In most instances I TOTALLY agree with you! I have had my car for over a month now, and I just started using the eshift on it. The thing is, there are times (maybe merging, or blasting into a space on the freeway) where the car may take a second or two before it downshifts when you floor it. What I have found is, at least with E-shift, you can MAKE the car go to 3 when YOU want! I have found it really useful for that.

 

If you pay very careful attention there is actually a bit of extra resistance at the very bottom of the floor when you floor the gas. A lot of people I know think that's just the floor and don't push a little harder, but it will actually go down a bit (I'm talking like 1/4 inch at the most) and even though it doesn't open up the throttle any wider, it does force the car to pick the lowest gear suitable.

And that's a big key word... suitable.

If your car could downshift to 3rd, but it would be at 5.7k RPM (still a good way from redline), you may get upset and want to force it to shift one more gear down. But the car is actually programmed to realize that by the time it shifts down to 3rd, runs the motor for 500 RPM (not even at its power peak which will have already passed) and then shift back to 4th... it will have actually taken longer than if it just let 4th gear work its way up instead.

It's not always perfect at this, but it does try.