Automatics had a bit of a bad reputation, for quite a while. They don’t/didn’t play well with our road layouts. E.g. they could be slow to downshift when climbing a hill, and kick when they did decide to play along. I believe they have improved a lot, but most people are used to manuals, and so more manuals are sold. This makes automatics more expensive and rarer.
Thermal imaging requires specialised organs. The difference between optical and thermal wavelengths is too extreme for a single organ to cover. Long wavelength IR is also quite low resolution for visual purposes.
Snakes have evolved the capability, but it’s not common.