Volkswagen joins the car of the German Premium. The Wolfsburg manufacturer has announced that it will abandon manual gearboxes from 2023, so its models can only be configured with the DSG dual-clutch automatic transmission. An important measure with which they will reduce costs.
Although the manual transmission is a benchmark in high-performance sports cars, it is not so much in normal models. The vast majority of customers rely on the comfort of a automatic transmission, with different technical configurations in the market, facts verified in the sales of the manufacturers, so that fewer and fewer choose a mechanical transmission.
Mercedes already gave the bolt a couple of years ago to manual transmissions, and the next to announce it has been Volkswagen. Starting in 2023, this option will not be available on any of the gasoline or diesel models., limited exclusively to the well-known seven-speed DSG dual-clutch automatic transmission. In fact, the German brand has already announced that The new generation of the Volkswagen Tiguan will dispense with this change and will be offered exclusively as automatic.
Tiguan and Passat futures will only be sold with automatic transmission
The new generation of the Passat, which will also arrive in two years, will be the second model that will not have this system either. The decision has been made to reduce the high costs that they suppose, and that they do not translate into an equivalent sales figure, as the analyzes of the JATO consultancy show. In Germany, of the 5,838 versions offered by manufacturers, only 1,870 units are equipped with manual transmission. In Volkswagen, specifically, there are 218 mechanical versions equipped with the 5-speed manual gearbox, and 1,652 with the six-speed gearbox.
The analysis also points out that, without counting on the Multivan, the offer of automatic transmission reaches a total of 214 versions, while the manual ones remain at 139. In the particular case of the Passat, the manual amounts to 8 compared to 21 automatic, a ratio that in the case of the Tiguan Allspace is reduced to 2 manuals for 13 automatic.
A normal and logical strategy when Volkswagen has already announced that it will be fully electric in 2030, and to which It is expected that other brands of the group will join, especially SEAT and Skoda, also eliminating the manual gearbox of your offer. Resources that will be devoted entirely to the development of new electric models, with a flood that will arrive from the middle of the decade.