Dave Plowman (News)
Fw: 2m has gone to the dogs....... 764Knight Of The Road I readily admit that I found their position surprising (given their other postings), but that is more or less what they were at pains to try to claim. Here's Brimstone...
Not that we haven't had this debate before ;-) but at least one marque - Volvo - has produced software updates to stop their auto gearboxes from doing this - shifting to neutral when stopped in drive for a few seconds, just because of reliability and mechanical problems it caused.
And anecdotally, I've encountered autos with slippage in 1st, that are quite probably driven in that manner - ie old-school shifting to neutral or parked when stopped briefly on the road.
Which is why some marques introduce a "feature" to do this automatically with their autos - and at least Volvo (dunno about the others) have had to make available a software update to stop them behaving like this, and revert to the more traditional behaviour.
If nothing else, when stopped briefly on the road at idle, all that happens if left in drive (buttuming the 'box doesn't automatically drop back to neutral) is that the ATF gets stirred for a bit, but I highly suspect the ATF doesn't get heated up to anywhere near it's operating tolerances.
Howver, needlessly shifting to neutral and back again, does mean the 1st gear clutch has to do much more work than it would if left in drive, and looking at it from that perspective is mechanical work involving friction material, that is arguably less mechanically sympathetic than simply leaving it in drive.
