Toyota: Surprising electric car patent - future for manual switches?

Created: 02/12/2022, 15:59

By: Simon Mones

More and more manufacturers are throwing manual gears out of their range.

However, Toyota also wants to use them in electric cars.

Toyota (Japan) – The days of the manual transmission seem numbered.

Mercedes-Benz has long since banned them from its cars.

And Volkswagen also only wants to deliver its cars with automatic transmissions in the future.

And this despite the fact that for many Germans shifting gears is part of driving.

But with the switch to electromobility, the manual transmission is simply no longer necessary.

So it should only be a matter of time before all manufacturers put the manual transmission in the dustbin and put it in the archive.

If it weren't for Toyota, as reported by 24auto.de.

The Japanese, who were once pioneers in hybrid cars, now apparently not only want to save the combustion engine, but also the manual transmission - for electric cars.

Toyota: Surprising electric car patent - future for manual switches?

Toyota filed corresponding patents in the summer of 2021.

These cover various technologies, including a simulated clutch pedal, a simulated gear shift and a method of interrupting the flow of torque to mimic the driving experience of a vehicle with a traditional manual transmission and internal combustion engine.

The patents first appeared in some BZ forums.

Does the manual transmission still have a future?

(Iconic image) © Bernd Leitner/Imago

One of the patents states: "The electric vehicle includes a shift lever and a clutch pedal for the pseudo-realization of the manual gear change of the MT vehicle. (...) The shift lever is operated by the driver to select any virtual gear ratio mode from a variety of virtual select gear step modes. (...) The control unit calculates the virtual engine speed of the virtual engine (...) and shows the virtual engine speed on the display."

Toyota: Simulated manual transmission - three modes planned

The patents indicate that Toyota appears to be planning three different modes for the system.

In one mode, Japanese customers can drive their electric car as they are used to from a diesel or petrol engine.

So you have to clutch and shift.

In the second mode, only the shift lever has to be operated, which Toyota says should be particularly helpful in traffic jams, when parking or reversing.

In the third and last mode, the driver does not have to change gears or use the clutch.

The patents suggest that the functions are then carried out automatically and the electric car then behaves like a combustion engine with an automatic transmission.

Toyota has also come up with something else, as a picture in the patents shows: There should be a "tachometer".

The gear shift could therefore also be used in sports cars such as the Supra.

However, it is unclear when the simulated manual transmission for electric cars will go into series production and whether it can really create the driving experience of a combustion engine.

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