Driving test in an electric car

I regularly drive my partner's Nissan Leaf, on local trips, and find it a most satisfactory experience. There are a number of options for how it responds to the accelerator, and I like to set it with a bit more motor braking than my Mondeo auto diesel, which is now only used when absolutely necessary.

The EV certainly accelerates very well. As one who views cars as a means to get somewhere, it delivers.

Chris

Some BEV cars support one-pedal driving, and have a mode selector for operating the car that way. So yes, there can be some differences. To protect naive drivers, the car switches out of that mode, at the end of every session, for safety. And goes back to two-pedal mode. If you take your foot off the one-pedal pedal, it slows down... rapidly.

"Kia Niro EV"

If going for a test drive at a dealership, ask for details first. The car really should use "conventional" controls by default, but it does not hurt to ask.

Paul

When I drive an auto for the first time after a break I always fold my left foot under my right. This is to stop me absent mindedly putting my foot on the clutch. As there isn't one, but just a larger brake pedal, this tends to result in an unpleasant sharp stop.

I'm sure my wife's next car won't have a clutch.

(I intend to keep mine as long as possible. It's over 20 years old with

Andy

I felt the same, but found that Towing became an issue - dual mass flywheels as fitted on most ho-torque clutch based cars, are not compatible with towing.

Mt clutch would smell like it was burning if I tried to tow start on a hill, or when recovering a boat on a slipway. Manufacturer changed clutch pack twice, then came with experts to my boat launch ramp ... and they could not resolve.

They said its inherent with a Dual Mass flywheel to allow a controlled slip to avoid harsh clutch due to high torque of the engine. Unfortunately under a high load (2 ton) on an incline the slip was too much and clutch would burn.

Result was they gave me full refund and I went and bought an Automatic .... tows superbly ..... in fact many 4x4 / SUV are now automatic only for this reason. Being 8 speed box, to me it seems its always in the right gear, and you can put full torque down at crawling speed.

I find roundabouts very difficult to negotiate smoothly and yet briskly in an automatic.

In a manual I know that (for my car) third gear is perfect for driving at a constant speed on the roundabout and for accelerating back up to the speed limit as I leave the roundabout, and having selected that gear I have a constant, predictable relationship between accelerator position and road acceleration/speed. So I'd brake from (for example) 60 in top gear as I approached, assess which gear I would need, change into that gear as I stop braking and then negotiate and accelerate out in that same gear, only changing up as I reach steady speed.

In an automatic, I find that the transmission changes in response to the demand for power as I accelerate out, but it changes down much further. So I increase the accelerator position slightly and I either get very little acceleration in the gear that was used for going round the roundabout, or else for fractionally more accelerator the transmission drops into second (or maybe even first) and the car shoots forward like a scalded cat because the engine suddenly finds it has much less load on it because of the lower gear. So I come off the power to give less acceleration and the damn thing changes up again - I can only have s*it-hot acceleration in an absurdly low gear or piss-poor acceleration in a higher gear. There is no happy medium of "stay in this gear but with more throttle" as I would in a manual.

I imagine a true electric car with no variable-ratio gearbox (either fixed ratios or CVT) will be a lot more predictable because there is no un-commanded change of gear, and the power will be predictably related to the accelerator pedal position - as for a manual that stays in the gear that I put it in.

Automatics are great for *performing* the gearchanges much more smoothly than I could *reproducably* do in a manual, but they are lousy at the timing of the gearchanges because they are reactive instead of being proactive as a driver can be with a manual or with a DSG in manual mode.

Certainly I would disagree with the sentiment that an automatic is easier to drive than a manual, because it requires very careful control of the throttle to give the amount of acceleration of road speed that I want, when I don't have control of the gear selected and can only control engine speed.

Maybe I've driven manuals for so long that I find it difficult to the different driving technique to drive an automatic and to make it perform as

I was told (by the dealer) to put my left foot on the footrest provided (the manual vehicle has the same footrest, for when not using the clutch). The brake pedal isn't that much bigger than normal, so I can't get both feet on it anyway (especially with the extra wide shoes I wear).

