Whether or not you’ll save gas with a manual transmission or an automatic used to be an easy question to answer, but thanks to the ongoing refinement of automotive technology it’s gotten a bit more complicated. These days, mileage depends on the model year.
As Consumer Reports reported, if you’re looking at models from before 2016, you’re more likely to get better gas mileage from a manual. This is — or rather, was — primarily due to proper manual transmission requiring drivers to shift into neutral when stopped, both to avoid stalling and because holding the clutch down constantly is a pain in the leg. Older automatics would remain in gear when stopped.
Even back then, some automatics surpassed their stick-shift counterparts in fuel economy. Now, that’s the rule rather than the exception. The 2023 EPA Automotive Trend Report found that improvements in how an automatic transmission works have reversed the efficiency gap: Cars with automatic transmissions are now more efficient on average than stick-shift models. The EPA placed that change in the late 2010s: Cars released after that date burn less gas with automatic rather than manual transmissions. An interested customer can always compare the manual and automatic efficiency of any given model, but overall, the idea that a manual transmission burns less gas than an automatic simply no longer holds up. Whichever kind of transmission you go with, make sure you memorize the warning signs of a transmission going bad to maximize safety.
