There are still enough models available with them, except less people are buying them opting for the automatics instead.
Pretty well all âsupercarsâ use them.
The only thing Ford, et. al. did was kill off the DCT in the compact range in the USA. Theyâre still going strong world-wide.
Now, instead, in the USA, weâre going full-tilt CVT, although the âtraditionalâ automatics are making an effort by adding another gearset or 2 (for 6+ gears), the merits of either and whether these are âimprovementsâ over the DCT being debatableâŚ
Thatâs what I was thinking. So, they are are effectively dead, since the vehicles they come on arenât really mass market models or see many miles like âregularâ cars.
Hereâs a good article on it, although a few years old. Interesting use of words from many people in the article. 
P.S. This is interesting
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/8j0h4c/dcts_in_hybrids_who_would_have_thought/
I recall the Fusion having a 6-speed DCT as the sole option in 2017 all trims, but Iâve slept since then and looks like thereâs not going to be a Fusion in 2019.
Rented a Corolla several years ago with 6 gears. Had about 90% less suck than even my old Integra, which was mighty tolerable.
The phrase âfake newsâ hits pretty well for these words:
Dual-clutch transmissions âhave taken a beating among consumers,â said IHS researcher David Petrovski.
âIf people arenât used to it, they think something is wrong.â
and
Sales personnel at Village Ford in Dearborn, Mich., took the companyâs advice to heart, said Bob Wheat, the dealershipâs sales manager.
âIf customers are prepared for it and understand it, then they have no issues,â Wheat said. âPeople who havenât driven a manual transmission expect the car to be smooth as silk, so we have to set the right expectation level.â
Maybe itâs just me, but to me, the consumers were standing at the top of the tallest mountain they could find, shouting their discontent with real problems, and all the automotive industry heard was crybabies who âarenât used to manual shiftsâ. This is likely because I had a family member with this very problem. This particular family member traditionally drives manual transmissions (along with a plethora of automatics, too), and had done for 50 years before buying the vehicle in question . At 40+mph the vehicle would grind, crunch, lose speed, shudder, and then carry on as if nothing happened (at least, it never actually locked up the drive wheels prior to his unloading this POS on a trade in). This was not âsomething to get used toâ unless you subscribe to the Clayton Williams Theory of Thingsâ˘. Further, this particular family member had tales to be told from passengers who also are well-acclimatized manual transmission devotees corroborating this as âanything but normalâ and âdownright scaryâ. Yet, all the manufacturer heard was âthe crybaby doesnât like a little noise and shudder when pulling away from a stop because theyâre just not used to anything but automatic smoothnessâ.
Assholes.
Where was I?
OH yeah.
I think it had more to do with the industryâs unwillingness to listen to customers and actually try to address the problems than it did with the technology or âSoftie Americansâ being unwilling to accept it.
Honestly, I presumed, based on the way that article is written, that âAutomotive Newsâ would be a Euro-publication. I was surprised it is not. Itâs out of Detroit. Owned by an American company. But then, itâs the mouthpiece for the American manufactures, so it towed the lineâŚassholes.
Yeah yeah. Hybridâs the cure for everythingâŚ
I am admittedly a novice when it comes to cars, but isnât hydrogen kind of the way we need to go? I always figured the flaws in hybrids outweighed the benefits.
1 Like
Opinions are like assholesâŚ
Iâll show you mine regarding hydrogen:
IF hydrogen were not so difficult to obtain/distribute, it might be part of âthe answerâ, but weâve been chasing that dragon for a long, long time⌠(fun facts: Francois Isaac de Rivaz is often credited with inventing and constructing the first successful internal combustion engine in 1806. The engine was powered by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. 1 year later, he also placed said engine into an âautomobileâ).
1 Like
VW still sells manual transmissions in their cars. My 2012 Jetta TDI and my 2016 Golf GTI are both 6 speed manuals.
They also have their DSG which is a two clutch automatic, that they sell with paddle shifters and itâs interesting as well.
1 Like
Iâm of the camp that the electric motor should have two gears. Something equivalent to the 1st and 4th in the gas world. Of the electrics Iâve driven (Tesla excluded) they seem to have amazing low end torque and starting power, but accelerating from 50 to 70 to merge onto a highway is terrible.
The purple people eater was out back this weekendâŚ
Upsides of hydrogen:
- Produces water vapor as its combustion byproduct
Downsides of hydrogen:
- Expensive to produce
- Once produced, significant additional energy must be expended to compress or liquefy it for storage
- Polluting to produce : Electrolysis powered by solar and wind might be the hand-wavey way that promoters insist itâs going to be made, but the reality is that steam reformation of hydrocarbons is how it will be made in volume since thatâs slightly more energy-efficient and the petroleum industry can gear up for a fraction of what industrial hydrolysis setups will cost; these setups dump waste CO2 into the atmosphere
- Low-ish energy density using both present and foreseeable future storage methods
- Hard to contain - not only can hydrogen leak through the best gas seals, but it can also diffuse through steel; leakage is an accepted fact of life when storing H2
- Explosive across an incredible range of atmospheric concentrations, flammable across almost any range, and far far easier to ignite than gasoline
- Fuel cells have cost, lifespan, and a range of operational issues that havenât been remedied; theyâre also ~half as efficient as batteries
- One could bypass fuel cells by simply running a conventional engine on hydrogen, but at that point you might as well just run the vehicle on cheaper, easier-to-manage natural gas
3 Likes
I call it âWho cares what the customers think, we need a real world test data to prove that this works and we need a scapegoat answer when it doesnât work.â
The last Corolla I drove as in 2014 and I had a pretty good CVT in it. Much better than the any other CVT from other Japanese makes at the time. The one on the current Prius, does not feel as good. It(Prius CVT) feels like itâs âdisengagingâ and re-engaging with a noticeable amount of shift shock.
