I am experiencing very repeatable hesitation on tip-in on my 2008 4.8i. Doesn't seem to matter if the car is hot or cold. Has anyone else experienced this one?
I think you'll find this is common problem/complaint across all automatic transmission modern BMWs. Every one I have driven in recent times has exhibited this behavior to one extent or another. It is a combination of throttle-by-wire and electronic transmission control programming that isn't present in manual transmission cars. Other brands exhibit similar behavior too. When I drove an E65 B7 Alpina, I was shocked at the profoundly poor throttle programming that would simply not allow you to drive the car smoothly (i.e. push, push, hardly no response, push, zooom, back out of throttle, cuss at stupid programming). In the old days, American car makers often used this as a ploy to make people think a car had "power" (i.e. in the mid-70's they employed bell cranks to leverage up the ratio of pedal travel to throttle opening) once they didn't have power anymore. Rumor has it now that the reason car makers end up with this convoluted programming has to do with emissions cycle testing and/or fuel economy testing cycles. How it improves the numbers on those is beyond me at the moment. Note the other thread on the board just started where someone is complaining about the very same problem with their diesel X5. I think the very latest models are somewhat better...at least the last 2009 E90 auto loaner I had wasn't as bad as previous year E90 automatics we've had to use. Just one more reason to get a manual though...the 6MT in the E90 is butter smooth and very easy to modulate the throttle with fine adjustments.
