After experiencing two cars with the same transmission back-to-back (2022 GLE53 and 2023 S500), I feel like I can say with some confidence that this transmission is not good. It’s not smooth, it’s jerky and doesn’t shift with any composure. Sometimes it acts like it doesn’t know what to do.

HOWEVER, the unit I have in the S500 is significantly better than the one I had in my GLE clunker. That thing would clunk so loud that people half a block away could hear it (not sarcasm). I hope it does get better. The transmission in my GLE did slightly get better after 2k miles. Since this one is better, I’m hoping it can settle down to a compliant transmission over the same mileage.

I have no idea where these are made but I think there are two issues: design and production.

Finally, I don’t want to detract from what is otherwise a superb car to me, especially coming from that haunted GLE. I’m really enjoying myself and glad I got this. No other issues by the way. *knock on wood*

 

The PDK is smoother and is seldom confused, this one, this one will often in the wrong gear and shifts can be poor. It's the worst transmission I've encountered in years. Bottom line; you're not wrong.

 

Not defending the GLE but the GLE 53 is supposed to be more sporty, not saying clunk is normal until that is confirmed but let's just say that transmission is more "aggressive?"
Hopefully no issues will be experienced with your S-Class, enjoy it.

 

Yeah I find the 9-speed to be clunky too. The ZF 8-speed is the gold standard for me.

 

It is known that the ZF is smoother, not as good as the PDK from what I heard but in the right direction.

 

Normal MB transmission behavior. MB transmissions are junk. They produce them in-house, when they should rather exit this part of their business. They should leave transmissions to those who know what they are doing: Aisin and ZF.

 

Have you tried the Sport or Sport+ mode? If left in Comfort mode the transmission is lazy and vague on purpose. You can also customize your dynamic settings and it feels like the transmission has a bit of a learning curve so it might take some drive time before it starts to recognize what you expect of it.

We've had no problems with the 9 speed transmissions in either of our S-Class's and are pure enjoyment at WOT.

 

not sure the mileage on OP's vehicle but if they are still in break-in it definitely is likely that it is still learning but if in break-in I personally wouldn't recommend flooring it or anything. Glad you don't have issues with your transmission though.

 

We have a 2019 SL450 and a 2019 E450 Wagon. The 9-Speeds in both of those cars work flawlessly, as did the one in a 2018 S560 I had. My 2020 S560 had a horrendous 3-2 downshift, so bad that MBUSA bought the car back and I replaced it with a 2022 S580. The 9-Speed in this new S is just plain SLOPPY! It feels like I am back in a 1960’s car. When driving around at slower speeds, it is constantly hunting for the right gear. If slowing down and turning onto an inclined street, it always CLUNKS. I just wish it would get really bad, so they would buy this one back as well!

It’s just my opinion, but I believe this is yet another case of MB trying to cut things too closely. I believe it has to do with software designed to produce the absolute best fuel economy, so that they can still meet CAFE standards, while producing their fire breathing AMG vehicles. AMG is a cash cow for MB and they will do anything to protect it, including making the rest of us suffer with their less than correct vehicles.

 

Summarizing: MB doesn't know what they are doing in the realm of transmissions.

 

Sorry to hear about the continued dissatisfaction with your particular W223 S-Class, if they were able to achieve that it would be a win for AMG-buyers as they can stop downsizing the V8 down to four-cylinders but apparently they are not successful now they have to downsize to four-cylinders and also go full electric even on AMG models.

What is left in that case is a dissatisfying experience for both Mercedes-Benz and Mercedes-AMG customers. I get the statement that you can't statisfy everyone, but I don't understand the point of can't satisfy anyone.

 

Don't know if anyone noticed but the Germans are balking on the 2035 thing. Just an observation...

 

I am not aware of that, do you mind sharing where you heard about that. It would likely be a good thing if they do because as of now battery or EVs are not helping the climate at all. A simple front end collision can total a vehicle and research seems to suggest that you need to be driving the EV for many many years before it actually positively contribute to the environment which is not likely to happen as it stands with the old battery technology. https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...ar-2023-03-20/

 

Yes, Germany, specifically the FDP party were insistent on an e-Fuel exception as part of the 2035 ban and the EU capitulated the other day. It still has to be ratified by all member countries and not all are happy about it. It could still get challenged in the European court. Whether this amounts to anything, though remains to be seen as e-Fuels are currently far from viable.

 

Interesting, I wonder if this is a good thing I mean I really hope it goes through, I still think even e-Fuel is better for the climate than electric vehicles. I wonder if people that did transition to electric vehicles will find it annoying though because I mean there was a serious heavy push to electrify everything the going years.

 

It all comes down to how the electricity is being produced. It's now coming to light that EVs in China for example produce more CO2 than comparable ICE, because most of China's electricity comes from coal plants that operate under very lax environmental rules. Even in the USA, in states like West Virginia for example, hybrid vehicles produce less CO2 than fully electric vehicles, again, because of coal plants. As far as e-Fuel is concerned, if it can be produced from excessive renewable energy, then it can be a viable alternative, but it only makes sense if we have so much renewable electricity that we don't know what to do with it. Otherwise it's still far more efficient to just charge batteries with that electricity instead of producing e-Fuel that has a much lower efficiency, not just the production, but burning it is at the same low efficiency as any ICE already is, and e-Fuel will likely be needed in large quantities for airplanes and ships, so there may not be enough for cars or only at a really high price.

