For those who find electric cars a bit boring, Toyota engineers are working on a realistic-feeling fake manual transmission as a possible feature.
To be clear, a manual transmission on an electric car would serve absolutely no purpose. It would be just for fun, an add-on for people who like shifting gears in their gasoline-powered cars.
Toyota, long skeptical of electric vehicles, has been planning a more aggressive push into the sector. That will mean finding ways to appeal to all sorts of consumers. A feature like this could help lure holdouts who aren’t attracted to an electric vehicle’s usual smoothness and simplicity.
Even among gasoline-powered cars, most sold in the United States today have automatic transmissions that shift gears with no driver input. Manual transmissions, in which a driver has to press a clutch pedal and move a stick around to select different gears, are usually offered as options on performance cars or, in some cases, extremely cheap cars. They are more common in other parts of the world, though, including Europe.
Most electric cars have only a one-speed transmission because their fast-spinning electric motors don’t need the extra help from different gear ratios at different speeds.
In Toyota’s case, according to a patent application filed in the United States in late May, the car would have no actual multi-speed transmission. Instead, a shifter would be connected to sensors and a central computer programmed to mimic the feel of a car with a manual transmission. Since not all cars with manual transmissions are the same – they have different engines and different transmissions with different numbers of gears – the central computer would be programmed to imitate a specific sort of manual transmission car. To complete the experience, the driver will have a clutch pedal in addition to the usual brake and accelerator.
Drivers will even be able to “downshift,” a process also known as engine braking. That’s when the driver selects a lower gear and releases the clutch pedal without pressing the gas pedal at all. Then, the friction of the unpowered engine slows the car without the driver having to use the brakes.
Toyota’s virtual manual transmission includes programming that will allow drivers to realistically experience using it badly, up to a point. If the driver doesn’t “give it enough gas” or selects the wrong gear the car will shake and buck, just like a gas-powered manual transmission car would. The car’s computer will limit how far the shaking will go to avoid stress on the battery.
If the drivers don’t feel like using the fake manual transmission, they don’t have to. The car would have two driving modes, a regular EV mode and the faux-manual mode.
Some reports on the technology have said there will also be fake engine sounds to go along with all the shifting and accelerating action, although the patent application doesn’t mention it. So far, it’s unclear if, when and in which global markets the fake-shifting EV might be sold.
Toyota declined to provide additional details to CNN.