Exactly: there are times when it is easier to *select* the gearchange manually (with paddles on a DSG or an auto that has paddles) and let the transmission *perform* it, doing the correct rev-matching for a seamless gearchange, as opposed to letting the automatic determine when and by how much it changes down, which I find is unpredictable. If I know that I will be changing to second rather than third, I will subconsciously apply the correct amount of throttle for second gear, adjusting for it being a lower gear (which needs more throttle) but the mechanical load on the engine being less (which means reducing throttle accordingly). The brain usually gets it right which one can control the timing and amount of gearchange, but it is bloody difficult to get it right when the timing and amount are not in my control.

It's a great shame that internal combustion engines have such a narrow band of usable rpm (1000-3500 in a diesel, 1000-5000 in a petrol) and so need a multi-ratio gearbox to match that limited range of engine speeds to a very wide range of road speeds (eg 0-70, legally). If only IC engines had flat torque over 0-maxium (the ciritical thing being torque at 0 rpm equating to stationary car) then we wouldn;t have to faf around with gearboxes, whether manual or automatic.

Absolutely not my experience. I will quite happily never drive another manual car.

Chris

Manuals are dying. Already basically dead in the USA:

So it's only really a short term thing for hire cars etc until those too turn hybrid or EV. Since the hire car fleet tends to turn over every couple of years, it will probably happen quite fast. As more people get auto-only licences, because there's no future in manuals, also hire fleets will adapt with more autos in them.

That leaves the very cheap end of the new market (ICE manuals because they're cheapest to manufacture) and older used cars. If you have an auto licence it limits your choice a bit, but you can still buy an auto to your price point. That makes it much less of a problem in practice, unless you're having to drive random other people's cars.

Surely a driver who knows how to drive would be capable of passing today's driving test, and so the test is really only adding the clutch part? If they fail they're still allowed to drive autos.

TBH if the habits are that bad, I'd be worried. The current driving test isn't that hard if you actually know how to drive - although you might want to practice some of the things that they look for (like making clear mirror checks etc).

Theo

There's automatics and automatics. A torque converter autobox v a CVT v an auto-clutch v a DSG v a hybrid. It's not fair to tar them all with the same brush, because some of them are very good. Choose wisely and it makes a big difference.

Theo

I drive a Yaris hybrid with an eCVT. So it is quite smooth up and down the "gears" at roundabouts, away from lights, all that. Once it was away getting repaired (not my fault someone had backed into me when I was stationery in a carpark) so was driving an Aygo courtesy car with a "standard" autobox this seemed to change gear when it felt like it changing down to firct as I was entering roundabouts and thus revving its nuts off.

In about 2011 they changed the Yaris from the 'semi auto' (same gears but auto clutch, somewhat hesitant when it changed) to a CVT. The 1.3 CVT was a bit wimpy. The current Yaris is a 1.5 hybrid and the hybrid (2012 or later) is *much* better - uses the electric for extra acceleration. In the CVT Yaris you'd press down the pedal and wait, in the hybrid you press down and jump forwards. It's surprisingly nippy.

Theo

Son and his wife have moved to the Isle of Mull (Salen pier) daughter in law is going to take her test there. ONE repeat ONE main road (apart from in Tobermory itself).one roundabout, no lights, easiest driving test in the country and yet :-

I notice that the Germans and Italians are getting worried about the

One of the advantages of an automatic is that they can have a larger number of gear ratios than the average car driver is likely to be capable of handling, which avoids the sort of problems you describe.

You can usually over-ride the automatic choice with manual control of the gears. However, the only times I have found that desirable is when descending a steep and winding hill and wanting to use engine braking to keep the speed down. With my current speed limiter, even that is no longer needed.

I suspect you have only driven underpowered automatics.

And revise your knowledge of the Highway Code and of traffic signs!

You don't need to do the theory test to upgrade, so it's only a problem if your driving is so bad it makes it clear you don't know what the signs mean.

Theo

why ?

Non-CVT auto boxes should allow you to choose the gear you want manually when necessary (like driving in snow)

People who tried to program in Pascal after using Fortran or Cobol had that problem too.

Even doing a hill start with a caravan in-tow ??? :-)

Even if the engine could provide the torque needed to avoid the need for a gearbox, all the driveline components would need to be massively stronger.