Auto or manual

Conscript said:
Not quite the point we were making. There have been people in the thread criticising autos for being dull and choosing completely the wrong gear at the wrong times. But any modern auto will usually have a manual mode to overcome this. It being sloppy or disconnected in your Skoda is neither here nor there...it still allows you as much "control" as a manual, and even though you may have to anticipate the time it takes to change due to an inherent lag, this is really no different to how you have to anticipate the physical time to shift gears in a manual - if you anticipate that the manual override in your automatic is a bit slow and sloppy, and use it with that in mind, you still have as much control over the selected gear, even if you don't feel it actually improves the speed of shifting.
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It doesn't allow the same control, and the Skoda not having Paddles is pretty relevant as neither will the Mondeo being discussed (or at least was being discussed), it'll be a Ford Powershift box which also suffers from the same issues.

If i'm in 5th and tell it to shift down 3 gears I don't want a 0.7 second delay followed by 4th gear and then another 1.5 seconds at which point it then changes to 2nd, by this time it's ****** me off and i'm half way into having another go at the stick, I want second and I want it when I move the shifter not a few seconds later. And that's the other issue, if I stick a manual in 2nd, I know it's in 2nd, I don't have to start looking at the display to see if it's complied with my request. I want to enjoy driving and sloppy inputs don't work for me, whether that be the brakes, steering or gearbox.

If my PC had as much input lag as that DSG box in the Skoda i'd bin it. You know when you boot up a really old PC and you start typing an e-mail and the text on the screen is several seconds behind what you are typing? That's how the Skoda DSG feels to me.

Don't get me wrong, it's great in town, not having to use a clutch. But I rarely drive in towns, and the input lag & dithering about really does my box in. If the input lag was eliminated & the shift was near instant then it might be a different story.
 
Iamzod said:
It doesn't allow the same control, and the Skoda not having Paddles is pretty relevant as neither will the Mondeo being discussed (or at least was being discussed), it'll be a Ford Powershift box which also suffers from the same issues.

If i'm in 5th and tell it to shift down 3 gears I don't want a 0.7 second delay followed by 4th gear and then another 1.5 seconds at which point it then changes to 2nd, by this time it's ****** me off and i'm half way into having another go at the stick, I want second and I want it when I move the shifter not a few seconds later. And that's the other issue, if I stick a manual in 2nd, I know it's in 2nd, I don't have to start looking at the display to see if it's complied with my request. I want to enjoy driving and sloppy inputs don't work for me, whether that be the brakes, steering or gearbox.

If my PC had as much input lag as that DSG box in the Skoda i'd bin it. You know when you boot up a really old PC and you start typing an e-mail and the text on the screen is several seconds behind what you are typing? That's how the Skoda DSG feels to me.

Don't get me wrong, it's great in town, not having to use a clutch. But I rarely drive in towns, and the input lag & dithering about really does my box in. If the input lag was eliminated & the shift was near instant then it might be a different story.
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At least on mine if I'm wanting the effect of dropping 2 gears pre-emptively I'll drop it once and/or flick into sport and utilise kick-down if necessary. Manually shifting down twice doesn't guarantee it will enter the lower gear but if you work with that in mind I've never had a problem yet - trying to force the second gear change if it doesn't take is what seems to cause any problems.
 
Iamzod said:
Don't get me wrong, it's great in town, not having to use a clutch. But I rarely drive in towns, and the input lag & dithering about really does my box in. If the input lag was eliminated & the shift was near instant then it might be a different story.
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Which DSG is it? The experience I have with mine is nothing like that bad but that said, mine is the newest 7 speed variant.

DSG/DCT does need to be driven with an understanding of what it's good at and what it isn't. All the speed in a DSG comes from it having preselected a gear and performing a near instant switch of the clutches.

If it becomes confused by 'contradictory' throttle inputs that make it think you're gently accelerating in D, it'll be preselecting the next gear up. If you then floor it, it'll take half a second to select a gear down instead. If however you maintain throttle input in S, it's more likely to expect further acceleration and have preselected the next gear down.

I got on with mine very quickly and don't find it an issue getting the box to do what I want / expect.

What DCT will never do well compared to a torque converter or a manual is block shifting through manual controls. Via kickdown will be better because it will interpret the kickdown switch as a request for maximum acceleration and will set about selecting that gear. Doing three downshifts manually it won't do well though because it starts clutch swapping to 5th, just as you ask for 4th which is on the shaft that's likely still got 6th selected, so it needs to move the selection to 4th and then once it's started on that job you immediately ask for 3rd and it goes back to the other shaft which is on 5th and needs adjusting. All the while you're getting nothing from it.
 
