a manual auto?
clutch, H‑pattern, and a real gear lever,… But not a manual?
Ferrari started it. Now Porsche wants to recreate the manual gearbox
Sounds a little strange?
It is.
Ferrari has already shown that a modern sports car doesn’t necessarily need a traditional gearbox to give the driver a sense of control and involvement. And now Porsche seems to be exploring a similar direction.
Porsche has filed a patent for a system that would allow an automatic transmission to feel like a traditional manual gearbox. Not just a regular automatic with some paddles and a “Manual” button, but a system with a real third pedal and an H‑pattern that allows the driver to work their way through the gears themselves.
For anyone who loves three pedals, that’s a rather interesting idea.
An automatic with an identity crisis
Porsche’s idea is actually surprisingly simple.
Underneath, there is an automatic transmission — more specifically, a PDK (Porsche Doppelkupplung) transmission. The driver would then be able to choose between three different driving modes.
In the first mode, the car behaves like a normal automatic. Put it in Drive and let the electronics take care of the rest.
In the second mode, you get the sequential control we’re all familiar with. You can shift up and down yourself using the gear lever or paddles, just like in many modern sports cars.
But then comes the interesting third mode.
Fully manual.
A third pedal appears, and the gear lever operates in a traditional H‑pattern. The driver operates the clutch and selects the gear themselves, while the electronics control the actual transmission underneath.
In other words: you get all the actions of driving a manual, without there actually being a conventional manual gearbox underneath the car.
But why?
And this is where it gets really interesting for us as car enthusiasts.
Why would a manufacturer go to all this trouble to recreate a manual gearbox when an automatic transmission is technically simpler and more efficient?
Perhaps because manufacturers are slowly realising what we’ve known for a long time:
a car isn’t just a means of transportation.
A manual gearbox forces you to stay involved. You choose the gear yourself, operate the clutch and decide when to let the engine climb through the rev range or drop back down.
See also: The most enjoyable brain training comes with three pedals.
Those are exactly the little actions that make a drive enjoyable.
Ferrari has already experimented with technology designed to give the driver more of that interaction despite using a modern transmission. Porsche now appears to be working on a similar concept.
And perhaps that tells us something about the future of sports cars.
The solution to the death of the manual?
This is probably the most interesting reason behind it all.
True manual cars are becoming increasingly rare. At the same time, automatic and dual-clutch transmissions are faster, more efficient and easier to integrate with the increasingly complex drivetrains of modern cars.
For manufacturers, that makes a traditional manual gearbox increasingly difficult to justify.
For enthusiasts, however, it’s a different story.
We want that clutch.
We want to change gear ourselves.
We want to feel that little resistance as the lever slots into gear. We want to decide when the engine drops back through the rev range. And yes, sometimes we simply want to select one gear lower for the spectacular soundtrack.
Porsche now seems to be asking:
“What if we could give you that feeling without actually building a manual gearbox?”
And honestly…
That’s pretty clever.
But also a little strange.
Is a simulated manual still a manual?
This is probably the question car enthusiasts could argue about forever.
If you press a clutch, select the gear yourself and the car does exactly what you ask it to, does it feel like a manual?
Or does it matter that there is no longer a traditional mechanical connection between your gear lever and the transmission underneath the car?
For some people, the answer will be obvious.
A true manual gearbox has mechanical linkages, cables, gears and a clutch that you actually operate. No electric motor pretending to be one.
At the same time, there is something to be said for Porsche’s approach. If this technology allows us to keep shifting our own gears in a world of hybrids and increasingly automated cars, then Porsche is at least trying to preserve some of that involvement.
And perhaps that’s ultimately more important than what is actually happening underneath the car.
Because a car doesn’t always have to be the most efficient way of getting from A to B.
Sometimes we simply want something to do.
A gear lever to grab.
A pedal to press.
And an engine that responds to what we do.
The future of manual driving?
The Porsche patent does not mean that this technology will actually make it into a production car. Car manufacturers constantly patent ideas that never make it to market. So this is by no means confirmation that we’ll soon be able to order a Porsche with this transmission from a dealer.
But the idea itself is interesting enough.
Perhaps the future of the manual gearbox won’t be a traditional manual gearbox at all.
Maybe, ten or twenty years from now, we’ll be driving cars in which software controls how the clutch operates, electric motors operate the gear lever and a computer makes sure you can still work your way through the gears yourself.
Or perhaps…
we’ll simply stubbornly stick with the mechanical manual gearbox.
At Driver.community, we already know which direction we’d rather see the world take. 😉
Source: Motor1 — “Porsche Is Developing A Gearbox That Switches Between Manual And Automatic” and the subsequent patent report on the simulated manual gearbox. Read the original article on Motor1
Additional sources: Porsche and reporting on the new patent via the European Patent Office.
