Manual transmissions, wooooo, amirite? Yes, we all love to “row our own,” as they say, feel one with the machine, all that fun stuff. But manuals have become increasingly rare in the name of pure performance and declining offerings– just this morning, Thomas reported the Mazda 3 is the last stick-equipped economy car – and in the case of electric vehicles, there isn’t a need for changeable ratios at all, whether selected by a hand-stirred stick, a microprocessor firing solenoids, or the ol’ slush system.
But some people, a lot of you reading this now, I imagine, would like a manual shifter. Would you settle for a simulated manual? Not merely a “stick shift” form factor for selecting gears in an automatic transmission, but a stick that truly feels as if it’s tugging linkages and sliding synchros and all that?
Porsche has applied for a patent for just such a system, which you can view here. As the application states (per the patent site’s own German-to-English translation feature),
[F]ully automatic control of motor vehicles is not desired by every driver, because it makes individual intervention by the driver more difficult or avoids it, which is still preferred by some drivers.
Accordingly, there is a desire for the remanualization of motor vehicles in order to be able to perform certain functionalities manually again, such as the manual operation of the automatic transmission as a manual gearbox and/or the sequential shifting of the automatic transmission, whereby the motor vehicle may also only have an electric motor as a drive motor, whereby the shifting of the manual transmission or an automatic transmission is simulated.
…
An electronically controlled clutch pedal may also be provided to emulate the clutch actuation in an emulated manual transmission.
[Editor’s Note: The word “remanualization” kind of gave me some hives when I read it. They really have a knack for taking something potentially fun and making it all corporate-clinical. Ew. – JT]
So, we’re talking about a shifter that can be moved to choose gears like a conventional gearbox, or a sequential setup, or a full auto. Nothing too groundbreaking there – or patentable, I would think, though a phony clutch is interesting, if silly. But that’s not the meat of the idea Porsche wants to patent:
[I]t is also desirable if the hand-operated actuator is suitable for control in order to give the operator or driver of the motor vehicle a realistic experience of shifting a manual transmission or an automatic transmission.
This also includes the fact that the operating lever of the hand-operated actuator experiences realistically increasing resistance forces towards its end positions, which the driver must overcome when moving the operating lever.The task is to create a hand-operated actuator equipped with an actuating lever and realistically operable to generate a realistic shifting experience.
“Realistically increasing resistance forces towards its end positions, which the driver must overcome when moving the operating lever,” that’s force-feedback meant to make it feel like the shifter is actually doing something mechanical and not just bumping into switches. Maybe there could even be a knob you twist incrementally to go from full snick-snick to maximum notchy (who am I kidding, it would be a screen slider). At any rate, the words do a much better job than the patent art, which is giving “science fair” more than “high technology.” But that’s fine. The drawing isn’t for marketing, it’s for patenting.
As the application explains, springs return the stick to a fixed resting position, with a powered actuator (labeled 10 in the image above) providing the resistance to stick movement in appropriate amounts for accurate simulation. The actuator could be magnetorheological, electromagnetic, or motorized. The application goes on to explain that capacitors could power the system, “[allowing] a defined amount of current to be stored and retrieved briefly, in order to allow higher forces from the actuator on the operating lever.” Porsche seems to really want that lever to have some oomph, further explaining, “It is also advantageous if the current control circuit includes at least one boost converter … so that a higher electrical energy can be stored and quickly released again to allow for short periods of higher forces from the actuator on the actuating lever.”
There’s more. The patent application envisions a touch- and perhaps even camera-based sensor system to detect when the driver’s hand reaches for the shift knob, signaling an impending shift. If a phony clutch pedal is provided, it too could be sensor-equipped. Left foot twitching? Get ready to fire off those capacitors.
It’s all fascinating, and I can’t help but think of the guys who put thousands of dollars into e-racing rigs. In the future, the ultimate driving experience may be a car simulator that’s actually a car.
What a weird time to be a car person.
Top graphic image: Porsche
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