Quote:
Originally Posted by jmaryt
it is! it's because the gears are enclosed in an "oil bath",and a certain amount of 'slippage" is inherent in the design no matter how well it's engineered.a
"direct drive" manual has a miniscule amount of slippage compared to a "slush box",and the gear ratios in a manual are different too.
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The planetary gearset in an automatic doesn't really slip. The place where you would get slip is the torque converter which uses the viscosity of the fluid in the converter to transfer power while allowing differences in speed between the input and output halves (no direct mechanical linkage) much the way slipping the clutch would allow you to do. The thing is, it can also lock the torque converter when slip isn't needed. Modern automatics do a great job of doing this early and seamlessly, which is why you see autos these days with just as good if not better fuel economy than their manual equivalents.