IT’S COME TO THIS: Automakers can’t quit manual transmissions so they’re cramming fake stuff into EVs.

There’s no question that the rise in electric vehicles represents a wholesale shift in the auto industry. But while most car companies appear ready to embrace the electric future, a lot of them are having trouble letting go of the past.

Take Toyota, for example. The biggest automaker in the world is reportedly working on an electric vehicle prototype that mimics the feel of driving a manual transmission, complete with a gear shift that’s not connected to anything and a floor-mounted speaker to pipe in fake engine noises. The car will even pretend to stall out if you fumble the controls — in order to deliver drivers the complete experience of driving a manual car.

Keep in mind this is an electric vehicle. There is no engine, no drive shaft, no gears to speak of. All of this is achieved using software and a bit of smoke and mirrors. Toyota says the goal is to preserve the driving experience for car enthusiasts, but it’s unclear whether people actually want this.

I’m not a car enthusiast, but I know people tend to hate fake shit. (Just look at the fake meat industry. It’s not doing so well.) It stands to reason that they will hate this.

Unfortunately, Toyota is not alone in its attempts to awkwardly merge the auto industry’s past with its future. Dodge has been working on a symphony of fake engine sounds it hopes to include in its upcoming lineup of electric muscle cars. The Charger Daytona SRT concept was the first to stress test this vision with a fake engine sound that sounded like a bobcat that was angry about being neutered.

Dodge isn’t the only car company using fake engine sounds. In his recent review of the sporty two-door Toyota GR86, Jeremy Clarkson mentioned that he “truly loved driving this car, and I loved the noise it made too, until I discovered it was an artificial sound coming at me through the speakers. Then I hated it.”