The unintended consequence of electric vehicles: More demand for manual transmissions

ATs tend to be more likely to fail as they age. However, I doubt there's any significant difference in reliability between two Toyota transmissions.

 

Of all the manuals over my last 65yrs the only ones that have needed work regardless of miles were abused due to racing. Never had one that could not be fixed for a few $100's.
It's like a 2-stroke dirt bike compared to a 4-stroke. It takes 2 beers time and $100 to replace the top end in a 2-stroke, a 4-stroke takes $1200 and a few weeks.

 

I had a 1991 4Runner for 272,000 miles and the original Clutch. I followed it with a 2006 Nissan Xterra that I sold at 305,000 with the original clutch. I currently own a 1998 BMW Z-3 with 186,000 miles and the original clutch. I don’t think automatic transmissions can match these numbers.

 

Also, there's the ease of simply draining and refilling manual transmissions vs. dealing with filter swaps, temperature range fluid level checks and flushes.

 

Truely wish the Tundra was offered with a manual. That would be a game changer.
Can you tell, I Love rowing the gears.

 

I would worry a lot less about my transmission temperature when towing, that's for sure.

 

Be interesting to visit this in 5 years and see if the numbers sold has increased, decreased or become non-existent.

Theres nothing wrong with a manual, they just dont (in my case) offer a single advantage. There are a lot of good arguments made here, but I think they are arguments made from an enthusiast point of view and not an average buyers point of view. I think Tacomas have a higher number of enthusiasts but I think that number will probably drop if they can lure in more buyers and double production.

I think the average driver would not see much benefits to a manual transmission, they dont do their own maintenance, they dont drive off road, they dont haul heavy loads. The last manual transmission I had was 25 years ago, put 150,000 miles on it with no changes, in the last 20 years I have driven a little more than a million miles in automatics, never had to have one repaired, hell never even added fluids.

My wifes Subaru is a CVT, dont know anything about it, nor do I care. In the last 100,000 miles it's hauled her anywhere she wanted to go and never let her down once. My Tacoma did some of the wild shift swings back and forth when I first bought it, now maybe once a month I notice it shifting back and forth. It seems to be a bigger problem if I get little spastic in my throttle usage.

My guess is if you will only drive a manual you better buy one now and be prepared to buy used in the future.

 

My wife's Honda CRV is a CVT too, I actually enjoy driving it and never feeling any shift points.

 

they did, and it was a great combo with the 6 cylinder…it did need either a taller 5th or a 6th gear. Ours was a farm truck and lived a hard life before moving on down the road. I always wanted to put an aluminum flat bed on it.

 

Me too - I felt very fortunate to find a manual Tacoma. My first pickup truck, a Dodge 100 had a 4 speed manual on the floor. Then a '98 Dodge Dakota with a 5 speed manual.

Sounds like it was geared like my former '98 Subaru Outback. At 65mph in 5th gear the rpms were around 3,200. Don't know why it had such short gearing. I really like how the 5 speed manual Tacoma is geared, somewhat tall for a 4 cylinder.

 

My 2001 Subaru with a 4 banger and 5 speed hovered around 3k rpm on the hiway too. It seemed normal to me.

 

Same here!!!! Had a 2000 Tacoma with a manual put 200K on it, and drove tractor trailer for many years. Got myself a used and beautiful 2020 Tundra. Traded it in 6 weeks later when I came across a 2017 Tacoma 6 speed in the dealers lot. Traded it right then and there. Ha!

 

Good for you and glad you found a 6 speed manual Tacoma! I also traded down, meaning when I found a manual transmission Tacoma I traded in an SUV that was 5 years newer. I look for the heck of it from time to time, and it seems manual transmission Tacomas are more rare than they were 6 months ago.

 

Yep, because those of us that got one ain't selling!

"Sell me that Tacoma"

No

"I'll give you........."

NO!


.

 

Something I haven't seen mentioned so far: Do the new automatic Tacomas/Tundras still advise you not to tow in Overdrive/hi gear?

Back in the day I had a 2002 4 runner automatic that I really enjoyed, but I tow a boat/trailer regularly and didn't like to rev the motor to the moon because of no overdrive when towing. not to mention the mileage hit, watching for hi trans temp, etc.. The planetary OD gears still went out (costing $3800) even though I was careful not to tow in OD.

The manual I have now offers worry free towing for me. I can rebuild it myself.

Just wish the stuff in the cab wasn't made of plastic junk.

 

That's right - Not Happenin' ! !

 

Agreed, I've only had my TRD Sport 6MT for a month now and have already had folks asking if I'd sell it to them. Ain't freakin' happening.

 

Interesting how there seems to be a bit more interest, in manual transmissions. Maybe because for the most part, they're no longer an option, especially on pickup trucks.

 

Oddly enough, I've been noticing the trend for years now. In 2005 the lease was ending on my 530i, and as much as I loved the car, I had just taken a new gig which required nearly 200 miles per day of driving visiting the various locations of the client; last thing I needed to do was destroy the resale value of that wonderful car by putting 100,000 miles on it in two years, so I arranged to turn it back in and enlisted our spare "Home-Depot" minivan for the job. A hitch developed in my plans as I'd moved several hundred miles from where I'd leased the 5er, and none of my local BMW dealerships wanted the car, to a one, they all said, "The BMW FS rules are you need to return the car to the leasing dealership; do you have any idea how many off-lease 530i units we currently have on our lot?" I explained I'd moves a fair distance away from where I'd lived when I leased the car and one dealership manager finally relented and said, "Okay, bring it in, I'll have a look at it; no promises!"

I brought the car in the next week and he looked at it for literally five seconds and exclaimed, "Oh yeah, we're taking that one." I asked what had changed since I'd talked with him on the phone, his response was, "Do you know how hard it is to find a fully optioned 530i with a manual transmission? All of the manual units we have are base models, yours has the Sport Package, Premium Package, Premium Audio, and Xenon headlights." The dealership took the car in, did the CPO treatment on it, and put it on their lot two days later for $4,000 more than the otherwise identically equipped 530i automatic models; it sold in two days.

Fast forward a dozen years or so, times for my family had gotten rocky due to a failure of my wife's business during the recession an then discovering my (now former) business partner had five lines of credit in my name and spent over a quarter of a million dollars starting up a niche business which never earned a single penny in revenue. By 2017 things were on the upswing and I was looking to retire my "poverty Honda", an old and very well used 2001 Accord; I started shopping around for a third gen Acura TL 6MT, a few takeaways from that shopping effort:

• Most cars with the manuals had been scooped up by fanboi racers, slammed to the ground and had monster boombox audio systems added.
• After looking at over 100 cars during a 5-month stretch, it became obvious clean unmodified examples of the manual models were highly sought after and were commanding a price easily 40% higher than their automatic brethren.
• In the end I found a really clean 2006 6MT model with only 114,000 miles on it and I was happy to only pay $3,000 over "Blue-Book" prices; that car served me well until I traded the old girl in on the Tacoma last month.

 

Very interesting story and what may seem to be the trend...suddenly the tide changing in your favor due to having a manual transmission.

There's some 'fanatics' like myself on standardshift.com. Discussions there of course in the last few years are more and more about the demise in manual transmission interest and availability, but who knows - maybe ironically due to EVs that trend may slow down or even reverse a bit.