ABC News report on DSG (Direct Shift Gearbox) failures in VW and Audi.
What is Direct Shift? I thought VW and Audi had Tiptroinc? I guess DSG replaced Tiptronic. I’m confused.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8380548


I read some posts on YouTube and some people are saying that the "Mechatronic" units that control the transmissions are failing, that concerns me some as my vehicle uses a Mechatronic system. I guess electronics will be the death of cars.

DSG are dual clutch manual trans where the computer controls the shifts and clutches.

Thanks, I had some time, so I looked it up and read-up on it. It’s kind of weird, a manual transmission without an actual clutch pedal, just accelerator and brake pedals like a automatic transmission. How they say it works is really neat, too bad they are having problems with it.
I hope Volkswagen can work out the gremlins.

It's still an automatic transmission, you can chose to put it in full auto and dont have to change the gears yourself.

I thought it was an automatic transmission too, but it does not have the parts associated with a automatic transmission, including a torque converter. With it being manual, it doesn’t need all the parts a automatic needs.

Wiki has a page for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-Shift_Gearbox

Well you might be right but it still does the work for you, it may work in a different way than others but I for sure wouldn't say I have a car with a manual transmission if someone asked me about it, it works like an auto for the driver, the person doesn't need to change gears himself if he doesn't want to.

It's an automatic manual transmission.