2025 RWD vs 2022 RWD Impressions (Long and Nerdy)

[freeforall]

2nd gear in Normal for my 2023 Turbo CT, unless I slam the accelerator hard. 1st gear for Sport and SportPlus until over 50mph. Going up to 50mph will stay in 1st on Sport, switching to Normal and then back to Sport changes to 2nd where it will stay unless I slow down.

This makes me think that the behavior we are seeing with @Gru is related to RWD models and not necessarily related to ST/CT

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[whitex]

How do you know if your car is not engaged in second gear?

When quiet in the car I can hear the whine of the gearbox, especially with rear seats down. However, the most reliable way I know is the diagnostics display on which I can show the current gear. It does require coding the car via OBDII to enable this "Expert" display mode as one of the options for the right tube.

The above picture is with car plugged in, so no gear indication. When driving shows 00 for park, 01 for first and 02 for second gear.

 

[freeforall]

How do you know if your car is not engaged in second gear? It is not that easy to distinguish which gear you are on (except in Gen2 with the performance view). The best way to test is gradually get to 25-30mph constant speed then slam the accelerator, you should get a very clear "kick-down" after maybe a split second delay. This is the exact behavior I get with my RWD PB+.

Pretty easy to distinguish.
1- I drive slowly in Normal mode and by shifting to Range mode I hear it very easily shifting to 2nd gear and I feel it as well. With the Sport sound on it is even more noticeable.
2- also my car always shifts to 2nd gear at 80 km/h even if I accelerate very softly from low speed

I have a RWD PB+ ST MY23. I don’t see why they would set this for ST only. Is it possible that his behavior was introduced in MY23?
@Gru what MY is your car?

 

[Gru]

When quiet in the car I can hear the whine of the gearbox, especially with rear seats down. However, the most reliable way I know is the diagnostics display on which I can show the current gear. It does require coding the car via OBDII to enable this "Expert" display mode.

The above picture is with car plugged in, so no gear indication. When driving shows 00 for park, 01 for first and 02 for second gear.

I would be tempted, but afraid to brick the car...
I'll make a video tomorrow with the speed/mode and rotational speed to illustrate it

 

[Avantgarde]

When quiet in the car I can hear the whine of the gearbox, especially with rear seats down. However, the most reliable way I know is the diagnostics display on which I can show the current gear. It does require coding the car via OBDII to enable this "Expert" display mode.
View attachment 78040
The above picture is with car plugged in, so no gear indication. When driving shows 00 for park, 01 for first and 02 for second gear.

Yes I am now trained to tell exactly by the whining, but two other members sounded they are sure they use 1st gear all the way up to 70-80 mph in normal mode (which does not sound right unless they are slamming the accelerator). So I was trying to see what their datapoints are.

Btw @whitex what you have is very cool. What else do you see? Can you see torque, power etc live? If so can you let me know what product did you install?

 

[Gru]

Pretty easy to distinguish.
1- I drive slowly in Normal mode and by shifting to Range mode I hear it very easily shifting to 2nd gear and I feel it as well. With the Sport sound on it is even more noticeable.
2- also my car always shifts to 2nd gear at 80 km/h even if I accelerate very softly from low speed

I have a RWD PB+ ST MY23. I don’t see why they would set this for ST only. Is it possible that his behavior was introduced in MY23?
@Gru what MY is your car?

identical behaviour. MY 2022

 

[Avantgarde]

Pretty easy to distinguish.
1- I drive slowly in Normal mode and by shifting to Range mode I hear it very easily shifting to 2nd gear and I feel it as well. With the Sport sound on it is even more noticeable.
2- also my car always shifts to 2nd gear at 80 km/h even if I accelerate very softly from low speed

I have a RWD PB+ ST MY23. I don’t see why they would set this for ST only. Is it possible that his behavior was introduced in MY23?
@Gru what MY is your car?

Interesting. Mine is 2022. Now funny enough, a 2023 RWD loaner I was given last year felt quicker/more responsive at low speed and I always wondered why. Now wondering...

 

[Gru]

identical behaviour. MY 2022

Mode is missing below. I switched from Normal to Range at 19:27:00 : rotation speed was divided by 2 (at around 20mph)

 

[Gru]

and that's about the max. torque.
unfortunately that's vs time, I should plot it vs rpm

 

[Avantgarde]

Mode is missing below. I switched from Normal to Range at 19:27:00 : rotation speed was divided by 2 (at around 20mph)

What software is this? Can you share please?

Also 20mph is probably too low of a speed. Maybe at that speed even Normal uses 1st gear. I almost always get the kick-down in normal at around 30-40mph...

 

[whitex]

Btw @whitex what you have is very cool. What else do you see? Can you see torque, power etc live? If so can you let me know what product did you install?

There is a bunch of selectable items to show in that display. Not as many as I'd like, and they are obviously engineering intended displays so no units or descriptions what they actually measure., but gear indication is very clear.

It's nothing you have install. It's a Porsche app, just has to be enabled with setting in the instrument cluster which is only accessible via OBDII (with tools like PIWIS3 or PIWIS4). IIRC this can be enabled temporarily just until car shuts off, or permanently. I have it permanently enabled. It doesn't mean I can't display other things there, only that it's an additional display mode available to choose.

 

[Gru]

What software is this? Can you share please?

Also 20mph is probably too low of a speed. Maybe at that speed even Normal uses 1st gear. I almost always get the kick-down in normal at around 30-40mph...

I use Car Scanner.
I acquire here a limited number of parameters so the acquisition time is around 80 to 100ms.

 

[Gru]

I'll make a video tomorrow with the speed/mode and rotational speed to illustrate it

a bit faster than yesterday: car is in Normal mode, going to Range and go from 1st to 2nd gear. you can hear it too

 

[Avantgarde]

a bit faster than yesterday: car is in Normal mode, going to Range and go from 1st to 2nd gear. you can hear it too

I re-checked mine and you are right. Mine also uses 1st gear at around 30mph in normal mode (should have paid more attention sorry!). I was able to trigger gear change between normal/sport around 45-50mph only.

Gen2 i had as a loaner primarily uses second gear in normal mode even at lower speeds (i am sure about this as it kept shifting down as i slammed the pedal). Maybe this is part of how they made it more efficient.

 

[Gru]

Without the manipulation the torque curve should like this:

But it rather looks like this:

And this is with LC. Without LC the depression of First gear torque curve is even more pronounced. Now I am pretty sure Gen1 is subject to a very similar manuplation in first gear, based on how it feels. Which means, unless you live in Germany and enjoy high speed Autobahns everyday you are not even utilizing the lower non-LC performance in your day to day driving.

I got back my car today and it felt slow after Gen2. Knowing that it didn't have to be, pisses me off. I thought I bought a 476hp/357nm car, then I learned that only 380hp/340nm of that is available in day to day driving, and now I realize even that lower power level is manuplated so you only get a fraction of that at lower speeds.

It is lame what Porsche did here. RWD means one less motor, one less inverter for them. Significant cost benefit. Why screw it on purpose like this? Don't understand.

I'm not that sure.

Results below are with LC in Sport + (J1.1)

Max. torque is avail. until 6000rpm and then gradually reduced above 10000rpm in 1st gear.

Switch to 2nd gear around 14500 rpm down to 8000 rpm, and torque again reduced after 10000rpm

it doesn't look too much manipulated at low rpm, unless the data acquisition rate is not small enough to capture it.

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