Perusing for replacement car

forgotmyname

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82018323#Comment_82018323

Don't forget the not so useful systems that can cause incidents like the stupid crash protection that fully brakes in a panic at a car crossing my path
that I had seen and anticipated and adjusted my speed so that it could cross safely and then the car ahead would have cleared but my car thought
otherwise and slammed me to a stop. Luckily nothing was behind and no pedestrians near me also.

Goudy

All gearbox arrangements have their drawbacks. We're in an age of efficiency/weight saving/cost saving solutions when it comes to building cars which tends to mean components are closely matched for things like torque.

Road gearboxes tend to need to be built stronger/bigger due to smoothness and noise, this means using helical gears (cogs with angled teeth). Though these helical gear produce sideways load on the gears/shafts as they push away from each other, so need stronger cases, bearing and bushes. Stronger cases, bearing and bushes mean more space and weight which they try to shave off.

A lot of modern manuals will use dual mass flywheels to try and reduce to torque spike when the clutch is disengaged to try and protect the lighter gearbox, but the dual mass flywheel usually has a much shorter life span than a solid one, so tends to cost more when a clutch needs changing.

Again due to emissions, a lot of manufacturers moved away from torque converters as they sapped power and pushed emissions up. This meant they needed other automatic solutions like CVT and dual clutch.

Lighter cars tended to be built with dry dual clutches as they didn't need to handle a lot of torque. This was fine until the friction plates wear and they became problematic and more importantly, expensive to fix. So now most use wet clutch versions which tend to be better, though not without their own problems.

You will now find cars stuffed with more gears these days too. Manuals generally have 6 and some autos have up to 10, though 7 or 8 is most common. This is to try and keep the engine working as efficiently as possible as you have more gears to match the engine when it's running most efficently.

Gearbox model codes tend to give things away, they are called things like 7DTC300 (my car's gearbox). It's a 7 speed wet dual clutch that handles 300nm of torque and my engine produces 270nm of peak torque, so it's closely matched. I believe there's a 450 and 600 versions as well.

Toyota have been very clever with their latest hybrid system. It only really has half a CVT gearbox.

Instead of sending all drive through the gearbox, it employs direct electric drive just like a full EV for slow to medium speeds. Only when it's up to speed does the CVT gearbox start to handle drive. But as it's only handling higher speeds, it doesn't need all the ratios, it just needs a few higher ratios meaning a much smaller, lighter gearbox.

I like my dual clutch auto, it has more connected feeling to the road like a manual as there is virtually no slip like a TC, but I regularly drive one of my works Toyota Hybrid's and the latest direct drive version it's winning me over, it's that good I'm considering buying one and I'm not easily swayed.