I know it's a meme, but I'm going to rant for a bit.
The MT version of the air conditioner is the two knobs, one for temp and the other for fan speed. The AT is the temp setting where you pick a temp and the air blows until it's that temperature.
And the MT is far superior in every way. Most car trips, you're not in your car long enough to stabilize the temp, and if you're like me, you never bother with anything between max cool and max heat anyway.
If you're not in the car long enough to stabilize the temperature, then you're close enough to bike.
You try riding a bike in a foot of snow for 15 miles to the grocery when it's -10F outside, then carry a week's groceries for your family in your backpack. I'll wait.
My wife, kids, and dog don't fit on my bike.
Depending on the kids ages, they also can ride, or ride in a trailer. The dog can ride in a basket or trailer depending on size
Go for a Dutch style cargo bike and the kids and dog can ride up front in the tub
Surely the real reason is the terrible bike infrastructure where you live
We have some excellent bike trails, but getting around town is problematic. I work from home, so I no longer have to commute, but when I did, it was too far to reasonably bike. It's not safe to take the kids riding on the highways, but we're close enough to the elementary school to bike there when the weather is nice.
I'm an advocate for biking, but it's not a realistic replacement for a car where I live. You can't load up like a pack mule every time you want groceries or to go to a little league game.
That’s very sad, and you have my sympathies. I wish that more places were designed so that kids could have a “free-range childhood.” The benefits to their physical, mental, and emotional development are significant, versus having to be carted around everywhere. Not to mention the burden on parents of being forced to be chauffeurs.
I lived a free range childhood in a neighborhood with sidewalks, where we could bike everywhere and walk to and from elementary school. We still had a family minivan, and my dad commuted to work. My kids can still ride their bikes around our neighborhood, but our world is bigger than our neighborhood. They have friends that live on the other side of mountains and highways. They have hiking trails and music lessons and sports and dance and theater, and hardly any of that would be possible on bikes because you can't fit baseball diamonds next to theaters next to music halls and national parks and art studios unless you live inside a major city. When I was a kid, we would all meet at the dirt piles behind the middle school and then go explore storm drains.
I enjoyed my childhood, but I don't lament that my kids have more options and opportunities than I did. Yes, we need a car to drive them around to play with their friends or attend events, and I enjoy being engaged in their lives and watching them enjoy the things they learn. But they still have summer days where the neighborhood kids meet at the creek and try to catch minnows.
Things change.
“Max cool / max heat only” is for troglodytes. While I agree that the auto-settings are ~useless, the One True Method is to keep the fan speed on low to maintain airflow and adjust the temp for comfort.
That's my strategy most of the time except during prime time Oklahoma Summers and Winters. Once it's over 100 or below 10, it becomes a max heat/cool game otherwise it would do nothing to combat the temperature
Nah. I like just leaving it on Auto with 70-72 °F. It blasts the fan to cool off or warm up quick in extreme temps, then calms down once it gets closer to the temp.
Preach. I much prefer it heating and cooling faster than it throttling itself because you don't have it set high or low enough.
The transmission doesn't control the air conditioner
My 98 automatic truck has 3 knobs. Fan speed, temperature, and source (head, feet, both, etc.).
Sorry, no, I meant that as an analogy. The image OP posted referred to a hand fan as the "manual" version of air conditioning, but I disagree.
I see that.
I'm still curious about why you don't think that the "automatic" is good, though.
In my MT AC I can pick max cold, max hot, or somewhere in the middle by mixing cold and hot.
The AT AC can do max cold, max hot, and then gives you numbers for the middle.
If I want my MT AC truck to be middle temperature, I have to crank the heat until it gets hot and then manually turn down the temperature until I'm comfortable at half.
If I got into an AT AC truck then I could just set the temperature to half and it will automatically crank the heat until it gets hot and then automatically turn down the temperature until I'm comfortable at half.
Other than AT AC having more stuff to break and higher cost of repair. AT AC gives you the same temperature experience without you having to turn the knob multiple times. It automatically does it for you.
Because getting from max hot to max cold means pressing a button up or down for each degree. And there is lag between the car temp sensor detecting the current temp and the change in air temp and fan speed. On top of all that, the human body doesn't have a thermostat. What feels comfortable depends on your internal body temp, humidity, how sunny it is, what activities you've just done or will do, what you're wearing, and how many other people are in the car. This information cannot be summarized in a single number. It doesn't give you what you want automatically, and you need to tweak it up and down anyway.
