pinguhk

manual are outdated now.

pinguhk

looks like BMW have to make a 350ic

arcleid

for that kind of price, I'd go for it
IF only I have the money

BetterMakeWay

Fair point but what if 90% of the time you drive in city heavy traffic like pinguhk said and you don't get to change 3rd gear. If 8 speed is such a good option why don't we see it in most of the cars like the 6 speed one?

pinguhk

ya right on

LowOrbit

They would probably think the same thing in the 1960s about 5 speed automatics when they only had 3 speeds. It just takes time to trickle into all cars.

There must be an upper limit where you get 95% of the potential benefit - I assume this new 8-speed is getting close. The Audi CVT is essentially infinite gears but that technology has not caught on for some reason.

I read that the MB 7-speed auto helps performance and fuel economy so they are justified IMHO.

swajames

Because the majority of drivers do make it out of third gear - and also because only Lexus, who make their own transmissions, has been able to develop and build an 8 speed thus far thus far . MB is also offering seven, again for the same reasons as the lexus. BMW's own SMGIII also has seven cogs. I do agree with LowOrbit, at some point the law of diminishing returns has got to set in with the traditional auto and how many gears are available.

BetterMakeWay

Ok no i will have to disagree with both of you. I dunno what is the majority and really i don't care about the numbers. I can say aswell that majority is about city traffic but i don't have anything to back it up. Anyway moving on...you say only Lexus does that, probably true, but that doesn't mean that the tranmission makers sleep on their job if they know they can improve their products. It's a law of economics that if you can improve your goods/services and it will sell because of those improvements you make everything you can to bring it to the market. I doubt ALL third party tranny makers were that incompetent.

Also i'd like to add that there is a fine balance of performance/economy in choosing the number of gears not to mention the gears themselfs. Also there are many more variables like the impact on customers and so on. For example would you drive a car everyday that has 10 gears that has good performance? I for one would go crazy...anyway. Probably the best gearbox as in performance is currently the sequential 7 speed one or the gearbox that has 7 cogs. If 8 gears were more benefical to the car in terms of performance we would have seen them in F1 cars. IMO the 8 geared car is just a marketing gimmik, it's something to show to your friends and brag about it. Probably it's good for economy but only if you reach on a daily basis 7-8th gear. From the performance point of view i'm sceptical.

I accept the 7 speed gearbox but the level of the factor performance/economy doesn't stand 100% in how many gears you have. There are alot more factors to consider. But regardin to what you said i think that if 8 geared cars were better then we would have seen them by now. You forget how the world evolved from years 1900. It's an exponential increase not linear. Engines are geting upgraded in a year or so, technology is the number 1 exponential increaser. We now think of way more complicated things when we develop cars then just the number of gears. I keep my point of view that if it would be better we would have seen it by now. We'll see if the 8 gear car becomes generalised. I very much doubt it.

pinguhk

I go with you too.
Like on some car you can get to 60mph in 1st so why so many?
another is if the lexus do have the peddle shift the you better do some wight training with you hands cos you will be using them alot and no more fags, drink, mobile phones or even sex in the car.

swajames

Both Mercedes and Lexus claim both performance and economy benefits from the additional gears. Other manufacturers already have eight speed transmissions in development - and I'm sure they all believe they must be on to something, otherwise they wouldn't commit the the significant R&D budgets involved.

F1 came up in an earlier post - the current F1 regulations require a minimum of four and no more than seven forward gears. Every team has gone with seven. If the regs permitted eight there is a pretty good chance the teams would use eight, but as of right now they are prohibited.