With the rise of the electric car, the manual gearbox is gradually disappearing, but cars with fuel engines are increasingly only available with an automatic transmission. More than seven out of ten new cars will have an automatic gearbox in 2023, according to figures requested by De Standaard from the Febiac automotive federation. For comparison: last year electric and hybrid cars only accounted for just over 40 percent of the Belgian market.
Mercedes, VW and BMW
It has been said for some time that the manual gearbox is in danger of extinction, but in recent weeks and months the list of car brands that want to put an end to it has grown a bit longer. For example, Mercedes decided a few years ago to no longer make cars with a manual gearbox and now VW and BMW also seem to be joining the group of ‘non-believers’.
“They are nice products, but let’s be honest, the volumes are getting smaller and there is no point in developing them anymore,” Frank Weber, board member at BMW, recently stated in the Italian magazine Quattroruote. VW recently decided to no longer install a manual gearbox in the new GTI models.
Trend break
This seems to be gradually putting an end to the decades-long transatlantic style break in the global car market. While the American car industry from the outset focused on wide, large models with automatic gearboxes, until recently the smaller, quicker and sportier European cars were largely or almost exclusively supplied with a manual gearbox.
Those days are now gradually behind us. Automatic gearboxes have now evolved in such a way that they shift better than a manual transmission. In addition, there are also a number of safety systems for cars that function best, or sometimes even exclusively, with an automatic transmission.
Greater driving comfort
According to car experts, the greater driving ease that results from this means that people are increasingly opting for an automatic gearbox, and that more and more car manufacturers are drawing commercial conclusions from this. As automatic gearboxes became more efficient, another cliché also disappeared on the European car market: that a car with an automatic transmission would consume more.
Increasingly busy traffic may also play a role in the remarkable trend break. The stop-and-go traffic and traffic jams ensure that the last ‘believers’ in a manual gearbox are gradually opting for more comfort and changing camps.
Exception: the young driver
It is remarkable that the machine’s power grab does not happen at the same speed everywhere. The number of young Belgians taking their driving test with an automatic transmission is increasing, but at a much slower pace than you would expect. Only 13.8 percent of new drivers used an automatic during their driving test last year. The year before that was just over 10 percent, according to figures that De Standaard requested from Goca Vlaanderen.
“The reason why I think this is progressing so slowly is that the car market for private individuals is still largely a second-hand market where manual transmission vehicles are mainly available,” explains Goca manager Steven Raes. “When young people obtain their driver’s license and subsequently buy their own car, it is usually a second-hand vehicle because new electric cars, which are automatic as standard, are often unaffordable for them.”
According to Raes, candidates who take their driving test today with an automatic vehicle often do so through free guidance, with their parents’ vehicle.
