04. Audi Direct-Shift Gearbox. Few tactile pleasures can match the feel of a good manual shifter, but they can be a pain in heavy traffic.  The next best thing is an automated manual—you still command the shifting but don't need to press on a clutch pedal.  BMW's Sequential Manual Gearbox and Ferrari's F1 shift, among others, use a conventional manual gearbox with hydraulic actuators engaging and disengaging the clutch and selecting the gears.  Paddles behind the steering wheel or a toggle-type shifter act as switches to direct the action.  These systems usually incorporate a full-auto and a quicker-shifting sport mode. 

Audi's Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG) is an advancement in sequential manuals because the shift action is much smoother and operation is just like a Tiptronic-style auto.  DSG has two multiplate clutches and six gears.  It also has two input shafts, one to handle the odd-numbered gears, the other the evens.  The car of course starts off with one gear engaged.  As revs build to the next gearshift point, the next higher gear is preselected but its clutch kept disengaged.  The shift takes place by engaging the clutch of the preselected gear and disengaging that of the current gear with some overlap.  The gear change takes fractions of a second and there’s no palpable loss of drive during the shift.

05. Continously Variable Transmission. Automatic transmissions are not only a relief during the daily grind on EDSA but they also allow a driver to concentrate on steering and accelerating a vehicle.  Conventional automatics use sets of planetary gears to alter ratios.  These tend to be heavy and bulky.  One possible answer is the Continuously Variable Transmission, which made its Philippine debut this year in the Mitsubishi Lancer, then in the Honda City.  CVT eliminates the numerous gears in a conventional automatic and instead uses a steel belt wrapped around two conical pulleys.  Each pulley has two separate halves, and by controlling the distance between the halves, the pulley diameters are effectively varied to produce infinitely (thus, continuously) variable drive ratios.  Because the transmission slides smoothly from one ratio to another, there is no shift shock. Most CVTs also do without a torque converter and this lessens power loss and improves fuel economy.  CVTs can hold an engine at a certain rpm where it's generating the most torque, thus providing optimum acceleration.  This however gives the strange sensation of a car accelerating while the engine speed stays the same.  If the future begins to feel too weird, Mitsubishi and Honda thoughtfully provided a "geared" mode for their CVTs, where the engine is allowed to accelerate and drop revs just like with a conventional auto.