I don’t know how valid it is these days, but when I was last in Germany in 1989, I asked my much older cousin about automatic vehicles.
Conceptually he knew what they were and that Americans drove them, but aside from large commercial vehicles - and it was rare at the time even there - he had never come across a consumer vehicle with an automatic transmission in his life. Like, everything at the time was stick and three pedals on the floor. Everything. If you wanted an automatic it had to be special-ordered and shipped in at significant expense from America or something like that
I don’t know how valid it is these days, but when I was last in Germany in 1989, I asked my much older cousin about automatic vehicles.
Conceptually he knew what they were and that Americans drove them, but aside from large commercial vehicles - and it was rare at the time even there - he had never come across a consumer vehicle with an automatic transmission in his life. Like, everything at the time was stick and three pedals on the floor. Everything. If you wanted an automatic it had to be special-ordered and shipped in at significant expense from America or something like that
Automatics used to be less efficient, they have since reached parity, long since.
Automatics are now far more efficient than manuals. More gears (up to 10), and shift faster (milliseconds) and more optimally.