 

Agree! Canada used to mainly use nuclear to produce electricity now it is cleaner with electricity mainly produced through hydro sources. That said, we haven't abandoned nuclear yet and still are producing electricity to some extent through nuclear which means it is not renewable, we also sometimes use coal, natural gas, petroleum, biomass and solar to produce electricity I believe wind too.

Sigh, I was hoping e-Fuel was the breakthrough, as how you described it looks like it is (so far) an empty promise. Porsche also entertained the idea of synthetic fuel but I guess that is not going to do much either plus might be exclusive for their own vehicles.

 

There have actually been people suggesting to use nuclear to produce e-fuel. Nuclear is one of those plants that you can't just shut down when the electricity demand is reduced, so what some have suggested is to use the nuclear plants during the times when the sun shines and the wind blows to produce e-fuel for later use, while the renewables power everything else and then when the sun goes down the nuclear plants can keep the lights on. Obviously this hinges on politicians realizing that the electric future is most likely not gonna happen w/o nuclear, at least not as long as we don't have large scale long term storage to supply energy during the winter and times when the sun don't shine. Currently, their solution is natural gas plants as those are the easiest to quickly spin up and then shut down again.

 

Trying to get back on topic. The 9-speed transmission always seems to get thrown into a single pot. While the core mechanics are shared, there are many variants of the transmission with different tunes for the specific models. The AMG versions are as somebody pointed out above deliberately more aggressive. Most AMG V8 models don't even use a torque converter and instead have a wet-clutch. AMG terms this variant a multi clutch transmission. But even for the regular MB models, the 9G-Tronic is tuned specifically for each model. When I drove an S 500 loaner recently it was mostly smooth. There was occasionally an uncharacteristic jolt or clunk, but for the most part it shifted smoothly, and this vehicle was still fairly new, so the transmission hadn't had much time to adapt and it's always difficult to adapt to multiple drivers. Loaners that are driven by so many people are probably not the best example. The whole powertrain, though has the response of a sloth, but that's intentional as not to upset the boss/passengers in the back.

 

Those are interesting suggestions by them, well, I guess we will find out what the future holds later.

 

I guess there are odd ***** of which some are either defective or poorly tuned from factory, manual adaptation usually helps but it is way too time consuming and not a lot of dealerships are willing to help out, MB just throw a bunch of updates and see what sticks (or what works)

Agree loaners being a comparison isn't a good example, given how it learns all sorts of good or bad driving habits.

 

What I can say based on the 4 years I had my C63 now is that at least AMG does update the software of the transmission over time, and the transmissions really do adapt. For example when I first got my car it always downshifted all the way to 1st gear as I was coming to a stop. This was jerky as the 1st gear is very short. After several thousand miles and me doing more city/town driving it suddenly stopped doing that and now stays in 2nd gear until I have come to a full stop. I've also gotten a couple of ECU/TCU updates over the years and the transmission is better than ever. The clutches are all worn in now and it shifts great. Smooth when I want it to, and with a kick in the back when I feel like a hooligan, but again, that's the AMG multi clutch variant. All regular loaners I've had over the years with the 9-speed drove perfectly fine. Just not very engaging or interesting, but they shifted smoothly. I've yet to experience some of the issues that have been reported with any of the 9G variants. Maybe I've just been lucky, or I simply have different expectations, and a driving style that fits the programming better.

 

Happy to hear you have no issues and enjoying your vehicle as a result.

The problem with updates is that it is a never ending loop, after a TCU update unfortunately the dealership will likely reset the adaptation and the learning cycle restarts again leading to the possibility of having clunky and jerky transmissions.

Granted, not all dealerships update the transmission for every service visit and usually does it when there is a compliant with the shifting but the transmission keeps on getting resetting and the customer complains again as it is doing the jerky and clunking because it wasn't given time to adapt then the reset happens again, like a loop.

 

Another thing is people drive in sport+ in the city in stop and go traffic and then they feather the throttle, that confuses the transmission, MB's transmission hate indecisiveness it seems, so you need to either make up your mind and mash the throttle or slightly accelerate but don't do light feather and then sudden throttle.

 

Those aren't the only problems. There is already a shortage of many of the materials needed to produce EVs today; scale only increases that problem. Not just supply chain; you're talking about needs increasing up to a factor of 10 in some cases. That's mining, processing, the works. There is currently no road map by which that can happen on paper; let alone in process. We're talking about finding some of these materials and getting through the regulatory approval to start setting up a mining operation before any works even begin.

There is also no possible way many countries can produce the electricity for those cars without a net carbon gain unless they move forward with massive infrastructure build outs of the kind only richer countries can contemplate; some of these are moving forward but not nearly enough.

Think of the US: We're one of not so many countries that have the kind of wealth that can make this happen. How long would it take us with our money to overhaul the grid? We're talking about new nuclear, wind, solar, Tidal, and everything between them and a cord leading to an EV. Nothing less will get the move to EVs into negative carbon and the goal is negative carbon, not EVs.

My wife is an academic and working tangentially in this field. Neither she nor her colleagues see a path forward without a net carbon gain that works within the timelines many are pushing unless very significant movement starts on these fronts now.

Back to the trans; it does work better in sport and it's smooth most of the time but that's not enough to meet par. A dual clutch should not best an automatic for smoothness, not any dual clutch, not any automatic. You have that going on with this car compared to the PDK.

Any auto can be caught flat-footed, in the wrong gear, be made to clunk, but it happens more here than any car I've had recently. Or even any rental car I've had recently.

Neither of those are anything huge comparatively but they're there. It's odd to me; I'm coming from Porsche's and I'm not familiar with this brand but I did have an idea in my mind about what an S Class brings to the table. I didn't envision a trans that feels like it's a step behind.