Driving an automatic car

I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me, that humans will soon be deemed too risky to be allowed control the car, or contradicting me?

The fact is, the tech is becoming more affordable and reliable all the time. When it gets to the stage that self drive is far safer than humans, then it will be logical to prohibit human control. There's other positives too, insurance, efficiency, traffic flow, …

Look at commercial flight these days, almost entirely automatic.

The 2 automatics in our house, different manufacturers, have different forms of auto hold. For one it just comes on when you're stopped for a second, the other you've already described that Mercedes have.

Neither experience jerkiness when pulling off though, they're smoother than clutching and pulling off.

And most modern automatics, in my experience, will apply the parking brake automatically too when ignition is switched off.

Never had the need, or felt it would have been good in a particular situation, to use my left foot to brake in either a manual or auto.

If Technology can control out whole lives and do everything for us then what's the point of living ?

If humans are deemed too useless and all the want to do is sit on the couch and have a robot do everything or an app then it will be a very sad existence.

Whether tech reaches singularity or not I have no idea but that's well into the future, the tech the E.U forced into cars is not helping, there's no system right now in any car that can actually prevent an accident if the driver is playing with their phone or the infotainment system.

We should concentrate on making humans better drivers, all the tech has done is make drivers concentrate less on driving we don't need tech to make drivers less of a risk on the road we need less in car tech and proper phone detection with proper consequences.

I've been in a few cars which I remember the auto-hold being slow to release if you try to move off quickly. Avensis and Passat come to mind, but maybe it was just those specific cars. You'd go to accelerate, the engine would bog down for a split second, the rear would dip, and then finally the brake would release. I was used to the smoothness of the Merc system too which I'm sure didn't help.

The F30 3 Series as common example has no auto-hold, and a manual parking brake which can get irritating after a while in traffic. It also give you a warning to put the car in park before you turn the engine off, but it put itself in park anyways, so the warning it just an annoyance.

Trying to park in a tight space on a hill is an example, particularly in some autos with stop-start, and hybrids. There's only so much the engine idle will overcome to prevent you rolling backward when both feet are off the pedals, and/or you need to give a decent input to the throttle for the car to overcome the parking brake, it can make for very jerky parking in some cases.

No need to feel nervous, just take some automatics on test drive and remember CVT are not the most reliable and are budget Automatics.

The stop start was too slow on the older diesel VW I had. Got into the habit of tapping the accelerator at junctions to stop it stopping. Like you said it could catch you out.

Never thought the DSG (auto) it had was great either. slow to shift, used to have it in sport mode most of the time. Perhaps newer autos and stop start are better. Switched to an EV and it's vastly better.

Probably worth test driving a few autos see which one you like.

Toyota hybrid CVT gearboxes have no issues with reliability. The only CVTs that I am aware had a bad reputation were the early Daf / Volvo rubber belt ones.

If you read my earlier posts you will see clearly where I excluded Toyota Hybrid CVT and I explained why, because the electric motor takes a lot of the load. Yes, you can add Lexus to that of course.

I guess you didn't bother to read the whole thread, you just picked out something you didn't like.

If I had to buy a car with CVT Toyota Hybrid would be my really only choice, especially high mileage car, this box needs it's oil changed every , oh, think it was 60,000 Kms, don't remember and no idea the recommendation now. It's good to change any gearbox oil, normal CVT included.

For a much better driving experience, more like a manual the Dual clutch auto is about the best out there, DSG, powershift etc. Audi, seat, skoda have the DSG.

CVT and lower powered engines are absolute sh*te to drive because the engine is always at high revs and I've driven some of them, I couldn't stick it bar a few local runs to shops and back.

I guess you missed earlier in the thread where I mentioned Toyota as the best CVT out there because of the electric motor, I didn't mention Lexus but you can add that to the list of course.

Nissan had a lot of issues with CVT, it was such a headache for Audi and cost them a lot of money in repairs that they stopped selling CVT altogether years ago for DSG/Stronic, same thing.

DSG in the early days had several issues which have long since been fixed, it's basically a manual box with 2 auto clutches and offers a far better driving experience than either CVT or torque converter. Ford's Power Shift is another Dual clutch, Volvo used it too, not sure if they still use it.

Ford Powershift has a bad reputation.

it’s an easy switch to automatic. Just keep you left foot on the rest stand and enjoy driving. Get a car with electronic handbrake like a golf and then you don’t need to think about it either. We had at least 1 automatic from 2015, I switched to a golf with dsg in 2018 and never looked back. Moved on to a ID.3 in 2020 and to MY in 2023 with one pedal driving and life came even easier:)

love the VW Golf auto but you can’t tap the accelerator to keep the revs up or the car will start rolling. ( unless you are into that left foot braking 🫤 ) . Only real issue I have is the ( my ) old worry that if the let it stop it mightn’t start and the slight pause between pressing the accelerator and the car moving forward when you “ need to get on with it “

I drive a VW automatic and was talking to a few other automatic drivers and we all agreed we'd never go manual again