1 Like
Energy density looks like a hard problem to solve. Li-Ion is running out of headroom for improvement. Weâve likely all heard about various lab advances (remember Cambridge Crude a few years back) and venture capitalist bait (EEStor) but that needle doesnât move quickly. Li-Ion glass is the latest thing that the tech press has been going on about that supposedly bumps both energy density and lifespan, but that vapor has yet to, uhm, condense.
For most EV drivers, time-to-refill is solved via overnight charging since theyâre daily driver commuting cars. Doesnât fit every use case, but EVâs canât be everything to everyone and I canât take anyone who insists otherwise seriously. Iâll admit itâs a bit strange watching Tesla try to shoehorn their vehicles into the long-distance driving role via their fast charging networks; they enable long-distance driving, but taking 30 minutes to charge every 2-3 hours seems like it would require some adjustment to a motoring public accustomed to sustaining something close to highway speeds indefinitely should they desire.
Thatâs gonna take a good long while.
2 Likes
Not entirely sure what year the vehicle was; I believe I rented it sometime around 2014. It certainly shifted like it had discrete gears and had an indicator on the dash showing what gear it was in at the time.
I think one of the best responses to the shortcomings of the all-electric have been those in which you use your electric daily, charging overnight, and when you need to make a longer trip than it can handle, you arrange to borrow, free of (additional) charge, an ICE car from said manufacturer (Canât find a link to such a program right now, but I thought BMW ran it for a bit at the introduction of the i3). Granted it takes planning, but this seems so much more viable than any other responses to date (e.g. Teslaâs efforts to get charging stations everywhere, or the government push to put charging stations in every parking spot in the city, etc.) But I guess, when youâre Elon Musk, bullying the government into fining the shyte out of VW and putting that money into âelectric infrastructureâ is easier than actually trying to come up with viable-today optionsâŚ
2 Likes
Iâve been back in my gasoline burning car for a few days and was thinking about the trade off in time.
I probably spend an extra ~10 seconds of my day, every day, plugging in the electric, vs ~10 minutes every other week (or so) to fill up my gas car. Not exactly sure what iâm doing with the extra ~33 seconds/day, but it is a time savings for sure.
2 Likes
It could be an older model. The one I drove had just been launched at the time and was the first Corolla to have a CVT.
Thatâs what Honda said in the ASEAN market when they first introduced the CVT in one of their models back in 2003 too. The next generation of the model had a conventional automatic, of course. 
1 Like
Hydrogen as a alternative fuel for combustion engine, e.g. replacing as fuel for internal combustion, is almost a non-starter. Th energy density of compressed H2 is extremely low for the weight when the very expensive high pressure tanks are added in.
Compressed gaseous hydrogen is even less dense than liquid hydrogen. At 5,000 psi of pressure gaseous hydrogen only has a density of 0.25 pounds per gallon or one twenty fourth the density of gasoline
Before I retired I worked at United Technologies Corp Power. They made fuel cells for everything from Space Shuttle, submarines, cars, buses to stationary power. None used liquid H2, it was in mass storage as H2 but had to be converted from liquid to compressed gas.
The way to get the most the âpowerâ/work out of it was to use fuel cells/electric vehicle - which added to the complexity, i.e. the fuel cell and tankage but simplified the motor/transmission by having an electric motor. They also only omitted H2O but had NO/NOX issues associated with burning H2.
It will be a while before fuel cells are in cars. Complex/expensive, have a warm time before starting unless left on a trickle running mode when parked, and refilling tanks is also slow.
1 Like
If youâre willing to accept a longer journey at a more ⌠pastoral ⌠pace than ICE vehicles allow and the charging stations are convenient to your endpoints, it can work. But like renting a car or arranging for a loaner it takes some planning.
Charging stations in every spot in the is silly. Or even a significant percentage of city lot parking spots.
But a small number of spots for city-owned EVs and possibly resident convenience? Orders of magnitude cheaper than some of the pilot stations Iâve seen with hydrogen or CNG filling stations.
Eh, pretty sure VW would have been spanked hard by world governments regardless of Mr Muskâs Twitter account. Whatever charging network VW builds out wonât use Teslaâs secret sauce for fast-charging and be reasonably open to all comers (but not necessarily free); Tesla owners will benefit so long as they pack a converter cable for the trip but it wonât be a Tesla exclusive.
In an attempt to get somewhat back on topic âŚ
The initial Tesla Roadster started off with just such an arrangement - 2 gears. I gather that between design problems and reliability, they discovered that it added surprisingly little to the actual performance. But Tesla probably uses beefier motors and leans on their big battery pack for range while other manufacturers do it the other way around for reasons of cost, so I can see the appeal.
1 Like