Electric car with manual transmission?

As in the title: just wondering if anyone knows whether there is such a thing?

I'm looking at getting a replacement for my current car (an inherited automatic Yaris). I've noticed over the last few years that I don't enjoy driving as much as I used to, and although it's probably partly just that a Yaris isn't very exciting to drive, I think it's mostly that I'm bored and miss driving a manual.

I've also been wanting to go electric for a while, but as far as I'm aware this means condemning myself to driving an automatic again. I think I already know what the answer is, but just wondering if anyone knows if there is a manual electric car on the market that's somehow escaped all my Googling?

(Before anyone says it: I realise electric cars don't need gears. It's an issue of wanting it, not needing it! )

Edited to add: I did find this on AutoTrader, but feel like it might just be a categorising mistake since all of the other Zoes apart from one are listed as automatic?

You can't be serious.. can you?

As in the title: just wondering if anyone knows whether there is such a thing?

I'm looking at getting a replacement for my current car (an inherited automatic Yaris). I've noticed over the last few years that I don't enjoy driving as much as I used to, and although it's probably partly just that a Yaris isn't very exciting to drive, I think it's mostly that I'm bored and miss driving a manual.

I've also been wanting to go electric for a while, but as far as I'm aware this means condemning myself to driving an automatic again. I think I already know what the answer is, but just wondering if anyone knows if there is a manual electric car on the market that's somehow escaped all my Googling?

(Before anyone says it: I realise electric cars don't need gears. It's an issue of wanting it, not needing it! )

Edited to add: I did find this on AutoTrader, but feel like it might just be a categorising mistake since all of the other Zoes apart from one are listed as automatic?

While I was looking through cars, I spotted the above one. One of the AutoTrader representative chat boxes popped up, and I asked the guy if the listing was a mistake. He said he didn't know, but would ask the trader to email me. If someone working for a major car sales firm doesn't know, I'm hardly going to.

And a quick internet search shows a lot of people asking the same question (for the same reason) and quite a few people saying 'it's possible but no-one's done it yet', on posts that are several years old (a couple of examples here and here.. there was another one on the Tesla forum somewhere), and lots of people discussing it as though it's a theoretical possibility (again, several years ago). Hence asking whether this is realistic now. Apparently it isn't.

Why would it be needed? Electric motors are capable of providing near instant torque.. there's no need to select a gear..

I said in my OP that I knew it wasn't needed. Just wondered if there was a workaround for the fact that I (and quite a few other people, it seems) find driving an automatic car tedious.

There's no gearing, so it's not an automatic transmission either.

Sure. Nonetheless, that's how they're listed on all car sales sites, and in terms of what you're doing with your hands and feet, is there much difference between an electric car and an automatic petrol?

The closest you'll probably get is a hybrid. No consumer electric car has gears simply because they have no need for them. And lets be honest, buying a hybrid Robert and enjoy driving again is probably not the smartest idea

You can't be serious.. can you?

Thanks. I kind of expected as much, just wanted someone to say so definitively.

It seems obvious but it's not as obvious as it might seem. Some of the cars in Formula E opt to run with up to 8 gears I believe. Don't know why, but it is a thing.

Yes, I am aware that single seaters obviously don't use traditional gear sticks.

Editing just to add that after a quick search it would seem that some Formula E teams opt to have up to 3 gears. Strange and I don't really get it but yeah, it's a thing

Its probably worth looking at some newer hatchbacks, most are pretty fun, nippy little cars that are an absolute joy to drive. They all now get on average 45-50 mpg as petrol or up to 75ish mpg if you go diesel as long as you don't hoon them like a tit everywhere you go

I'm dreading the day that cars go fully electric, partly because I think it will remove most of the fun out of driving personally but also because I doubt our current energy infrastructure could handle everyone charging their cars after work

That's because it's not commonplace in the market. There is physically no transmission so it's not a manual OR an automatic.

Why would you want a manual EV?! How would it make sense?!

The torque curve of an electric motor, although more linear than a standard petrol/diesel engine isn't perfectly linear
i.e. it doesn't deliver maximum torque across its entire rev range
Multiple gears can be utilized to ensure that the torque at the wheels per motor is maximized, so you have improved efficiency
Of course the engineering time and cost to implement this on a consumer car would be completely lost so they won't bother with gears

I'm not trying to argue any different.


I've already explained why.

To be honest, the main reason I wanted to go electric was because of the environmental impact of driving a petrol/diesel car (although I realise that lots of the newer tiny hatchbacks have very low CO2 emissions, it's still not the same as not using fossil fuels) though, so might end up going down the electric route despite the potential lack of fun.

How about we just drill a hole in the dash and jam a stick through it, would that make things more interesting?

What would you want to control with a gear shift in a car with no gears...