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Comment by daveguy | Hacker News Reader

Re: software... So the first time you get in it the A8 has a zero to 60 of 20.4 seconds? That sounds about right.

I drove an A4 for a while and the gas response was absolutely terrible. You had to press it gently if you wanted it to respond immediately. If you gunned it or even just pressed a little quick to get across oncoming lanes -- expect about a half second delay. One of the worst cars I have driven. Taking it to the dealer the response was -- "that's normal". My boring ass accord responds to the gas pedal better than the A4. Maybe their higher end cars are better, but I wouldn't get another audi.

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Let me guess, your boring ass-accord does not have a turbocharger and the A4 did? Turbo lag is hard to avoid if you want the good power/weight of the turbocharged engine.

Yup. It was a turbo. I thought that turbo issues had been resolved in the early 2000s with proper transmission tuning and turbo-on. Apparently audi did a piss poor job of it until the the last 2-3 years (according to other posters).

I'll take a few less horsepower with better responsiveness any day. I'm not trying to beat anyone in a 1/4 mile -- i'd much rather the car be enjoyable and responsive. Half a second can easily mean the difference between getting out of the way of someone coming up on you not paying attention and getting rear ended. Hopefully they got their shit together.

TL;DR: .,-' is better than ___/

A turbo is a better driving experience on the highway. So, it's really just about buying the right car for your driving tastes.

There is no way to "solve" turbo lag. The compressor needs torque before it can produce boost. At the high end you can do a twin turbo. Not in an a4. And you could say something similar about having necessary power on the highway to avoid a collision.

Tldr: It's all subjective.

A turbo is a better driving experience on the highway.

How so? I would perceive no difference between a turbo'd engine and a Naturally Aspirated one while driving on the highway at a constant speed. Engine responsiveness as per the parent poster would be the same within the city vs. on the highway.

There is no way to "solve" turbo lag.

I'd suggest researching variable vein turbos. BMW has done it very successfully in their e92 335s. Even resulting in a flat torque curve at very low RPM. It's impressive engineering.

I'm not sure how you drive on the highway, but I don't usually drive at a constant speed. Instead, when I need overtaking power, I have fast throttle response with a turbo that is already spinning.

I'm not familiar with what BMW did for a 335, but I do know that the 335 is quite a bit more expensive than an A4.

Even at idle the turbo is spinning. Engine RPM at highway speeds isn't vastly different than engine RPM at city speeds (perhaps a few hundred RPM in the average car). Therefore turbo lag also isn't vastly different.

Variable vein enables turbos to match engine speeds more quickly. Greatly reducing turbo lag.

Come on; it's not producing boost at idle which is clearly the point. Excuse the slang term "spinning".

And I call bs. You're being argumentative. The debate wasn't highway vs "city speeds" it was highway vs cold stop.

A more advanced turbo solves the problem in a car that is $15k+ more, and I believe you that it can reduce turbo lag. For that price range a twin turbo can as well. But there is still physics that cannot be overcome.

I mean, if anything the speeder on my 2016 VW Touran 150hp 1.4 TSI is too responsive. That's probably more of an issue with DSG7.

(It has a compressor afaik)

Which cars don't have a delay? If you have a gas (i.e. relatively low torque) car with automatic transmission, it needs to shift in a lower gear if you want to accelerate rapidly, so that's where the delay comes from.

GP was probably referring to turbo lag.

I love my 2014 Mazda 3's Sport Mode. When I hit that button, the engine goes from being more than adequate to chomping at the bit. It just flies. Love that thing. Paddle shifters so I can downshift without even moving my hands.

Test drive one someday, Mazda isn't kidding around with the "zoom zoom".

As a six pot aspirated driver, screw turbos, automatic gearbox and mileage. I'd either drive this car till it dies or until a volta makes landfall in my country at a reasonable markup.

That's an interesting observation. Obviously it doesn't take 20 sec for an A8, but you really need to pay a lot of money for it to have a reasonable acceleration of ~5 sec. And I think this is the most striking thing about Tesla's cars, because right now, every potential Audi buyer knows that every single Tesla car will beat the 5 seconds 0 to 60 you bought with a lot of money (speaking of mainstream models).

I believe what he meant is that it takes 15(to launch the software) + 5.4(0-60) = 20.4 seconds to get from getting into the car to 60 mph.

That is what I meant. And if we count turbo lag it's zero to 1 mph in 15.5 seconds, unless you're on a hill. :) I would like to drive a tesla. That low end immediate torque is probably a lot of fun.

You don't need a Tesla, it's the same even on the low end EVs (and probably many of hybrids). Not having a wax pedal feels amazing.

My mother has a Mercedes with the same response. I assumed it was a luxury car and/or Mercedes large engine thing.

Whenever I drive it I end up jerking forward trying to manually compensate. I imagine if I just accepted it everything would be much smoother .

Guesses as I don't know which specific models you're referring to:

The parent's lack of throttle response is most likely due to turbo lag. Modern cars are getting better with variable vein turbos.

If your Mom's Mercedes suffers from poor throttle response I'd guess it's because she purchased one with a small engine relative to the size of the vehicle. A C230, for example, isn't the sportiest of cars. A C63, however, does not suffer from poor throttle response.

Or the transmission settings. Most luxury cars default in a "comfort" mode which introduces some lag in the down shift until revs build up more, so that the shift is smoother. A C63 is usually left in the sport transmission setting, of which the whole purpose is to jolt you as hard as possible every time you mash the pedal, to remind you what you're paying for :) Also, 4 or 5 speed cars this lag is much more ponounced than say a 7 or 8 speed, especially the newer ones with double clutch.

