What is the tiptronic and the principle of its operation?

When buying the first car, many of us are faced with a dilemma about which gearbox, tiptronic or automatic. A lot of novice drivers do not know that in fact the terms mentioned mean completely different things, so comparing them will not be entirely correct. In this article, we will try to understand what the tiptronic is and what the principle of its functioning is.

First of all, I would like to destroy a long-standing stereotype and emphasize that this name does not mean at all one of the variants of the transmission. It is a function that allows you to manually switch gears on an automatic box. Moreover, now the name of this ability of the machine is a separate trademark, which is called Tiptronic. Note that the first time it was registered in 1989, belongs to the German car concern Porsche. According to the company representatives, this system was developed for sports cars in order to provide more efficient gear changes. This was achieved by reducing the trajectory of the lever.

Among other things, the tiptronic box is also characterized by the fact that this function allows the driver of the car to monitor the dynamics of movement in different variations of the motor's functioning. In other words, it has opportunities that are unrealistic for standard automatic boxes in the classical form, in particular, the ability of additional acceleration, turning on low-gear turns , braking with an engine and so on.

Talking about what a tiptronic is, you also need to understand the principle of its operation. To switch to this mode, it is necessary to translate the selector lever of the automaton box into a special cutout located in the link. It can also be determined by the presence of the symbols "plus" and "minus". There are several types of design, from which, the number of switches can be from one to three (to activate the mode, reduce and increase the transmission). From them, the signals go to the electrical unit, which, in turn, triggers the entire algorithm and performs a gearshift. In modern models of cars, the manual control can also be carried out through the "petals" - special switches under the steering wheel, after which information on the included gear is displayed on the information display.

The first car that appeared on the market with an automatic transmission equipped with the function of a tiptronic was the Porsche 911. He got off the assembly line in 1990, and after a while such know-how was taken over by other world automotive industry leaders. Note that then they used a different name, because the official owner of the trademark Tiptronic was Porsche. In fact, all this led to the fact that this name became a household name. As a consequence, there is confusion about the question of what is a tiptronic. This problem persists until now.

As a result, when talking about what a tiptronic is, it often means any automatic gearbox that has a manual control function, regardless of which algorithm of action is embedded in it.