The future is (presumably) automatic
10/30/2021
We recently took an interested look at the results of a survey conducted by Innofact for Autoscout 24. The following questions were to be answered: Which type of transmission do drivers prefer? Manual or automatic?
According to the survey, 46 percent of respondents prefer automatic transmission, 40 percent prefer manual transmission and 13 percent don't care.
More interesting than the general preference for automatic transmission, however, is the fact that women have a more positive attitude towards manual transmission (43 percent compared to 38 percent of men).
The fact that 53% of young drivers under the age of 40 approve of automatic transmission compared to 42% of drivers over 40 is food for thought. In the past, this was probably the other way around.
Car manufacturers are increasingly moving towards the end of manually shifted gears via "H" anyway, soon this question will no longer even have to be asked in the new car segment and only very few of today's super sports cars can be shifted manually. Electric cars have no manual gear changes anyway.
This will also have an impact on classic cars in the medium to long term. People who have not shifted gears by hand for years are unlikely to buy a classic car where they have to learn to do so again. At the moment, however, the trend seems to be going the other way round, with manual models often selling for more than automatic versions. But the buyers are probably those over 40 today ....
P.S. And yes, the title above is not exactly innovative, as Mercedes advertisers were already writing in 1964: " The future belongs to the automatic" . They were quoting racing greats Ewy Rosqvist, Karl Kling and Hans Herrmann ...
