Its been almost 2 months with the new A3, great car, super fun to drive and looks amazing...However can someone shed some light onto the automatic transmission of the A3?
When driving in regular Automatic mode the A3 seems to "short shift" itself , basically it rarely goes over 2k RPM and when driving around town its not uncommon for the A3 to be in
5th or 6th gear while only 40mph? I am sure the A3 does this to enhance fuel economy but it often seems like the car is short shifting so much that its in way too high a gear for the
driving condition, specially uphills. Of course the Sport mode works great and since you control the upshifts its no longer a issue. Does anyone else have a A3 that does this? Is this normal?
Would chipping my A3 change this?( I am guessing so), sorry if these are newbie questions, I know alot about motorcycles, still have alot to learn with cars!LOL Also its my first Audi..
Thanks

 

Yea its common, its just to save gas because the higher the rpms you shift at the more gas you use. Automatic with a few bursts of sport mode to have some fun usually evens it out for me but it does get a little annoying being in 6th gear at such a low speed. Usually on the freeway if I need to pass someone or need some good acceleration I just downshift on the paddleshifters to 5 and when im done upshift and it will go back to D automaticly.

 

All automatics tend to do this, its the factory way to enhance fuel economy. If you need a lower gear just get on the gas or use the paddle shifters...

 

i notice mine does that when i just got the car/ or after your TCM reset.
but after a while the dsg seems to addapt to your driving style.
of course its always depending on your throttle input; but other than that its prety normal.
like what others are saying. save gas

 

The short shifting is absolutely normal, and definitely improves gas mileage with the broad torque curve of the 2.0T engine. The great part about the DSG transmission is that it upshifts very smoothly, and also downshifts pretty well when needed. But as stated already by others, the paddles work exceptionally well whenever you want to take control. I recently drove an A4 2.0T tiptronic with paddles (and Quattro) for a day. It was clearly less responsive, and not nearly as much fun.

Chipping would have minimal effect on the short-shifting.

BMW did an extensive comparison of the effect of different techniques on gas mileage during acceleration, and found that quickly accelerating to speed whileshort-shifting to get into the highest gear as early as possible gave substantially better mileage then any other method.

 

Thanks to everyone who responded to this, glad to hear its a totally normal driving condition. Since the engine is now broken in (1400miles) I have started to really use the the paddle shifters, wow
does this little A3 have some pull, very fun. I run the car in regular auto mode most of the time to save on MPG, but lately the paddle shifters have been very entertaining!

 

You can also put in in 'S' mode where the engine tries it's damndest to stay around 3000 RPM. I was highly skeptical until I went at some nice mountain roads. Oh. That's what it's supposed to do. Works really well in heavy freeway 'point and punch' driving, also.

Full Disclosure: Costs about 2 MPG.