Manual gear shifting skills on automatic cars

To ensure safety as well as bring a better driving feeling, today's cars, although using automatic transmission, are often equipped with manual or sports transmission. But many people still do not understand this clearly, and are quite confused in switching from automatic to manual or sports transmission in driving situations.

In principle, manual or sport gear is a type of gear that is shifted manually depending on the driver's will, not automatically changed by the car (auto). Gear shifting can be done through the gear lever or paddles on the steering wheel. There are 3 basic types of manual gear: limited to a few gears, +/- changes on the gear lever and changes on the steering wheel. For those new to cars, manual gear on automatic gears sounds quite complicated. However, basically this function allows the driver to use the gear lever or paddles to switch between gears 1, 2, 3, 4... as desired, instead of "leaving" the automatic gear shifting to the car like in D mode.

Most automatic cars today are equipped with semi-automatic mode (+/-), allowing drivers to control the car almost like a manual car. In addition, there are still some car models that, in addition to D, are only equipped with a few gears, adding 2, 1 or 3, 2, 1 or 3, 2, L... depending on the manufacturer, in which L represents Low (low gear), equivalent to 1.

When moving in the city, automatic (D) is preferred, helping drivers to move leisurely. However, when driving on the highway, many drivers who want to find a better feeling when driving can move the gear lever to the side, switch to semi-automatic mode (+/-), and manually shift gears similar to a manual transmission.

The difference is that the driver moves the gear lever up (+) to increase the gear and moves the gear lever down (-) to decrease the gear. In addition, when wanting to increase the engine power to overtake another vehicle, the driver can also switch to semi-automatic mode, use manual gear, or sport gear to make the car overtake stronger and faster. However, the driver needs to pay attention to the engine speed to avoid inappropriate gear shifting, the car jerking, affecting the car as well as causing danger while driving.

For cars with sports paddle shifters on the steering wheel, this paddle works similarly to (+/-) on the gear lever with the usual design of the right paddle increasing the gear, the left paddle decreasing the gear. On cars with CVT automatic transmission, to increase driving inspiration, manufacturers can equip additional paddle shifters on the steering wheel, which essentially represent virtual gears. The driver may be driving and shifting gears on the paddle shifters, but after a period of no intervention, the car will automatically return to normal CVT.

Another important function of manual and sport gears on automatic cars is to slow down the engine when going downhill, avoiding having to use the brakes too much. If only left in D gear, by inertia, the car will tend to go downhill faster and then, will have to use the brakes more. Overheating brakes can cause brake failure, endangering the life of the driver as well as people and vehicles around.

The correct way is to shift the gear lever to semi-automatic mode, use low gears to move the car slowly, do not have to use the brakes too much, ensuring safety. In addition, when the car moves on difficult terrain. If in D mode, the automatic transmission often reacts quite slowly to changes in terrain. Therefore, using semi-automatic manual mode will help the driver master the gears, thereby promoting engine power to help the car easily overcome terrain.

In fact, drivers with many years of driving experience say that automatic cars with manual shifting mode, although not really giving the same feeling as manual cars, but somehow create excitement and more convenient operation.