Transmission News

May 15, 2013

Volkswagen has gained unexpectedly wide coverage for comments by its CEO that the group was developing a dual clutch transmission with ten speeds. Speaking at the 2013 Vienna Motor Symposium, a long-established conference of automobile driveline engineers that takes place every April, Professor Martin Winterkorn linked the development of the new ten-speed DCT with that [...]

May 15, 2013

Due to their efficiency and performance, dual clutch automatic transmissions (DCTs) will emerge as a key technology as global emissions standards tighten and customers begin to demand sporting response, as well as comfort and fuel economy. These are among the predictions of a strategic analysis of the global market for DCTs in passenger vehicles, carried [...]

May 15, 2013

We reported in October last year that General Motors and Ford were planning to embark on another round of cooperation in the design and development of innovative automatic transmissions. Now, the two US giants have officially confirmed the existence of the program. “Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. have signed an agreement under which [...]

April 17, 2013

Jatco, the Nissan-controlled transmission manufacturer that is the world number one in the production of CVTs, forecasts global sales of front-wheel drive vehicles with automatic transmission will rise to 4.70 million by 2017; this compares to under 3.25 million in 2011. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Japanese supplier is bullish about the prospects [...]

March 19, 2013

Almost all automakers, even those operating in the elite luxury and supercar segments, are now looking towards some form of partial electrification in order to reduce their corporate average CO2 emissions. The very latest top-drawer supercars revealed at the Geneva auto show in March bear this out: both Ferrari’s LaFerrari, with its 6.3 liter V12 [...]

March 18, 2013

It is not often that the automotive world is granted an insight into the engineering philosophy at legendary Italian supercar maker and Formula One protagonist Ferrari. Yet at a recent industry conference, Franco Cimatti, head of the vehicle concept and pre-development department at Ferrari GT – the company’s sports car group – revealed some details. [...]

February 21, 2013

Honda launched the tiny Insight coupé as the world’s first commercially available hybrid in 1999. Now. the company has delivered a comprehensive update on its original neat and simple mild-hybrid Intelligent Motor Assist (IMA) technology, taking into account the major shift of the market towards more sophisticated full hybrid systems, larger batteries and stronger multiple [...]

February 21, 2013

The much-anticipated 2014 Chevrolet Corvette, unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show on January 14th, features a host of driveline innovations including a new small-block V8 engine and, for the first time on a front-engined production car, the option of a seven-speed manual transmission. The new Corvette is the seventh generation of a model line that [...]

February 21, 2013

The new seventh-generation Volkswagen Golf has set the automotive world talking about flexible modular vehicle architectures and standardized interfaces between engines. Engine mounts, transmission housings and detailed changes to the control of its hardware have also allowed it to achieve greatly improved functionality from familiar combinations of components. A good example is what the company [...]

January 9, 2013

Ever since the launch of Mercedes-Benz’s new generation of compact B-Class and A-Class models in 2011, it has been known that all-wheel drive 4MATIC versions would later be added to the range. The addition of four-wheel drive would, in turn, permit the launch of much more powerful performance-oriented AMG versions, said Mercedes. This had been [...]