Here's How Manual and Automatic Transmissions Really Work
If you're looking at the difference between an automatic and a manual transmission, it's not hard to understand that one shifts gears for you, and the other doesn't. Even the concept of shifting gears isn't hard to grasp. After all, if you've ever ridden a bike, you've had to do something similar.
But if you want to understand exactly how car transmissions work, that's a little more difficult. Unlike a bicycle, you can't easily see what's going on in either a manual or automatic. The video below, though, gives a pretty in-depth explanation of how each type of transmission works, making it much easier to understand the differences.
The narrator is a robot, and the cars shown at the beginning appear to be front-wheel-drive BMWs, which makes it a little weird. Still, the illustrations and explanations do a great job of making relatively complex concepts simple to understand.
As the G.I. Joe commercial used to say, now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
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