DCT gets "stuck" in a gear when in Auto mode

[mzobian]

It's November 2025 and I just bought a leftover 2024 I4 model Emira with only 25 miles on it. One thing I've noticed in the first few days of driving it is that when the DCT is in Auto mode, it will occasionally get stuck in 2nd gear and refuse to upshift. I have to pull the + paddle to manually upshift. Then I pull the central shift lever to Auto mode and the problem seems "fixed", for a while anyway.

I've detected no pattern to this problem. It happens on gentle and hard accelerations. It happens several times on a drive, and occasionally doesn't happen at all. The only consistent thing: it seems to always get stuck at 2nd gear. It's a pretty annoying problem, because you you're relaxed in Auto mode and you're leaving an intersection and the engine begins to scream because there's no upshift to 3rd. You end up grabbing frantically at the paddle and you look and sound like a guy who can't drive a car.

I did read about this in a couple car reviews of the I4 Emira. Is any other I4 owner experiencing this? Any fixes? (I was told the car is "completely up to date as of November 2025" when I bought it from Lotus of North New Jersey.)

 

[Emira Fan]

Have about 1,00o miles on mine. Haven't enchanted this issue you describe. Unless your in track mode, track mode really holds the gear into higher RPMs/

 

[lynchy73]

It's November 2025 and I just bought a leftover 2024 I4 model Emira with only 25 miles on it. One thing I've noticed in the first few days of driving it is that when the DCT is in Auto mode, it will occasionally get stuck in 2nd gear and refuse to upshift. I have to pull the + paddle to manually upshift. Then I pull the central shift lever to Auto mode and the problem seems "fixed", for a while anyway.

I've detected no pattern to this problem. It happens on gentle and hard accelerations. It happens several times on a drive, and occasionally doesn't happen at all. The only consistent thing: it seems to always get stuck at 2nd gear. It's a pretty annoying problem, because you you're relaxed in Auto mode and you're leaving an intersection and the engine begins to scream because there's no upshift to 3rd. You end up grabbing frantically at the paddle and you look and sound like a guy who can't drive a car.

I did read about this in a couple car reviews of the I4 Emira. Is any other I4 owner experiencing this? Any fixes? (I was told the car is "completely up to date as of November 2025" when I bought it from Lotus of North New Jersey.)

what mode? Tour, or sport or Track? The car will hold onto gears and let the engine rev high in Sport or higher settings, even driving fairly sedately. Even fairly light throttle applications in sport means it revs high before changing up.

Even in Tour, if you give it any sort of gas, it will hold onto gears, longer than you might want. The AMG engine needs a certain amount of revs (not that much), it doesn’t do lugging at barely over tick over so well.

 

[Jbrock]

Sounds to me you may be in manual mode and not know it. It has happened to me.

 

[lynchy73]

Yes, there are 3 different modes of Auto/Manual operation. Full Auto is just that, it will change up/down according to the driving and selected mode (tour, sport, track). Then you have full manual mode, which is selected by the gear sector (not paddles), where it will hold onto gears, bounce off limiter, but will still change down to 1st gear automatically if you come to a standstill, it won’t let the engine under or over rev changing down gears.

The other mode is semi auto (Lotus might call it something else). If you have the gear selector in Auto, but touch a paddle, the car will switch to Manual, but will time out after a short delay and go back to Auto if you don’t touch a paddle (like 20 secs). It doesn’t bounce off the limiter in this mode, if I’m not mistaken. When in this semi auto mode the Dash will show an M, but the colour is different from full manual (green/white). The handbook will explain it better than me, but this is roughly the jist of how it works.

 

[mzobian]

Thanks gang, but it happens in Tour+Automatic mode, and haven't touched any paddles, which is why I am puzzled and concerned. Several magazine and YouTube reviews of the I4 have noted this problem, so I'm wondering if anyone also experiences this, or if an update in the past year has fixed it.