For those who find electric cars a bit boring, Toyota engineers are working on giving their customers manual transmissions in their EVs.
However, the manual transmission will be a fake one which likely is to be provided for a realistic feeling to the drivers.
It is pertinent to mention here that Toyota, long skeptical of electric vehicles, has been planning a more aggressive push into the sector. That will mean finding ways to appeal to all sorts of consumers. A feature like this could help lure holdouts who aren’t attracted to an electric vehicle’s usual smoothness and simplicity.
Takero Kato, president of Toyota's newly-established BEV Factory, dropped the news that Toyota will deliver a manual transmission EV at the company's Toyota Technical Workshop earlier this week. The simulated manual will likely debut as early as 2026 alongside the automaker's next-gen battery packs.
Manual transmissions, in which a driver has to press a clutch pedal and move a stick around to select different gears, are usually offered as options on performance cars or, in some cases, low-end cars. They are more common in other parts of the world, though, including Europe and India.
Most electric cars have one-speed transmissions because their fast-spinning electric motors don’t need the extra help from different gear ratios at different speeds.
Toyota is not alone in its attempts to merge the auto industry’s past with its future. Dodge has been working on a symphony of fake engine sounds it hopes to include in its upcoming lineup of electric muscle cars. The Charger Daytona SRT concept was the first to test this vision with a fake engine sound.