Posted Thursday, January 29, 2026 at 10:12pm
The manual transmission is an endangered species, and the proliferation of EVs (at least, until recently) probably means the end is near. Or is it? Last week, both Toyota and Subaru published patents for systems that promise to simulate the experience of driving a manual transmission as accurately as possible, even in EVs that don’t have an actual transmission.
We first noticed this development by Subaru spotted by CarBuzz. But we’ve seen something like this before from Toyota, who has been showing off a custom “manual” Lexus UX 300e since 2022. Evo got to drive it at the time, and it sure looks and sounds like a genuine manual car.
