Pay at the pump SC

[wolfie]

IIRC, if you passed your test in an automatic, you have to re-take your test in a manual if you want to be able to drive one legally.

Within my lifetime, that applied in British Columbia (Canada). When I was in elementary school, I remember my mother mentioning it in connection with her sister who owned a Corvair at the time.

In Ontario (Canada) it's been VERY recent (since I started driving a truck) that the requirement to get a class A license dropped the requirement to do a road test on a vehicle with an unsynchronized manual transmission (many heavy trucks are now getting "automated manuals" - core of a manual, but shifted by computer).

[bunrotha]

That's right. Automatics are very rare outside of cars adjusted for someone with a disability, and lower in value in comparison to the same model in a manual. IIRC, if you passed your test in an automatic, you have to re-take your test in a manual if you want to be able to drive one legally.

Automatics are becoming more common in some brands now. BMW/Merc/poshwagon 4x4s that regard themselves as premium now tend to have automatic boxes, as do sporty things now that twin-clutch flappy-paddle automatic gearboxes are a thing.

Plain, common and garden saloon and hatchbacks still 90% manual transmission though, right enough.

I have my first automatic in 15 years at the moment. They don't offer that engine/trim as a manual (Alfa Giulietta QFV) and it's taking a while to adjust..

[Silent-Hunter]

I believe there is no such thing as a manual Prius either.

[wolfie]

My understanding is that no hybrid is available as a manual. With the computer constantly deciding whether to feed engine power into the battery or the road, or to do regenerative braking, it needs to have control of the transmission.

[Nunavut Pants]

My understanding is that no hybrid is available as a manual.

Nope, there are manual hybrids. The original Honda Insight (the little two-door one) was available with a manual, for one. I know it hasn't been sold new for a while now, but used ones come up for sale. I had thought that at least one of the super-super-high-performance hybrid cars was also available with a manual, but now I am doubting that...

But the Toyota "Hybrid Synergy Drive" uses a sort of continuously-variable transmission as the link between the electric and fossil-fuel engines.