[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Johnny Horsepower

That's certainly true in a sense. But what I mean by "semi-auto" is that some but not all of the necessary steps need to be performed by the operator.

For guns, semi-auto means that certain actions, such as ejecting the casing and chambering the next round, are performed automatically. What keeps it from being fully automatic is that you have to pull the trigger once per round. Which is a very small detail to me, I mean why not just legalize automatic weapons, oh god here goes this thread.

For cars, manual means you have to make the shifts yourself, auto means the car does it for you. But semi-auto (not an official term, just what I'm calling it) means that you tell it when to shift but don't have to make the shifts yourself. To me, the fact that the driver determines the shift points is far more important than torque converter vs DCT.

But then that distinction is further blurred in cars with paddle shifters not as good as ours. I've heard that the Miata takes paddle pulls as suggestions to be taken into consideration, rather than commands to shift now.

Semi auto most certainly is an official term for trannys!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-a...c_transmission