Great to see that Europeans are finally moving on to better cars!

@JonathanReez I wonder what made them change their mind.

I assume people have started trying out automatic cars and realized that the "manual is better" meme is false.

@FranckDernoncourt I suspect that electric and hybrid vehicles have something to do with it. All of them are automatic.

It may also have to do with better automatic gear switching, which does not use more fuel anymore.

@JonathanReez automatics have improved; for many years there was a significant efficiency penalty to them but now they can beat may drivers for fuel economy - and fuel efficiency is a much bigger selling point in Europe. The better automatics can also mimic some of the bigger advantages of manual transmission, like a decent choice of engine braking on long descents (so you don't cook your brakes and your brake lights aren't lit for the whole downhill meaning they don;t provide a warning when you slow down hard. But most I've driven, hired or borrowed, aren't that good

@ChrisH-UK AFAIK automatic transmission has been better than manual since ~2008. A quick Google search confirms this. But the "manual is better" meme persisted for much longer, unfortunately.

@JonathanReez for some meanings of "better". This is a long-standing flame war that has nothing to do with technological advantages.

@JonathanReez depends on your definition of "better". Sure it may accelerate faster in kickdown mode that the average stick shifter, and it may have a comparable fuel efficiency nowadays, but I hate automatic transmission with a fiery passion as for me, they always shift too late or too soon. Sure, you'll have to learn how a particular brand/model detects your intentions (how far to push the throttle to make it upshift or where to hover so it accelerates but doesn't downshift), and it's nice when in busy traffic so you won't have to shift gears like 1-2-3-2-3-2-1-2-3 over a kilometer,

Most people's preferences are based on driving experience rather than performance. If you are used to automatic, having to shift is a chore and a distraction. If your are used to manual, not controlling the gears feels like something is missing, even if the automatic transmission is actually doing it better than you.

@FranckDernoncourt To me the killer argument is that manual switching aligns poorly with advanced driving assistance. I recently drove 2000 km with a modern rental car and was pleasantly surprised how helpful the assist systems were in dense motorway traffic. Keep the distance to the car ahead of you, read speed limit signs and adjust accordingly, keep in the lane: Much less cumbersome than manual driving. And automatically changing speed in stop and go traffic works like a charm with automatic transmission.

@JonathanReez "Better" is fuzzy: To me, the best car is one that can be repaired at home with purely mechanical tools. More automation -> more things that can and will break. More software -> less ownership. My ideal car would survive an EMP and could not be hijacked or bricked remotely. (That said, I'd love to own a Tesla.)

@JonathanReez i.e. more recently than any car I've owned was built (I only have a campervan now, and that's nearly 20 years old, driven a couple of times a month) to catch up with or slightly exceed manual. Thinking over ones I've rented/borrowed since 2009, less than 50% were as efficient as I'd expect from manual; the same ones were nice to drive, but one of those got scrapped at about 5 years old because fixing the fault in the auto transmission system would have cost more than it was worth. The others were awful, turning petrol into noise with nothing in between

Actually, 54% of sales being automatic is not the same as Spain. In Spain finding an manual seems more difficult than "almost half" would suggest. And the increase suggests that the preference is opposite.

@WGroleau that's where epa095's comment comes. The numbers here are new sales. If, say in Spain, every year 5% of existing cars are replaced by new ones and the total number of cars remains the same, even then the number of automatics is going up by at most ~1 percentage point each year. It'll take a long while for them to become the actual majority.

@Peter-ReinstateMonica Automatic following and lane holding are all very well, but do make it easy to lose concentration. I reckon the sweet spot is in one (manual) hire car I drove - it warned about drifting out of lane, or creeping up on the car in front; although it could brake in an emergency I never put that to the test. But I find motorway driving tedious at the best of times, and also use limit mode if cruise control is fitted (which it isn't in my van), so I can gently slow by lifting my foot.

@epa095 for a question about rental cars recent sales is probably a better figure than the overall market because rental companies generally don't keep cars for more than a few years.

@muru, 54% of new sales implies that almost half the cars available are manual. American expatriates in a Facebook group I follow have complained about the difficulty of finding an automatic to buy. When I was there, I did not own a car (I prefer bike) but I sometimes drove cars for friends and they were all manual.