Are two speed transmissions worth it?

[MrForbes]

The discussion about automatic shifting is interesting.....do any of you know much about automotive automatic transmissions? In the old days before computers, there were two ways that they were designed. One used a vacuum modulator, which essentially measures the load on the engine. This would be analogous to the current detection algorithm. The other used a combination of throttle position and vehicle speed. This would be analgous to the encoder method.