I can't tell what is meant by a "synthetic manual transmission"? They're writing about it in the same sentence as "fake engine noises" but I assume they mean something more than "gear stick that changes current sound track"?
The "obvious" option (short of putting a real manual gear box in the drive train?) is it just changes the mapping of accelerator position to acceleration rate so in first gear you accelerate faster than in fifth with the accelerator in the same place? maybe with some other silly gimmicks/limiters to force you to "shift" correctly?
Sounds like something between "Fake controls for car heads" and something to match expectations from some people?
The purely electronic way of having gears is to have a controllable configuration of poles on the engine, for lower gears you have less poles, for more gears you have more poles. But I think you could do something like 2 or 3 gears tops using this
The "obvious" option (short of putting a real manual gear box in the drive train?) is it just changes the mapping of accelerator position to acceleration rate so in first gear you accelerate faster than in fifth with the accelerator in the same place? maybe with some other silly gimmicks/limiters to force you to "shift" correctly?