Quote:
Originally Posted by some_other_dave
You've said that a couple of times. Can you provide a source?
Traditional torque-converter automatic gearboxes are quite complex, what with planetary gearsets and immensely fussy shift valve bodies. Manuals have individual paired gears, and the shifting mechanisms are just sliding forks and rods.
CVTs do seem to be much simpler and probably less expensive to build.
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From what I understand, the cost to build a car is mostly dependant on how many they can make. It costs money to design, test and make all the production line tools for a car or car part. If they can make and sell a few million the price will be way cheaper than if they make just 3.
The same is likely true of automatics and manuals. Manuals haven't changed much, so I would guess that for the same volume, manuals are actually cheaper. But it makes sense to me that because automatics are so popular and very few buy manual transmissions that it costs more per transmission to make a few manual gear boxes for the 6 and a half people in the USA that like to drive a stick shift than it is to make a hundred thousand automatics for everyone else.