some honda autos get better mileage than manuals?

[jkp1187]

Originally Posted by dcb

"Lets play games with the gearing so we sell more of the expensive model"?

To me that is beyond despicable. Why can't consumers have a choice of ratios? So the would be sport "in a fiesta?!?" crowd can waste gas but the rest of us can save gas.

Probably because they don't think there'll be enough of a market in the USA to justify the cost of offering (and marketing) a fuel-economy-geared manual transmission.

And they're probably right!

[PaleMelanesian]

Maybe the new 35 mpg CAFE standard can help to change that. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath.

Somehow, GM found it worthwhile with their XFE models.

[Allch Chcar]

Another thing to consider is acceleration. Classic Automatics don't like to Revulate very high and the torque converter is only active during cruising not under moderate acceleration even in high gear. And then gear these things for Highway low RPM cruise for MPG and bam it's even slower. Which means a 25% larger engines is considered to be "Required" to accelerate an AutoCar at an "acceptable" rate. The same size engine in a manual transmission car would be overpowered aka Sporty just 10 years ago. And now people regularly cruise at 80mph because it just so easy to go that fast without working for it.

The problem I see doesn't lie with Manuals being work it has to do with Consumers picking the Automatic cars and not seeing the Big Picture. Most people could care less too. The 90's was the Autocar Decade. Cheap Loans and oversized engines ment AutoCars were faster than previous generations and Gasoline was cheap. The 90's subcompact cars were ridiculed for being slow despite being small and lightweight mostly because the Automatic version was a 3 speed with poor MPG and even worse acceleration. Now the double 00's were where these 90's Autocars were even cheaper and first time car buyers don't bother learning to drive a Manual transmission anymore. 9/11, Iraq, Hurricane Katrina happen and people don't see any connection between their Gasoline Consumption and wars being fought over Oil.

Realistically a proper Manual transmission car could be the same size and geared taller for better MPG but be just as fast as an Automatic or they could be smaller, geared shorter and still be just as fast but better MPG. The Problem there is that most car buyers are City people and don't consider a Manual an option.

[Allch Chcar]

Shovel, "So think what you want but denying the possibility that machines can work quite well, isn't particularly productive. "

The problem is the Machine is doing more work and wasting more energy than it would take for a Human Driver to control the transmission. The EPA Score is not even a major factor for most people especially the Middling crowd age 30-60, I say that with respect of course. People car more about seats than they do the transmission, and most manufactures barely offer Manuals on the Base Models anymore and the Premium packages all include Automatics. Majority doesn't mean they're better, they're just more popular. We should all know by now what popular means, aka Popular Presidents.

The GM's XFE are manual transmission cars, why?

CAFE? Really, when we're all driving aluminium boxes with 1.0Liter engines it will be loads of fun. 35MPG is going to mean they either stop selling Automatics completely, because that's all people want or we get 1.0Liter Engines. Yay for Nanny states./sarcasm

Using the Joe Public argument will not fly. You are Joe Public, what do you do? If the car has a Manual and you don't know how to control it, but you don't want to learn how to drive it or someone told you something bad about it you don't buy it right? That makes sense emotionally even if you cannot afford an Automatic car, which isn't generally a problem for most people I presume. I could go on. You are the General Public, yes the general public is as crazy as you are, get used to it. The Public is stupid by choice? Do you really think so? They are coddled, swept around, made fun of, laughed at. Do you honestly believe you're not a part of the General Public? Being on the Internet doesn't make you any less of a Joe Public than hanging out at your local bar does. What is "best" and what the General Public need to be the same thing, then we'll have progress. I'm not even suggesting we educate, gosh no, if there was anything good in this world it left when Liberals took over our schools. Right isn't a direction anymore it only means "yes" or "yeah" or even "okay." Yes I used that properly in a sentence. Education is all about standardized testing and sitting in classrooms these days. We learn them on the negatives of the AutoCar culture, how Manual transmission cars and smaller engines are better. Why driving slower is not only more efficient time and money wise it's better. You pay more up front for an AutoCar and then you keep paying more over the life of the car. How is that anything but a poor choice?

[datsundude91]

Originally Posted by AJI

This hits on a pretty good point, though it does also apply more to say, the US and the Far East than it does to Europe, where manuals are still more popular.

I suspect that the vast majority of the public would get better fuel consumption with an automatic simply because the auto box would be much better at choosing the most efficient gear than the driver would. So many drivers are consistantly in the wrong gear.

You can tell just from the way they drive - cars at low speeds and high revs going through town who should have changed up one or even two gears more, taxi drivers labouring around with the engine stuttering in top gear because they think it saves more fuel than using the correct gear, people dithering at junctions because they've not had the foresight and observation to select the right gear for joining the traffic - all those examples and more.