Turbo lag is a real issue too, although newer cars deal much better with it. Many newer model Audi's for example, it's hard to even identify the lag (not so true 10 or even 5 years ago).

C63's default to comfort mode. They don't introduce any lag in comfort modes, they simply select a higher gear than what would be ideal and up-shift at lower RPMs (1,800RPM in a C63).

Source: I own a C63 and my startup procedure includes completely turning off traction control and putting the transmission into S+ every time I get in the car.

You shouldn't disable traction control for safety purposes. Don't put your life and the lives of others on the road at risk.

No one is at risk. Most people should not disable the nannies. ;)

Stability control is there for a reason. People over estimate their driving abilities. No need to put unnecessary risk for everyone.

You're right.

I will not be changing my behavior. ;)

Wonder if you'd still think the same if someone who is doing the same as you ends up crashing into your car because they think they're too good and disable the stability control systems.

HN Is a lot more combative with posters making broad assumptions than I remember.

In that hypothetical situation I might wish that they had taken some high performance driving courses from me or my colleagues/friends. And spent time behind the wheel of cars at the limit, as I have, so that they had better skills to potentially avoid the accident they caused (with or without ESC).

ESC doesn't save people from bad driving, it masks some of their errors.

There is nothing wrong with disabling traction control. Please don't use the ESC in your car as a crutch. It won't save you.

Even if you did take driving courses, the roads are for transportation, and are to be used with as many safety features as possible. Stability control is another thing to add to the list of safety behavior. Disabling it on public roads is even careless behavior. Yes, it does not save from bad driving, but it plays a very big role in mitigating or preventing certain accidents, which even the best human drivers are not able to react in time.

Sorry, you're misinformed on what ESC and traction control do, it seems, and the rhetoric makes for a difficult conversation.

I didn't take them, I taught them.

We call the driver aids "nannies" in motorsports because they fix some driver errors. They limit control and input. They don't react for the driver. Interesting fact: A driver can out-brake ABS. The vast majority of motorsports competitors do regularly.

I'm not sure why I'm engaging in this, I should probably have more coffee... :)

No, it's a CLK430 convertible from ~2003. It's got plenty of power, it just feels like it purposefully retards the throttle when starting from stop for a short while to keep it from jerking off the line. In my trying to compensate for that, I give it more throttle, which seems to trigger it to stop the retarding action, and the it accelerates faster than expected. It feels like if I just let it do its thing it would be fine, but it feels slow to me when starting, which causes the whole problem. This isn't a developed problem, it was like this from the beginning, so I assume it's on purpose.

The CLK430 has a 275 HP V8 and the car weighs nearly 4,000lbs. That's not a lot of power for a vehicle of that size and non-AMG models aren't geared for acceleration. The surge you experience is probably the transmission down-shifting. On typical city driving the Mercedes transmissions seem to select gears 2 higher than what would be optimal for acceleration. In the AMG models they don't even use 1st gear unless the transmission is in Sport mode.

Glib solution: Buy an AMG and smile when you put your right foot down, but cry when you go to the bank...

> The CLK430 has a 275 HP V8 and the car weighs nearly 4,000lbs. That's not a lot of power for a vehicle of that size and non-AMG models aren't geared for acceleration.

I alternate driving a Honda Odyssey and a recent base level Hyundai Elantra as a commuter every day. I'll tell you flat out this is not a problem with too little horsepower or torque. I've also recently driven one of the AMG Mercedes variants for a few days, and seemed to notice the same issue in that vehicle, but much less pronounced.

> The surge you experience is probably the transmission down-shifting.

What I'm experiencing seems to be slightly different than what the original commentor started out with. I'm referring to starting moving forward from stop, such as a stoplight.

> Glib solution: Buy an AMG and smile when you put your right foot down, but cry when you go to the bank...

Naw, I still have my 240z sitting out back. It was fairly tricked out prior to it becoming basically useless most the time when I had multiple children. I get most of my jonesing for fast cars satisfied by the fantasy that I'll one day fix it up again. I think it was way more fun to drive than most the modern fast cars, because it's not so much about how fast you go, but how fast if feels like you are going. Driving a small early 70's sports car serves that up pretty well even without actually going all that fast. :)

We're veering off topic a bit but I've come to learn Mercedes pretty well now. I'd put money on your feeling with the Mercedes being two-fold: 1) The gearing: They're long gears and it defaults to selecting a very tall gear. I have 500hp on tap and doing 50mph in 7th gear isn't fun, but that's what it selects as a default in comfort mode. 2) Traction control: It might not be as much of a problem in non-AMGs but the traction control is surprisingly intrusive and very good at hiding that it's engaging because there isn't a mechanical coupling to the drive wheels. It uses the brakes and I assume some throttle limiting. Even in the sport handling modes it's quite intrusive.

I never drive with traction control or in comfort mode - not even in winter. It's a completely different car with them off - if you get another chance to drive one I'd suggest turning it all off. Unfortunately the throttle isn't linear but any more than 20% will spin the tires.

I also have an S2000. It has half the horsepower and weights 1,000lbs less but it's a blast.

I'll see if the traction control makes a difference next time I have reason to drive either of the cars. Thanks for the input.

> I also have an S2000. It has half the horsepower and weights 1,000lbs less but it's a blast.

50% the horsepower but 74% the weight isn't that bad a trade-off. Less top speed, but likely better cornering, which is probably fun. :)

I'm not sure if it's related, but IIRC there was a lot of complaining when BMW first introduced drive-by-wire throttles (E46 3 series)

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