Joshua

Hi All, I have had my brand new 2019 S560 for just over a month and have clocked up 1700 kilometres (just over a 1000 miles). I am just getting used to it and the various tech features.
I have noticed that no matter what mode I am in (ECO, COMFORT, SPORT or DYNAMIC) I can never see the gears getting up to the 9th Gear or very rarely in D.

Some context before I ask your wise counsel.

• My commute to work (this is a daily driver) is about 25 kms each way.
• Max speed in traffic I get up to usually is about 85 kms/hour (56 to 58 miles per hour).
• In town I appear to be using a max 5th or 6th gear.
• On the occasional long trip (60+ kilometres) to the airport I get up to 8th gear when doing 100 kms/hour and see an excellent 7.9L/100 kms consumption. Otherwise I usually average about 12.0 L/100 kms.

Q1: Is the transmission behaving as normal or
Q2: because I have been driving it gently (only been in sport mode once and never in Dynamic mode) should I get the upshifting / downshifting checked and perform an adaptation reset ?
Q3: Does the old procedure of performing a home adaptation reset (as per the old 7 speed transmissions, key at turn 2, accelerator pedal to the floor, wait 30 secs, switch of, don't open doors etc etc etc) work on these new 2019 W222 9 G Transmissions ?
Q4: Does the 9 speed really need autobahn speeds to get up to the 9th gear ?

Your thoughts much appreciated.

S_W222

You car is behaving "as designed" based on your description. I tested this model for weeks earlier and read few articles on the new 9G-tronic transmission. Unfortunately, the 2 extra gears in this new transmission would get more advantages at high speeds while the "usable" range for the first 7 gears remain "almost" the same (similar to 7G) for the lower speed ranges (below 60MPH or 100KMH) which is what an average person use 80% of the time (meaning the 8th and 9th gears are needed less than 5% of the times). Those who drive at 80MPH+ or 130KMH+ would notice the difference in performance between the 7G and 9G, but for lower speeds the differences are relatively small. Keep in mind that despite the two additional gears, the overall space (size) of the transmission is exactly similar to the 7G transmission.
In summary: the advantages of the new transmission are mainly gained at very high speed that the 8th and 9th gear are covering. The 2nd one is that 9G transmission can skip multiple individual gears when downshifting (which can occur only when you are racing or on a kick-down!. People think they'd get tremendous differences, but unfortunately the two gears have the same housing and even same size, and improvement is focused on two areas that are rarely used by the average person so don't be surprised that you are not seeing the 8th and 9th gears under normal driving conditions.

chassis

Try forcing upshift to 8 and 9 with the paddle. I can do this on my GLE with 7G-Tronic, when it otherwise wants to hang in 5 or 6.

Joshua

Thank you S_W222. What you say makes sense to me. I shall just enjoy the car and not overthink things ...

Joshua

Will definitely try this on my way home today but will do so only when I have a free run on the freeway at speeds between 80 to 100 kms / hour and shall report back.

_S500_

My 2016 S500 9G-Tronic gets to 9th gear once it reaches 90 km/h, the rpms are 1000 at cruising speed.

Between 80 to 88 km/h is in 8th gear.

Thats just a guess but maybe your gearbox received a different software then my pre-facelift model.

S_W222

The coupe S-class has a different software, also, the transmission unit as well as the software is one year older than those put on the 2017 sedans and face-lift models (2018+), hardware is pretty much the same but software is not.

Mitch Alsup

As far as I can tell by your description, yes.

The transmission will not let a gear be selected if the engine RPMs will go below <about>1,000 RPMs.
The engine is most efficient at 1,500 +/- 100 RPMs in converting fuel into mileage.

lsdreem

Thats weird, Mine will go to 9th gear driving 50mph.

MBS63AMG

I too have a 2019 model coming out of a 2017 S63. Now that you've brought this up, I'm going to pay more attention to this as I drive between 75 and 80 mph on the interstate and I've never looked to see what gear it is in. One thing you might want to look into is the individual settings you've chosen for your car's handling. You have options to change the steering stiffness, transmission sportiness, and chassis softness. You probably have already done that but I just wanted to remind you of it.