7 speed automatic tiptronic downshift

wstar

No, the paddles can't get you to P, R, or N.

You can use the paddles in D-mode to temporarily take over the gear selection though. After a few seconds of "normal" driving in one gear it will revert to automatic selection D-rules though. Unless you're in the habit of keeping track in your head which gear the car is currently using while in D-mode, using the paddles directly from D can be initially confusing (not sure which gear you'll initially land in).

You'll notice also if you're cruising in say 7th gear in D-mode, switching to M alone will drop you to 5th (I guess on the good assumption that you're usually taking over the gearing to use 1-5, not 6-7). If you don't want this to happen, use the upshift paddle first (temporary gear selection, stays in 7th), and then flip the stick over to M (continues to be in 7th).

As far as this goes, the up/down-shift commands from the stick or the paddles are exactly identical. In either case, it's just a pushbutton electronic input to the TCM. Using both like you describe above could be faster, but if so that's just because you can execute the inputs faster, not because of anything about the car.

I've never tried overlapping them, but that would be even faster if it doesn't confuse the TCM (i.e. execute a double-click with one hand, and pull the lever down once at the same time as the first click). I wonder if it would ignore one of them if the click+pull are too close together in time though.

In any case, I find it's rare to be cruising in 7th and then need to be in 4 or lower immediately without warning. Most of the time, you know what you're going to do well ahead of time, in which case all this quick multi-click stuff is unnecessary. You can drop to say 5 in a normal slow manner a few seconds before you need 4 or 3. Again, this is what the D->M automatic downshift predicts as well. Cruise steady on the highway in D-mode, and when you see a situation coming up just flip the stick over to M, which automatically puts you in 5th, and then you can downshift further from there without needing these giant 3+ gear leaps.

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