Just wait until the author learns about CVTs.
Will no one think of the children!? Haha. Someone must ensure the author doesn’t learn about CVTs and heavy-duty truck transmissions on the same day(or have an intelligent thought for that matter) lest they be forcibly committed to an insane asylum for the engineering impaired.
“journalism”
When will they get Intelligent Author Assist at Slate?
Why would an author at slate need that much intelligence? Foolish waste.
They’re stuck on the “Intelligent Author” prerequisite.
Don’t tell them about my 2.7 liter 10 speed f150!
or my 3.5l 10 speed pilot. God have mercy on them if they notice we’ve had 10 speeds for decades.
At least 4 of those 10 are spares, though. That way, you’re never stranded on uphill with a trailer. Just push one of those rocker switches on the dash, the turboencabulator de-capsulates, the lane change assist mechanism pulls the bad gear out of its lane, recerts the thrust capsulator for a spare, then the whole system recalibrates the torque angle frequency variable for non-PPG vector limits, re-capsulates, then you can put it in “H” and are good to go. Takes less time than a DPF regen cycle.
Jesus man, how have you not sent that thing airborne into a border checkpoint fence yet?
This technology exists BECAUSE people are terrible drivers and they routinely speed and kill others. If this was not the issue, EU wouldn’t be mandating these new techs on every new car. And in a few years it won’t be a chime but it’ll actively limit the car wether you want to or not
Slate is trash this is nothing new.
Seriously, I can infer each and every one of the author’s unoriginal political opinions from this single bad take.
You are on reddit.com, where a majority of the userbase holds similar opinions to the author. You may not notice it in this particular subreddit because the users here probably make unprincipled exceptions to their usual worldview.
Reddit is full of young, anxious people. Just like Slate.
And just like Slate journalists, redditors are try to fix their own anxieties by reducing the autonomy of those around them.
A cheeky headline about two people dying in a tragic car crash is just in such bad taste.
Clearly written by a moron
More gears =/= more speed. JFC.
Fast and Furious logic
If you started off with a 1 gear transmission adding a 2nd gear would almost certainly give you a higher top end speed, but you hit the wall pretty quick once you get into overdrive gears.
We don’t need speed assist. And it has an 8 speed for efficiency and performance.
Ironically it’s powerful cars that can probably get away with fewer speeds without having as much of an efficiency hit.
NASCAR Cup Series cars were at 900 horsepower with a 4 speed for a couple years. Even now, they’re at 670 with a 5 speed. Number of gears ≠ power
Bring back the powerglide!
Oh, please no.
there’s a video version of this article (condensed down to 17 seconds) if anyone cares to save themselves some time
From this clip it seems like it’s the classic take of an older person who mistook the accelerator for the brake. Either that or someone who doesn’t know how to properly drive a car with that much power
Unless you’re buying a performance car there isn’t a no reason to have beyond 100hp tbh…
My big ass horse trailer begs to differ.
you…must be joking, right? there are on ramps where a car with 100hp is literally a liability unless it weighs well under a ton.
I love this new trend of “you don’t need it” becoming “therefore you can’t have it”.
Theres no need for you to be here.
Is there a connection between the amount of power in an engine and the amount of gears in the transmission?
Like, wouldn’t more power mean that you can get away with less gears, because you aren’t always needing to be in a narrow rev range to generate torque?
I guess the real question I’m asking is, does the author of the article actually known anything about cars and how they work?
A car needs to be capable of high rpm low speed acceleration and low rpm (relatively) high speed cruising once up to speed. And together you get something that’s capable of high rpm high speed. You can’t legislate or dictate physics.
It depends on the working RPM range. A semi truck has 1000+ ft-lbs. of torque, but still has 10-18 gears to keep it in a narrow RPM band.
They know nothing about cars.
More gears means you can stay at peak efficiency. So you can also build a more efficient engine with a narrower torque band rather than one with a wider torque band that may be less efficient.
There are a lot of 1500+hp drag cars with 2 speed power glide transmissions.
does the author of the article actually known anything about cars and how they work?
