Yeti575

Hi,

In January my dealer performed a software update of the gearbox. This was to fix the very jerky up-shifs from 2nd to 3rd gear.

Upon getting the car back I subsequently noticed that the car no longer will coast / glide when in ECO-mode.

There has been much to and fro with my dealer, but bottom line is they deny this feature ever existed, and I cannot find it described in the owners manual. Luckily some decent fella has documented in on YouTube:
Has anyone else noticed this feature gone? Or even seen any mention in the owners manual. Like I said, I cannot find it. It could well be that newer cars, or cars with the new gearbox flash come without this feature.


What is coasting/gliding?

• Put the car into Agility setting ECO
• At speeds above 60km/h (40MPH), if you remove your foot from the gaspedal the car will coast
• Ie it would disengage the gear, as indicated in the display where it would go from D6 (or whatever gearnumber it was in) to display just D
• The RPM-counter would also drop to tick-over RPM's - further indicating you were gliding
• If you were to approach another car too fast, or if you hit the brake pedal it would re-engage the gear, and it would go back to D6 (or whatever)
• If speedes went below 50km/h or 30mp/h it would also re-engage drive mode.

Advantage of this?
Primarily to save on fuel - I pay roughly $5,80 for a gallon of petrol / $1,5 a litre but also on longer journeys it would provide entertainment as to how far it was possible to glide (yeah I know )

megaoctane

I have also noticed that this is missing now. i only used it a couple of times and just like you I had great fun seeing how far i could glide. my record was for a little bit over 2 kilometers.
But early on when the gears engaged again at the same time of downshift being necessary, it resulted in "loud" bang and jerk from the transmission.
So yeah - this feature is gone for now. but it should probably still work for diesel engines, as the jerky transmission was a issue for 4 sylinder petrol engines.

Yeti575

Thanks for your response mega. It's good to know others have noticed feature disappear. I'm curious as to whether it is a bug that this no longer works, or whether it is a silent feature removal that has occurred.

Dealer wants me to visit them yet again, at least the video I found disproves their claims that this feature never existed !

topsider

doesn't work in the US sadly. the website claims it does, but I put the car in Eco when coasting down steep hills on the highway and the car still slows down. also, the Gear doesn't go to just "D". disappointing

getto

I shift to neutral when coasting on highway.

Jay_Chicago

Isn't it "illegal" to coast in neutral or out of a gear in the US? Maybe that's the reason it's not working.

DapperStyle

But it's a sophisticated decoupling not just throwing an automatic transmission into neutral for the end user to determine when it is best to re-engage the gear.

Xtrema

Law and lawyers are usually why we can't have nice things. I'm sure some lawyer already got class action suit ready when they find out it disengages (smartly or not).

topsider

You get worse gas mileage if you do that versus leaving it in drive, since the computers cut fuel to the engine while coasting in drive..its also not good for the auto transmission to coast in neutral

AMG_BUFF

Especially with 4Matic...