AUTONEWS

Legendary manual transmission will no longer exist for Volkswagen

After having announced that the brand's latest platform capable of supporting combustion engines, whether electrified or not, would be introduced on the market in 2026 and that, from 2030 onwards, all vehicles sold in Europe will be 100% electric, not it was with amazement that the news was received that manual gearboxes will be the next casualty in Volkswagen's productive apparatus. With electric vehicles not even using a gearbox, models with three pedals (one for the clutch) and manual transmission are doomed to be a thing of the past, even before the disappearance of combustion power units.

According to the German press, the first Volkswagen model to be launched with just two pedals and automatic transmission will be the Tiguan SUV, scheduled for 2023. As much as this news makes a tear appear in the corner of the eye of the nostalgic ones, the reality is that although automatic transmissions are more expensive and traditionally require higher consumption – today only slightly – there are fewer and fewer customers willing to handle the gearbox lever and the clutch pedal.

Jato, a specialist in market research and sales analysis, confirms that of the 5,838 models on sale in Germany (the largest European market), with emblems of all brands, only 32% offer manual gearbox, which is equivalent to 1,870 models. And among these, 1652 propose boxes with 6 relations, against 218 with only 5 changes.

At Volkswagen, the percentage is slightly higher: of 353 models on sale, 39% have manual transmission (139). And this percentage is even lower if we consider the more expensive vehicles, such as the Tiguan, Passat or Allspace.

VW thus aligns with the same tuning fork as Mercedes, which had also announced the end of the three pedals, as customers of the silver star brand are even less fans of manual boxes. It is one more (albeit indirect) consequence of electrification, which will also be evident in other brands of the German conglomerate, especially the more sophisticated ones.