What to Look for in a Non-Electric Car
If you’re buying a car, buy an EV instead of an Internal Combustion Engine car, but if you insist on the latter, here’s what I’d recommend. Let’s discuss the fuel and the transmission:
Fuel
When it comes to the fuel, I recommend petrol. Petrol engines are quiet and don’t vibrate much. This is more than an esthetic matter — noise and vibration tire us. Petrol cars are more responsive. They’re fun to drive. They accelerate rapidly. They reach higher speeds1.
EVs outperform petrol vehicles on all the above fronts (except perhaps top speed), but if you must buy a fossil fuel-powered car, buy a petrol.
Transmission
DCTs are awesome, by the standards of non-electric vehicles. I was driving in a Taigun and 70-something kph and I wanted to get ahead. I pressed the accelerator significantly. We surged forward and I was happy. After a second or two, the salesman asked me, “Do you know what speed we’re at?” I looked at the speedo, and I was surprised to see 152. DCTs can accelerate so fast. They’re also very quick to change gears. I was in the 4th gear, accelerating significantly, at which point I found congestion ahead and eased off the accelerator. The DCT changed from 4 → 5→ 6 → 7 in one second! As another example, in a Creta DCT, I was next to a Dzire taxi and I wanted to get away. I pressed the accelerator significantly. After a fraction of a second, the turbo to kicked in, I was pressed back against my seat as the car surged forward. DCTs are suitable2 for such spirited driving.
In addition to spirited driving, DCTs also perform great when driven in a relaxed manner.
DCTs are linear: the acceleration before, during and after a gear shift is the same. You don’t even know it has changed gears! Technology that works well enough to be seamless is amazing.
Conclusion
The best fuel is electric and the best transmission comes in an electric car. But if you must buy a fossil fuel-powered clunker, buy a petrol DCT.
Diesels are the worst — they make a lot of noise and vibration, even when the engine is idling. They have more lag between you pressing the accelerator and the car beginning to accelerate. They accelerate slowly even when you floor it in Sport. They can’t reach high speeds. People claim that diesels can tow more, but check whether that’s true for the specific car you’re buying. It may not be true. Diesels also pollute more.
As for CNGs, they take 15 min to refuel! There are only 6K CNG filling stations in the country vs 100K for petrol / diesel. When I was in Hyderabad, a taxi driver told me that there are so few CNG stations in the city that he has to wait for an hour every time he refuels.
Here’s how I’d rank the various types of transmissions:
DCT > Torque converter > CVT > AMT > IMT > Manual
Let’s discuss each of them:
A torque converter works just as well as a DCT for sedate driving, but it’s not suitable for spirited driving: it accelerates slower than a DCT if you suddenly give it a lot of throttle. Gear shifts are discontinuous and not seamless like a DCT. Acceleration reduces while upshifting, unlike a DCT which maintains the same acceleration before, while and after upshifting. With a torque converter, you feel each gear shift, and not in a good way. Since shifting gears is harder for a torque converter, it lingers on each gear longer, resulting in the engine revving before the gear shift. After the gear shift, a torque converter runs the engine at a low RPM, resulting in low acceleration, like upshifting too early in a manual.
CVTs are the third best transmission. They avoid the problems of a torque converter, and the best CVTs, like the one in the Hector, are smoother than even a DCT and would rank second above torque converters. But many CVTs are bad, even in high-end cars like the Creta — it has a continuous whine. Some have a lot of lag. A CVT gets damaged if you floor it every week. I’ve never driven a bad DCT or torque converter. That’s why I’ve ranked the CVT below the torque converter and DCT — the latter are consistently good. So if you don’t know better, picking a DCT or a torque converter is a safer choice.
Moving on from DCT, torque converter and CVT, we get to AMT, which is in a completely different class of its own, by which I mean a lower class:
When I pressed and held the accelerator at a constant level, it accelerated, then stopped accelerating for a while, then again accelerated.
When I tried to accelerate significantly, there was a big jerk. I wasn’t demanding high acceleration from the car — I didn’t floor it.
With a better transmission, if you want smooth acceleration, you’ll get it instantly. By contrast, AMTs can have a lag even to transition from coasting to gentle, smooth acceleration.
When I eased off after the significant acceleration, it jerked back.
When I coasted to a stop, the deceleration was uneven.
If you’re offered an upgrade from AMT to any real automatic transmission (DCT, torque converter, CVT), grab it! Put differently, if you have a CVT or torque converter and are pining for a DCT, drive an AMT for a couple of hours, and you’ll be grateful for what you have.
An IMT is even worse than an AMT because the system takes care only of the clutch; you still have to switch gears.
And the worst transmission of all is a manual, since asking a human to do what a computer can do will produce worse results: jerks when de-clutching, being in too low a gear and accelerating faster than required, being in too high a gear and not having enough acceleration, lugging the engine, stalling the engine, slow gear changes, being stuck in between two gears… better manual transmissions improve some of these. At this point, people sometimes bring up the aspect of skill. A skilled driver may make only some of the above mistakes, and may make them less often, but he still will. A computer does a better job.