claim that the car is a prosthesis will be
disappeared, and so passengers will be able to move on to something else. As happens to those today
traveling by train, they can perhaps devote themselves to a book, take a nap or open an excel spreadsheet.

But fully autonomous cars may never fully spread, and
even predominantly autonomous cars could be a long way off. While the auto industry will take control of drivers one step at a time, slowly, just as other industries have done for home appliances, appliances and services.

Today it is possible to flush the toilet or operate the sink not with the force of the hands, but thanks to sensors. Web and product searches generate the results strangers want you to see, not the ones that best match your requests. The maps, now digital, show points of interest instead of raw information; travelers let map apps tell them where to go and how to get there. Customer service agents follow scripts to solve your problems, doctors follow automatic diagnostic models, and our TV streaming platforms calculate which shows we should watch next.

People have been complaining about the decline of manual shifting for many years before the “Save the manuals” campaign (in addition to the hashtag and merchandising) was born. But perhaps it is no coincidence that the real crusade was born just when information technology took over culture, orienting human lives towards the needs of technology companies and data aggregators. At that time all the applications and services just mentioned (and many others) spread.

Manual transmission, although it has become marginal in the age of smartphones, remains a vestige of direct and mechanical control. When a driver changes speed, his intention can materialize into a rewarding action, thanks to the engagement of material gears. Even when the hand slips and the gears engage, that device continues to express itself in an understandable way.

To regret the end of the manual gearbox means to praise a lot more than the shifting of gears. When the manual transmission dies, driving won’t lose much of what it has already lost. But what will be lost will be something greater and more important: the reassuring awareness that there is still an essential and daily device in the world that we can actually perceive how it works.

Even if you don’t have a manual gearbox, or don’t know how to drive it, its mere existence proves that more concrete technology is possible – and once even common – and that humans and machines can indeed live together. Manual transmission is a form of hope, which we will soon leave behind.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)