I have the same thing.
No other ev:s I drove had this, but I suspect VW sunk so much money into their DSG gearbox so they felt the need to retrofit the electric motor into the GTE drivetrain?

Also what's strange is that it actually seem to consume a lot less electricity if switching gears with the manual stick or paddles.
Feels very weird having to switch around gears just so that the petrol engine have the right rpm to jump in.

Would've made more sense to me to just let the rear wheels be electric and front wheels regular petrol.

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Let's separate things here: The GTE is a plug-in hybrid, meaning that it has an ICE connected to a 6-gear DSG box to drive the wheels. On top of the clutch there is an electric motor, connected to that same DSG box. When in EV mode the electric motor drives the wheels, through the DSG which shifts as normal manual box, although much much smoother.

So some gear changes can be felt. But, the DSG changes are very smooth, almost imperceptible.

This all applies only if you accelerate like a granny. If you push the car, gear changes become clearly more noticeable. That has nothing to do with the DSG itself, nothing is wrong. The gear changes are still much smoother than a manual.

If the car is lurching all over the place, then there is a possible problem with the DSG. But that should occur even when "granny" accelerating.

 

The use of the gearbox in the GTE even in electric mode is odd, but it is easily explained.

The motor is a fairly small unit (80kW peak, ~20kW continuous), and is also used to start the combustion engine. Due to the use of the gearbox, it is possible to make the motor even smaller.

The motor is effectively coupled to the combustion engine, with a clutch to separate the engine from the gearbox when the engine is not in use. This allows the use of the motor for engine start and alternator function in any gear.

Otherwise, the engine would need another motor to start it, because you cannot spin up an engine to operating speed via a gearbox directly - it would be easy to over rev the engine on start up making for a very rough transition. While I'm not sure exactly how it works, I suspect that clutch K3 and the motor work together to spool the engine up to the starting rpm, possibly with the DSG clutches K1/K2 disengaged.

I do notice the gear transitions, mostly 1st to 2nd with a very slight jerk on transition, with the others being pretty unnoticeable. I have no real complaint about it. The DSG is a very good gearbox design and it is far better than most automatic transmissions.

 

All agreed. I would add that the DSG box provides continuous power through the changes which makes the acceleration seamless. You can watch the car's with the manual gearboxes fall behind at each gearchange as you depart the traffic lights

And all in silence! Most satisfying!

 

I find the DSG very smooth and like it, certainly vastly better than the CVT "droning" design

 

I often drive around town in manual when in electric mode, I hardly ever actually manually change gear I just let it do its thing, stops it hunting gears all over the place and around town it never gets beyond third, give it a go.

 

Like others I find the DSG very smooth, passengers have commented on this also.
(I've never used manual or flappys since I got the car - no need!)

 

Like others I find the DSG very smooth, passengers have commented on this also.
(I've never used manual or flappys since I got the car - no need!)

It's smooth up, until the point you want to boot it, if that moment happens to be when the DSG is faffing around in fourth you get a loooong delay while it figures everything out. Thats why I dive in manual in EV mode, I want to be able to put my foot down and immediately go, to me thats half the joy of an EV.

 

I agree, the DSG is a joy (occasional low speed judder aside).

I do find myself using the manual paddles though - living in the countryside where there are some sudden sharp hills, it can be useful to tell the box to kick down a great or two just before hitting a steep bit rather than waiting for the gearbox to work out that it's now going up hill.

 

I think the problem here with the DSG is that it's very good at going down one gear or up another gear, but asking it to shift from, say, 6th to 3rd, means it has to fully declutch and engage the new gear on the same geartrain. Essentially, if you can somehow go down by an odd number of gears, it should work better...

 

Yup, VW should of programmed it to work differently when in EV mode, as I'm sure the time spent, getting it down to 2nd so to bring the petrol engine into the power band would make perfect sense if I was actually using the petrol engine....