Before the PDK was launched the magazines and internet boards were filled w/ anticipation, the future is about to arrive. Now that it's available some of the same people are ready to announce it's soon to be extinct. I think in part we are experiencing the result of what has become a confused and conflicted culture. People desire and expect new technology but have become extremely risk averse. The idea of adopting new technology is accepted but not the potential problems that inevitably come with that newness. This leads to unremitting dissatisfaction and complaining. Seriously, why would anyone put a PDK in a Toyota? While PDK may be less involving than a clutch, it was designed to provide more entertainment (i.e. performance) than a standard auto. Naturally this will appeal to a more limited audience w/ more disposable income for entertainment. So if the standard of success is bulletproof reliability and low cost for the mass market, then PDK will fail if it hasn't already. For my part, I understood and accepted that PDK was new technology, that Porsche has been developing it essentially since the 1980s, and that there may be some bugs along the way. The benefits outweighed the risk for me as an informed early adopter. It may go the way of the dodo, but the internal combustion engine may end up that way eventually as well In the meantime I'll just enjoy my ride.

 

Having owned a pre-software update 08 M3 DCT I can understand the frustrations some have had with the BMW DCT. However, from what I understand the software update fixed most, if not all, of the issues the DCT had when it came to manually downshifting and upshifting for that matter.

I think DCT tranny's are great and you cannot argue with their performance benefit. That being said, like SMG, DCT's are still flawed and in a time when Automatic Tranny's can pretend to be 99% of a DCT with better reliability, one has to wonder, is it really worth it?

No doubt, DCT tranny's will continue to improve, I am not sure if they will ever completely replace the automatic tranny even though BMW appears to be putting DCT's in more and more of their mass market cars. But, cars like the Merc C63 AMG and Toyota/Lexus ISF are proving that efficient and performance oriented automatic/steptronic transmissions can be just as good and yet more reliable.

Jason

 

IMO the article is poorly written, and based entirely on the author's opinion of anectodal feedback about BMW's DCT from a small sampling of owners on bimmerforums.com

I'm particularly annoyed at the reference to Porsche which the author used purely for name-dropping to add credibility with no quotes or real facts to back it up.

 

Well stated.