Instinctively, you know exactly whether you want hot or cold air and how strong you want it to blow. I could either turn two knobs to get exactly what I want, or I could press buttons to guess at the temperature that is going to trick the automated systen into giving me what I want without knowing if I will need to make additional adjustments later. Worse still, making adjustments means taking my eyes off the road to see what number I've put into the system. This problem is compounded exponentially if the car has a touch screen and I need to navigate menus to adjust the AC.
The worst part about it is that it's entirely unnecessary. The knobs worked fine. Some older cars has sliders ir buttons, but knobs seemed to be the thing everyone liked, and the automated system didn't improve on that. You still have to adjust the air, but the interface to make adjustments is objectively worse.
They were making an analogy that fit better than OP, not actually suggesting air con was affected by what kind of gearbox your car has.
This feels like I'm being attacked for driving a manual clapped out civic with poor AC...damn I'm broke cuz
Credit to ciko22ie below for the assist. Should've known the link wouldn't have been enough to embed the image .
saved you a click
Transmission choice is very condition dependent. America has a lot of flat straight roads. This fits automatic transmission very well. The car can easily predict when you will want to change gears.
Conversely Europe has a lot of curving and/or hilly roads. This changes the dynamics. You often want to hold off on a gear change, due to road conditions ahead. This is easy in a manual car, but is frustrating in an automatic. You either change too early, and so have to downshift when you enter the corner or hill, or it over revs on the straights.
It's a dying question however. Electric cars don't need either manual or automatic gearboxes.
I dont know if youve recently used an automatic but my 2017 Audi A3 shifts extremely well on european streets, never had any problems or efficiency issues. I would say it shifts way better than most people could manually. Also with automatics theres not even a need to 'hold back on a shift', it can just shift and then shift back in a split second without any noticable change in momentum. I think what you are describing might have been a problem years ago.
Right. Modern, well-tuned AT can out shift about 95% of drivers on the road, in every situation. Plus a lot of them have sport mode and steering wheel paddles for manual control, if you want to roll that way.
It's definitely improved, but it feels distinctly different to drive. Also, not all cars do it as well as that, some (cheaper) cars are still quite clunky with it.
Beyond that, their inertia effects. If you're used to manual, an automatic feels "wrong". Therefore most car buyers buy manual. This means most 2nd hand cars are also manual. This makes automatics more expensive and so even less desirable. I suspect America has the opposite situation.
Most people don't buy manuals everywhere in Europe anymore. Most people here in Norway have turned to automatic already.
Your last argument is probably accurate but just shows how little thought people give to big decisions like buying a car. Thats like bathing in mud for years and when someone offers you a shower youre like 'nah Im kinda not used to that, Ill keep buying mud'. Also most people are used to manual because automatics havent been around forever, including myself. It doesnt feel wrong at all for me, got used to it on the first day.
Sorry I like better fuel economy and support the Right to Repair
I do prefer manuals. But the fuel economy of autos largely surpassed manuals a few years ago. Can't beat 10 speeds or a cvt with a stick shift.
For new cars, sure, but I'll be dammed if I let anyone tell me that my shitbox(es) would be more efficient as an auto
Oh for sure. Old autos were terribly inefficient.
Yep with CVTs you can basically maintain a constant RPM when driving. There's no way you can drive manuals as smoothly as a CVT.
It's more fun!
I'm in this meme and I don't like it.
I legit drive a manual and use a hand fan all summer. Not at the same time tho
I learned to drive with MT and now I drive with AT. It's just way too much comfortable.
MT in a grocery-getter/going-to-work-machine is rather pointless, in my opinion. Manual transmission cars get boring pretty quickly during city driving, traffic jams etc..
In a sporty car on a winding mountain/country road, however.. ah, so satisfying to row your own gears during a bit of spirited driving.
Man, so many people on Lemmy just don't live in reality. Everything some of you guys say is just theory on paper based on a vision of the world that doesn't and never has existed. The shit some people on this website suggest is just comical, like they've really never thought about what they're even advocating for more than a second and realized all that it actually entails. Y'all need jobs and bills to pay.
This is devastating. I'm devastated right now.
It's also a cultural thing. Here manual transmission for fuel powered car cars is the most popular choice by far. People here sort of think that automatic is for people that can't drive or old people.