Noooo. Manuals are on average much more efficient. I drive a 1st generation Honda Insight, and the manual version gets ~10 mpg more than the automatic.
Equity is actually the most expensive form of capital (measured by an investor's required return on capital). If a startup could raise debt financing, that would no doubt be preferable. However that's quasi-impossible with no revenue. I do agree with the other parts of this answer though.