Mercedes developing 9-speed automatic transmission - 9G-Tronic

not promising i guess...

CVTs are alive and kicking. Here's a quick list of cars in production with a CVT I gathered from wikipedia. nissan versa, cube, sentra, altima and maxima. toyota prius and avensis. honda city. audi a4. ford focus c-max. mitsubishi lancer. seat exeo. subaru legacy and outback.

CVTs can't handle much power, as i understand it... and in reality, a 9-speed slush 'box would be damn near indistinguishable from a CVT; the only difference being automatic gearboxes are the industry standard whereas CVTs are to transmissions as wankel rotary engines are to power plants.

I'm happy with my fixie... ;))

Have you ever driven a CVT trannied car? It's the most disgusting experience ever...I drove a loaner A6-CVT for a few days last year and it was a piece of crappola. Who cares if they have 8 or 9 speed when you are not shifting yourself?

Besides the decrease in the "enthusiastic" driving experience, CVTs seemed like a "jack-of-all-trades" answer, being extremely efficient in theory. However, in practice, the high pressure pumps required for the chains eat as much (or often more) efficiency as an auto-box with a comparable ratio spread. In the end, it is more cost effective to continue using hydraulically coupled auto-box's, which still use legacy R&D methods and coding. And, the more gears, the greater efficiency(power & economy). However, the more gears, the more intelligent the trans programming must be to maintain a comfortable driving experience.

The problem is that Benz realizes this may be a problem, so they would have the car change down automatically, which is even worse especially because it doesn't let you know. This is my biggest problem with the C300 that I have. I'm on a back-country road in Connecticut, when I go hard on the brakes as a enter a sharp corner. I need to shift from 5th to 2nd, so naturally I slide the gear lever to the left 3 times. Of course, the computer has already done downshifts, and all of a sudden I'm revving past 7000rpm in 1st. If Benz does not allow for more driver involvement, this will be one of the worst transmissions for fun driving. And, knowing Benz, they will do this anyway, which means I will have to go for the other Germans with a proper manual because it is nearly impossible to find a manual Benz in the States without ordering one. I guess a new A5 or 328 is in the cards for me in the near future...