Automotive Plus

ggpwned asked:


I read that if you are driving a manual transmission, and if you are driving while still in gear and you bring the car to a complete stop without shifting the lever to neutral, your car will stall. That is why you need to shift the lever to neutral when you are bringing the car to a complete stop (e.g. at a stoplight).

However, I do not understand why an engine for a car with an automatic transmission would not stall even though the gear lever is still in “drive”. Wouldn’t stopping the car (auto tranny) with the brakes cause the gears that link the engine and the transmission to lock up and stop the engine altogether? Is there a temporary “neutral” mode that the car’s automatic transmission goes into to allow the engine to keep idling even though the transmission is still in “drive”? Please explain this.

Also, why do cars with an automatic transmission tend to slowly creep forward (in drive) or backward (in reverse) when the brake and accelerator pedals are not pushed down at all? I noticed that, for a car with a manual transmission, you would need to shift the car into gear and depress the accelerator pedal in order to move the car but why does this principle not apply to cars with automatic transmissions?

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