My car is a WRX like the one in the video (except mine is dark gray), and I feel kinda triggered watching this.
One thing that’s notable is that unlike a lot of other modern cars, the doors don’t auto lock when you start driving.
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My daughter starting learning to drive 5 years ago.
I advised her to learn on manual because here in the UK we still have a lot of manual cars and you get legally qualified to drive automatics too, but not vice versa. Her instruction was majorly interrupted by Covid, so she gave up for a while.
Now I think she’d be fine learning on an automatic, because by the time she can actually afford a car a lot of them will be electric anyway.
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I found shifting with my left hand came easier than I imagined it would. And it felt more satisfying dropping into 5th or 6th gear “in close” to my leg, rather than “way over yonder”.
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zing! bullseye.
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I got to go on a trip to the Netherlands yonks ago because I was the only engineer who could drive a manual transmission. I was not slated to go originally, but because of the rental cars available another engineer was replaced with me. After that for the next trip I got to go again because I had ‘experience’ there. And after that I was selected for more trips because I knew how to work with Europeans, whatever that means. Thanks, manual transmission!
BTW my daughter does fine driving a stick. She was pretty much a natural, unlike my son who would coast through red lights lest he conk out at an intersection.
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I’m always impressed at how differently people learn (and yet we can talk to each other. Amazing). My sister was a natural who just got it. I didn’t get it until someone explained the mechanics of what a clutch actually is. Once I could picture two spinning high-friction plates, what the car was doing made sense and I could learn from it. Before that, it just seemed to grumble and bounce or stall… mysteriously.
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I had this exact problem returning to the states from England. I could manage the correct side of the road, but could not help turning the windshield wipers on instead of the turning signal for the life of me.
When I arrived in England I did that too, but kicked the habit in a day. When I returned to the states ten days later it took me a solid week to stop messing up.
I was coming to ask the same question. I think often, though, “unspecified reasons” == “kids are minorities.” They just feel like adult thugs to the white DA.
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Oh Lord, I’d forgotten all about that. I screwed that up for the entire time I was over there. lol. Good memories.
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Here in Oz, European cars often have the indicators / wipers in the left-hand-drive (European) config. So I drove a Volkswagen in Australia, sitting in the right-hand seat, with the indicators by my left hand. Then I’d drive a Toyota for work, and signal with my right. Madness.
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An electric motor has the potential to make 100% torque from start, that doesn’t mean they all do or that manufactures even offer any semblance of that. Not to mention all of the safety controls. On paper putting your foot to the floor of a Tesla Model S plaid should leave you with at least a little smokey trail from the tire spin, but the computer mitigates all of that. EV’s seem to have this air of tire shredding ability when the reality is far from it - not because they mechanically can’t, but because they are programmed not to.
I don’t need for an EV to have a manual or any transmission, but there could be a lot more direct driver control added in. Most manual cars offer that direct driver input.
Does anyone run an electric oil pump or assist? Sure the starter is beefed up, but what about the oil pressure dropping out. Obviously by the number of vehicles that have start/stop it works. The issue as you brought up is “immediately”. People are keeping cars longer and the question isn’t if they will survive through their warranty period or 100k miles. The target should really be 150 to 200k.
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Shifter-Gate-Keeping
They are programmed not to because if they could, they’d blow up the driveline. The motors in EVs are huge and the rest of the driveline would have to be huge to handle that torque.
That amount of torque also creates suspension and driveability problems. Most EVs are front wheel drive, and torque steer is the top problem for this suspension configuration. The Chevy Bolt has terrible torque steer problems when accelerating out of sharp corners (really the only major flaw in an otherwise fantastic car). The Leaf does not, because they turn the launch torque way way down. Makes it feel more gutless in a straight line, but drives better generally as a result.
The original Tesla Roadster (which was basically an electric conversion of the Lotus Elise made with laptop batteries) did have a two-speed gearbox in it with a driver selection lever. They removed it because… you guessed it…. The electric motor kept detonating that gearbox.
Building driveline components that can survive the hammering of high torque is an exponential cost curve. To make them handle another 10 ft/lbs costs twice as much in mass, alloy quality, and tolerances in the engineering. They also add a lot of weight, which of course is the enemy of EVs. That’s why the answer is always to turn down the hammer in software.
Street cars are also not drag racers. They don’t have the suspension or the rubber to put 1000 ft/lbs into the road and stick it even though the motors are capable of it. The cars would be undriveable. It sounds fun on paper, but it’s really just annoying and dangerous on the street.
But mark my words- in 20 years all drag racing will be electric. The technical advantages are clear. The main reasons it isn’t already is because the NHRA regs haven’t caught up, and drag racing culture is one of anti-progress rednecks. As soon as the rules allow a pro team to go electric though, they’ll start winning everything and the others will come around.
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Add me to the list of “learning to drive all over again in the UK.” I was eighteen and sent over with the USAF. Learned stick in a RH-drive car I bought–a Vauxhall Victor. That was a sink-or-swim moment, but fortunately, I had a sufficient grasp of the inner workings (like @anon65652885), so I was able to get functional pretty quickly.
I did pull out of a turning into oncoming traffic once, and once again when I came back to the U.S.
No recollection of any wipers/signals confusion, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
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My mom and I did a driving tour in Ireland and we rented a stick because we’re both stick people. Pulling out the wrong way was the thing we almost always did too. We would say to each other in every parking lot as we pulled out, “look right, turn left!”. That muscle memory of pulling out of a parking lot or driveway is hard to overcome!
That and punching the door as you reach for the stick that’s on the other side. We did a lot of that too.
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I mean, fair point, the more complicated something is, the more likely it will fail. Was it a GM product? They seem to have a shorter life span than others.
But, IIRC, you can still manage fuck up a manual gear box if you tried hard.
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Another 2CV driver?
I passed my test in one, the examiner was fascinated.
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It’s probably to make the DA’s conviction record look more impressive and less child-predatory.
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Going between the US and Oz, I’ve ended up on the wrong side of the road maybe four times in lots of trips. Every single time was when the road was empty. This wasn’t just lucky - this was also because there weren’t other cars around to remind me. 
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My car is a PZEV hybrid and my first manual. After learning stick for a few sessions on ICEs, it was nerve-wracking for a week or so after getting my car.
The engine stopped! What did I do wrong? … nothing, it’s the autostop kicking in.
But the engine restarts faster than anyone can clutch out (faster than the brake to gas foot travel time), so ultimately it’s no big deal.
I’ve only used paddle-shifters on one rental car…but I considered the experience to be all the worst parts of manual and automatic driving combined.
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