With an auto? Not a bother. If you accelerate it changes down to help you, if you lift off it changes up and saves fuel. Of course, more skilled drivers do this themselves, but you can't count on Joe Public to be as skilled.

It's a view I've held for quite a while - a significant proportion of people would be better off with an auto, both to make up for their lack of skill, and to save fuel at the same time.

In the real world: A car with lower official fuel figures as an auto might actually be more fuel efficient than the manual when you give it to an unskilled driver.

not to mention the cost of more frequent clutch replacements that an unskilled driver would unevitably have to pay.

[PaleMelanesian]

Originally Posted by Allch Chcar

CAFE? Really, when we're all driving aluminium boxes with 1.0Liter engines it will be loads of fun. 35MPG is going to mean they either stop selling Automatics completely, because that's all people want or we get 1.0Liter Engines. Yay for Nanny states./sarcasm

Hardly. The CAFE ratings are vastly different than what we see on the window stickers. My civic rates 41 mpg for CAFE (vs 31 window sticker), already smashing the 35 mpg standard.

There are 99 current 2010 models that meet 35 mpg.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30706

----------------
Aside from the official mileage ratings...
A quick scan of our mileage logs here will reveal that manuals are better for mileage. Even ones crippled with poor gear ratios can get better mileage in the hands of skilled drivers.

The top 17 Civics are all manuals.
21 of the top 25 Hondas are manuals. The other 4 are hybrids.

[tjts1]

Originally Posted by PaleMelanesian

Hardly. The CAFE ratings are vastly different than what we see on the window stickers. My civic rates 41 mpg for CAFE (vs 31 window sticker), already smashing the 35 mpg standard.

The window sticker on your 96 civic is based on the old EPA mileage test and totally irrelevant to this comparison. By the current standards your civic is rated at 26/33mpg. The 35mpg standard applies to an average for city and highway driving. Your 96 doesn't even come close to meeting 2016 CAFE requirement. It is not rated at 41mpg by any standard.

Originally Posted by PaleMelanesian

Aside from the official mileage ratings...
A quick scan of our mileage logs here will reveal that manuals are better for mileage. Even ones crippled with poor gear ratios can get better mileage in the hands of skilled drivers.

The top 17 Civics are all manuals.
21 of the top 24 Hondas are manuals. The other 3 are hybrids.

And NONE of them post 2005 non hybrids therefore your point is irrelevant to this discussion.

[PaleMelanesian]

Originally Posted by tjts1

The window sticker on your 96 civic is based on the old EPA mileage test and totally irrelevant to this comparison. By the current standards your civic is rated at 26/33mpg. The 35mpg standard applies to an average for city and highway driving. Your 96 doesn't even come close to meeting 2016 CAFE requirement. It is not rated at 41mpg by any standard.

Wrong. That 31 I quoted is the new, adjusted-for-2008 rating. 28/35 mpg.

Here's the reference for the 41 mpg cafe rating. The fourth Civic listed:

CIVIC $ 515 (33 38 35) city/hwy/cmb window sticker, (37 49 41) CAFE, 97( 1.6L) / 4(FFS) FWD M5 OD

And other years are here: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/download.shtml

There are three ratings here:
The raw dyno test numbers, which are used for CAFE. (41 for my car)
The 1985-2007 adjusted numbers. (35 for my car)
The 2008+ numbers, which are adjusted twice from the actual test results. (31 for my car)

[vskid3]

I see two different types of efficiency being discussed here, fuel efficiency and transmission efficiency.
Transmission efficiency is just how much of the power going into the tranny makes it out the other side. I don't think anyone would argue that, up until recently, the manual was the king of efficiency. Even when cruising, autos need to pump fluid, while manuals are just turning gears. With dual clutch transmissions such as the Fiesta's, the efficiency is probably almost identical to manuals.
Fuel efficiency is distance traveled for a certain amount of energy. The EPA tests this in a laboratory and does what the "average" driver would do. It is probably much easier to tune automatics to perform well on the test, especially with more and higher gear ratios. But in the real world, fuel efficiency is mainly up to the driver (besides the number and ratio of the gears, which are pretty much whatever the manufacturer provides). It is all up to the driver in a manual , but in an auto, it is up to the driver and the transmission controller. A driver can see that the crest of a hill is just a few seconds away, and keep a manual in a higher gear, but an auto just sees that there is more load and can downshift instead of waiting a few seconds. Thus, the manual car can be more fuel efficient.
I think it is great that automatics are getting more efficient. More people drive them so it'll make a big difference. But until the car can drive itself and see the whole picture, I prefer to be in control of which gear it is in. I will only buy manuals and maybe automatics with a manual mode.

[PaleMelanesian]

Well said. There's also the aspect of varying conditions like traffic and lights. Until a car can be aware of such things and even anticipate them, a good driver can do better.