People can invent points and refutals. Physics, dictates manuals to be more efficient.
Automatic transmission 'learn driver habit' multiplies the above, and yet everybody in this discussion ignores it. CVT comes closer to efficiency of manual, but it's not popular because "the car just doesn't have the power on demand dude".
This subject is a horse beaten to death, and then to a pulp, where people that have sporadic and rather incomplete knowledge, write novels based on what was on the car sale pitch.
Now, perhaps this doesn't accurately represent real world driving conditions but nonetheless, physics notwithstanding, it does suggest that an automatic can be more efficient using standard measurements.
So far in this thread multiple people have brought up that the numbers reported by the car manufacturers themselves, for current model year cars, across a bunch of manufacturers, show that automatic transmission cars are more fuel efficient than manuals.
I see two explanations for this:
1) They're all lying
2) Technological progress has finally caught up to a system that is bounded by human skill and hand-foot-coordination.
(I'm betting on technology, are you betting on the human?)
Automatic transmission 'learn driver habit' multiplies the above, and yet everybody in this discussion ignores it. CVT comes closer to efficiency of manual, but it's not popular because "the car just doesn't have the power on demand dude".
This subject is a horse beaten to death, and then to a pulp, where people that have sporadic and rather incomplete knowledge, write novels based on what was on the car sale pitch.