Brabusx2

when i test drive my GSh a year ago, the salesman told me this "sport" button adjust the stiffness of your suspension, and the "power" button give your car full power engine/battery combine

i was happy, so now a year has pass and i am still happy, but just what da heck do they do, i feel like just clicking the sport switch just make the throttle more responsive, and the suspension feels EXACTLY the same, power mode does exactly the same thing, power mode + sport is also EXACTLY the same



someone tell me whats the difference..

and when i pop my tranny to the left, does it mean S= SPORT? or 5 = 5th gear?? and what does it do? tip tronic or another type of sport mode?

Boron

You've had the car for a year now, and in all that time you've never once opened the owners manual and had a flick through it?

S = semi-auto, not sport. If you've cruise control active, it'll still switch gears automatically. Without cruise set, it'll sit at whichever gear you choose, which is useful on occasion when the box will swap back and forth between two gears as you drive along an inclined road.
Otherwise, it's a play toy to amuse yourself with for two minutes, pretending to be a racing driver.

Regarding the AVS, assuming it's not faulty, then both switches do exactly as they say.
Sport will hang on to the revs before changing to the next gear, and the throttle is a bit more sensitive - but it's not night and day difference, but rather subtle.
The suspension setting will stiffen the compression and/or rebound only - I'm leaning toward the latter. Again, it's not monumental differences, just varying shades of grey, although it may be more noticeable on certain road surfaces.
If you were expecting sharper turn-in, and less body roll - then you've mistaken what the system is designed for and capable of.

If you've a chance to drive another car for a while over familiar roads, then you'll be able to feel if its system is just the same or there's a more noticeable difference between modes.
That'd be helpful to see if yours is faulty or not.

XxGoKoUxX

Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't GSh's CVT... meaning it honestly has no gears? well... TECHNICALLY there are gears, but the variations are different from traditional gearbox transmissions? :/

Boron

D'oh! That'll teach me to speed read.
Yep, the 450h is CVT, but the principle remains the same in the usage of S mode.

2008GSh

I thought the S stood for "Sequential Shift"... It does little to nothing for performance... In fact as others have posted it is kinda BS anyway since these are CVT's and have somewhere between zero and an infinite number of gears depending on your POV.

Stick it in 6 and it will use all of the transmissions ratio capabilities from the low start gear to the highest gear possible, It simply limits the max ratio that the transmission can use... I select it to force the car to generate more Kwh during down hill coasts.

The Power button on the other hand DOES make a significant difference in power output (in a positive way) and gas mileage (in a negative way) my experience in power mode is that the car tries to keep a higher charge in the battery and will idle longer at lights to load up the battery, On deceleration it also seems to try and charge the battery faster with more aggressive re-gen. This IMO tends to make the power mode rather "jerky"