Audi reinvents the gearbox, and it’s a plus for Cyprus drivers soon

PERHAPS the most exciting breakthrough in road car gearbox technology for almost 100 years is taking to Britain’s roads this month, and will be available here in Cyprus shortly.
The brand famous for ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ is pioneering an ingenious new manual and automatic hybrid transmission, which makes its debut in the latest version of the Audi TT.

Since Panhard et Lavassor invented the first gearbox in 1895, progress in the field of car transmission technology has been very slow — the automatic gearbox design widely used today essentially dates back almost 100 years to 1905.
The innovative new gearbox is arguably the most significant advance since that date. It betters the quickest of today’s manual and sequential manual gearboxes with what’s described as ‘a lightning fast’ manual shift that takes just 0.02 seconds and, uniquely, never interrupts the engine’s power delivery.

At the flick of a lever it can also be transformed into a full automatic, without the drain on power output or fuel economy normally demanded in return for the convenience of ‘hands-free’ shifting.

This remarkable new departure is the Direct Shift Gearbox (DSG) — the world’s first double clutch gearbox that makes a manual transmission operate automatically and brings the huge advantage of uninterrupted power delivery during shifting thanks to advanced electro-hydraulic controls and the alternate use of each of the two clutches.

This major step forward means that for the first time, sequential gear-shifting can be achieved without the ‘shunt’ which dulls the performance of more basic single clutch systems.

Another unique feature of this transmission system is the Formula One-style ‘Launch control’. Appearing for the first time in a production road car, Launch Control “helps the driver to extract the very best performance from the car by automatically selecting optimum gear change points under full acceleration”.

Britain is the first market in the world to offer the new Audi TT featuring the Direct Shift Gearbox, since Audi has produced right-hand drive models a month ahead of cars bound for its domestic German customers. As we, too, drive on the left, Cyprus drivers will also benefit.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.