I think people are over thinking it - at least on mine you can pretty much let it do its thing - learn how it behaves and then give it a nudge if necessary so to speak.
 
[TW]Fox said:
So in summary then, torque converter automatics are better than dimwitted dual clutch automated manual boxes ;)
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Yes, DCTs have limitations and now that torque converter boxes have caught up the shift speed department to some extent, the advantages to DCT are more limited. The new M3 for example has dropped DCT for TC I think?
 
A lot of the discussion in this thread appears to be from people who are just not used to the gearbox that they were driving. Once you spend a lot of time with (any of the ones i have ever driven for extended periods) a certain box, you learn how to control it using the throttle. They are never unpredictable really, and you can drop a gear or two using the throttle just by reflex on the accelerator once you know how it behaves. I definitely wouldn't want a gearbox other than a normal TC auto (at least until everything goes electric!).
 
Iamzod said:
It doesn't allow the same control, and the Skoda not having Paddles is pretty relevant as neither will the Mondeo being discussed (or at least was being discussed), it'll be a Ford Powershift box which also suffers from the same issues.

If i'm in 5th and tell it to shift down 3 gears I don't want a 0.7 second delay followed by 4th gear and then another 1.5 seconds at which point it then changes to 2nd, by this time it's ****** me off and i'm half way into having another go at the stick, I want second and I want it when I move the shifter not a few seconds later. And that's the other issue, if I stick a manual in 2nd, I know it's in 2nd, I don't have to start looking at the display to see if it's complied with my request. I want to enjoy driving and sloppy inputs don't work for me, whether that be the brakes, steering or gearbox.

If my PC had as much input lag as that DSG box in the Skoda i'd bin it. You know when you boot up a really old PC and you start typing an e-mail and the text on the screen is several seconds behind what you are typing? That's how the Skoda DSG feels to me.

Don't get me wrong, it's great in town, not having to use a clutch. But I rarely drive in towns, and the input lag & dithering about really does my box in. If the input lag was eliminated & the shift was near instant then it might be a different story.
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In what world are you driving where you need such instant shifts from 5th to 2nd so often as to complain an auto is impeding you? Around town or even backroads doesn't matter - you should be anticipating things ahead of you and built into that anticipation would be manually shifting down with paddles twice before you go for an overtake or what have you. The arguments for a manual in this thread have been beyond weak and suggest that people are in life-or-death situations and need to change gear instantly? Absolutely crazy. They've suggested having nothing more than a few minutes driving a auto (TC or DCT, doesn't matter) and just thrown in the towel immediately without learning how to manipulate that particular car and gearbox.

If I'm going for an overtake in my auto and I know the gearbox needs a second to kick down, then I can plant my foot as the oncoming car is drawing level - by the time it's kicked down and the turbo has kicked in, the car has passed and I can do an overtake as normal. Even then, overtakes like that constitute a tiny fraction of a percentage of my overall driving. 99.5% of the time the car is in auto.
 
Given the comments on TC versus DCT, maybe that is where the debate should concentrate -

Does TC provide faster non-sequential shifts, 5->3rd(personally) ?
and, necessarily, some method on the particular car to say what you want via paddles, although with 8 speeds it is probably difficult to learn.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a23367341/automatic-transmission-best-zf-eight-speed/
Albert Dick, vice president of car powertrain technology at ZF, says the 8HP’s deeply satisfying shifts are rooted in factors ranging from the quality of the solenoids to the manufacturing methods to the control software. They’re also a product of a fundamental design that determines how the four planetary gearsets, three clutches, and two brakes in every 8HP gearbox are parsed into eight forward ratios. All one-gear and two-gear shifts use just two shifting elements: one opens, another closes. The 8HP also executes certain multigear shifts in this manner; witness the leaps from sixth gear to third and even eighth to second.
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I think on a BMW TC auto you can hold the downshift paddle for a bit (not talking seconds but slightly longer than a very quick tap you'd usually do) and it'll block change down to the most appropriate gear for max acceleration? i.e. effectively replicating the behaviour of the kickdown switch.

I'd guess a lot of modern TC autos can do this. I've not tried similar in my DSG but I don't think it's a function.
 
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