Toyota; An EV with a manual transmission ?

[Social Media]

 

For those who find electric cars a bit boring, Toyota engineers are working on a realistic-feeling fake manual transmission as a possible feature.

 

To be clear, a manual transmission on an electric car would serve absolutely no purpose. It would be just for fun, an add-on for people who like shifting gears in their gasoline-powered cars.

[Jitar]

The Toyota project is a gimmick, but a multispeed transmission can serve a purpose for some types of EV.  Hi performance electric cars generally use more powerful motors running at incredibly high rpm to avoid a multispeed transmission, but that is not a great solution for lower cost models.   

The Porsche Taycan / Audi e-tron use a two speed auto transmission.  Tesla tried to do the same with the original roadster but could not get a transmission that could handle the auto shift.  Perhaps they should have tried a manual then? 

 

[blackcab]

How does that work with a self driving car?