Toyota’s working on EVs that mimic gear shifting and go vroom
Nostalgia is powerful.
That seems to be what’s animating Toyota’s latest EV engineering trick, anyway. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Japanese car manufacturer is working on next-gen electric vehicles with fake stick shifts that try to mimic the real thing, complete with engine sounds and even the possibility of fake stalling if you shift into the wrong gear.
In case you didn’t know, EV engines don’t require gear shifting at all, and they don’t make noise like gasoline engines do. The idea here is to recreate the experience of driving an older car (or a modern car with manual transmission) for people who yearn for that, I guess.
There are two unfortunate caveats to this. One is that the technology probably won’t be deployed until 2026 at the earliest.
The second is that the part where the car might simulate stalling if you use the clutch wrong could get left on the cutting room floor, per WSJ. That’s maybe a bummer for manual transmission enthusiasts, but probably a relief for engineers who don’t have to worry about creating a fake failure state on top of all the very real failure stats in any given vehicle.
Still, it’s kind of a cool idea, especially for old-school gearheads.