Anyone of you have one or driven one? I've never heard of it before. I am familiar with a CVT, I own a tractor with a hydrostatic transmission, I have rebuilt many automatic transmissions, IE torque converter, valve body, clutch packs et al. I operated my first hand clutched John Deere tractor before I entered kindergarten and have left foot clutched and stick shifted every car I've ever owned until recently. As I have aged I find it quite handy to let the car decide which gear it wants to be in, and one less pedal for me to think about. Someone please allay my fears and tell me an automatic clutched manual transmission is the next new thing and I'm going to love it as much as I do the Elgin gauges and which side the gas cap is on.
I know some forum members here have experience with an AMT. They seem to be, along with CVTs, the "next new thing", however. This one will be a single, dry-clutch design. AMTs potentially have a lot of advantages over traditional torque-converter based automatics in that they have no fluid coupling losses, are much lighter, less complex, cheaper, and probably some other things I'm not remembering off of the top of my head. Dual-clutch designs (like those used in high end sports cars, and increasingly more frequently used in "typical" cars) seem to be highly praised overall. The dual-clutches, as I understand it, basically allow the transmission to be ready for either an upshift or downshift very quickly, and thus very smooth operation. Single-clutch designs suffer in this regard, though.
At the moment I'm having a hard time finding specific information on what kind of transmissions the Elio will use, besides that they will be made by Aisin, and will be 5-speeds. This Suzuki Celerio in the video I linked above may have a different transmission entirely, though I'm certain the general operation will be basically the same to what the AMT-equipped Elio will be like.
I too am a bit hesitant on the AMTs operation, due to negative reviews I've seen of the Smart Fortwo's AMT. I'm going to hope that I'll be able to read many reviews and even test drive one before making my final decision on getting the AMT or just getting the standard manual transmission.