4 gears = 4 speeds
8 gears = double the speed
^^/s
Usually if you have a load of torque you can get away with fewer, taller gears since you can get moving at low ass RPM
Porsche used to claim they left the 4 in the 930 so long bc then you could enjoy the motor pulling hard for longer between shifts and bc it had so much power more gears would just be an annoyance with very little benefit. They really just didn’t want to build a new 5-6 sod transmission that could handle the increased torque. But also they were kind of right about the enjoyment thing imo
While were all laughing at these people, we must take them seriously. Ignorance spreads very fast. Especially when amplified by rags like Slate. People who think theyre smart will begin asking this question rhetorically.
It’s the same thing as the people who know very little about firearms, deciding the laws around them. It’s funny, but the influence a lot of people have is really concerning
It seems firearms users have not been capable of properly policing themselves so non firearms people have been having to try their best to do it.
You don’t have to know a lot about guns to know that you don’t want to get shot.
You don’t have to know a lot about cars to know that no one needs a high capacity assault 8 speed transmission.
Even worse, most of them are fully automatic.
But does it have a suspension thing that goes up?
No, but it does have a 800 cylinder horsepower motor.
Wow, that sounds like it would be as heavy as 10 Boxes you would move with.
You’re completely right there. But that ends when one who doesn’t know what they are talking about outright lies to get others scared & worked up about something they don’t understand.l
Slate, the Faux News version for idiots
Don’t worry it seems like most comments on the article also view the author as a complete fockin idiot.
Once you read a “journalists’/writer’s” articles about something you know a little about, through say a hobby, you realize how ignorant and off the mark they often are. Now make the topic of the article about something you really know about and you might get depressed about the stupid things they say.
Ignorance spreads very fast
almost like it’s got an 8 speed transmission
Imagine how fast it would spread with a 10-speed!
I wonder if they know how many speeds a big rig has…
Or… gasp …A CVT?!
Jesus, someone is bringing gun-legislation levels of stupidity to car regulations.
Can you go salivate over guns somewhere else? This is a car subreddit
Gun nuts will never pass up an opportunity to tell you how stupid you are for not knowing the difference between a mag and a clip, and how it invalidates your opinion on wanting less kids getting killed at school. It’s more fun to shoot guns at paper and pretend to fight off tyranny than it is to have stupid rules saying I can’t have lethal toys just because some dummies are using them to kill a ton of people
Car enthusiasts: “they don’t know anything about what they’re trying to ban!”
Gun owners: “First time?”
Another thing they have in common: the regulation never actually shows up, the fear if anything just stokes the market.
You’ve heard of assault style features on rifles, get ready for racing style features on cars.
Spoiler? banned.
Skirts? banned.
Car’s too heavy so you need more than 2 pistons per caliper? banned.
M badge? believe it or not, straight to jail.
No one needs a high capacity assault transmission.
My car has a shoulder thing that goes up.
Bro, there’s like zero legitimate purpose for a shoulder thing that goes up.
Please tell me you didn’t paint it black.
German cars can’t be imported with rear spoilers or alloy wheels, those performance parts are just too dangerous, but once they’re imported BMW can pay a shop to add them on before being sold and that’s perfectly ok.
Italian cars can’t be imported directly and must sit in a musty English garage for 20 years before being allowed in.
2 door roadsters are sporty so to keep people safe we won’t allow them to have over 200 hp, but for whatever reason we won’t consider a 5 door hatch a sports car and they can have whatever engine you feel like.
Automatic transmission shift gears too fast so they can’t have wheel widths larger than 8”, hand brake levers, aftermarket gauges, be painted the color red, or have rear parachutes because we all know how much people just love to put parachutes on their cars. Manual transmission cars can do whatever they want.
Banning silencers is on the same tier as banning car mufflers. It’s literally just safety equipment, but legislators watch too many movies.
RIP Hearing Protection Act(s), in all their varied forms and merits - that one time(s) a bill title actually coincided with what it set out to accomplish.
There’s always hope though. Randomly checked legality of switchblades in my state a few years back only to learn they’d recently been legalized again! (as a fully legal ‘flipper’ currently in my pocket could probably be opened faster, & was never outlawed)
Still don’t have one myself, but it’s a good example of dumbass legislation.
A lot of states allow switchblades but only if they are comically short.
At least arizona overturned their law banning nunchucks (not a joke).
Ah yes, nunchucks. The bane of law abiding citizens & top choice of criminals everywhere.
my state legalized switchblades but not gravity knives, which are definitely slower except on maybe jupiter
ugh - bizarre
Right? This author is one step away from wanting to ban assault sedans.
It’s the SUVs that are randomly running over parades all by themselves