BMW's M Division Is Going All-In On Automatic Transmissions
Top Gear recently sat down with Dirk Hacker, head of development for BMW’s M division, to talk about transmissions. And from the sound of it, the manual transmission is on its way out. So either buy a manual M2 now, or accept that if you buy a future M car, it’s going to be an automatic even if it isn’t electric.
Learning to Drive Stick-Shift at Mini Manual Driving School
When he was asked about the death of the manual transmission, Hacker told Top Gear, “It’s not only a decision of BMW, it’s also a decision of the suppliers. If you take a look around, you will see the future for manual gearbox suppliers will decrease. So I’m not sure we will have the possibility in the future – but in the future means six, seven years in forecast.”
Top Gear also asked about creating a manual transmission for electric vehicles, which Hacker quickly shot down, saying, “I think it could be done, but we will not do that.” So while Toyota may think it’s worth creating a manual transmission for EVs, the electric M3 of the future definitely won’t offer something similar.
While it’s disappointing to hear that BMW is moving on from manual transmissions, it’s not exactly surprising. There’s still some demand for them, but take rates are pretty low even on performance cars, and most EVs don’t need to shift gears at all. But what is surprising is that BMW is also abandoning the dual-clutch transmission.
“The double clutch, from BMW M’s point of view these days, it’s gone,” Hacker told TopGear. “It’s now manual or automatic, and automatic electrified for the future.”
When he was asked to explain why, Hacker said, “Around the M5 there was a big discussion, not only for the automatic transmission, but also for other things. And the decision was not only because of cost, but also because of comfort because we got a lot of reactions about maneuvering, parking, no rolling if you leave the pedal and so on.”
Basically, it sounds like customers prefer an automatic for daily driving regardless of how that may change the driving experience at the limit. Automatic transmissions are so much better than they used to be, and we’d guess the number of M5 owners who actually track their cars is fairly low. But we won’t pretend we aren’t at least a little disappointed to hear that future M cars will probably all be equipped with automatics.
