NEW Ford/GM 10-Speed Automatic Transmission
 

Say good-bye to our 4, 5, and 6-speed MPG advantage. Welcome the 10-speed automatics!

10 Things to Know About the New Ford/GM 10-Speed Automatic Transmission

Congratulations to Ford and GM for reinventing something nobody needs and wasting time, effort and money on a pointless invention that will soon be phased out in the electric car revolution...

hahahaha SO true, Paul.

One of these days, someone will mate a manual transmission to an electric car motor.

Do you think that would improve the 0-60 acceleration or MPG?

A bit of research on this question came up with this discussion on the Tesla forum:

https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forum...ission-offered

Electric motors don't need gears/gearboxes, they are mechanicaly very simple.

I could see 10 gears if it were for a vehicle with only a 300-400 rpm usable speed range but for a passenger vehicle it seems like 6 is plenty.

Even 10 gears is too few for manual shift loving people like Paul and me. We want 100 gears!

I like one with as many ratios as the molecules in the drive fluid. Electric motors have efficiency peaks.

DIY electric car conversions were mostly a DC motor bolted onto a manual transmission.

The ability to keep either motor in a peak efficiency spot is why the AWD Teslas are more efficient than the RWD ones.

As for the OP, ICEs are still going to be around for the foreseeable future. Since hybrids haven't come through yet for actual trucks, any improvement somewhere helps.

Continuous variable transmissions are neat to understand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLNDGUISTYM

I too am excited about electric! The biggest hurdle is storing energy. Sure Tesla is building a gigafactory to make batteries (which is awesome) but I think the future is super capacitors, possibly made from Graphene.

I think step transmissions, a traditional automatic, have an advantage in giving more overdrive ratios for cruising along.

Capacitors are great at charging and discharging at fast rates repeatedly. They tend to self discharge rather quickly compared to a battery though. A battery is still going to be needed in a plug in.

Until EVs take over, I'm all for improvements to IC drivetrains. Mercedes is working on an 11-speed auto. My 2015 Audi Q5 diesel has an 8-speed auto, and I love it!

I thought the CV Transmissions were beyond many speeds. Thus, they will give 6 or 7 speed, just to make people happy.
I think this 10 speed is to capitalize on the 10 speed bike craze of 50 years ago.

CVTs have all the gear ratios between a set low and high speed gear ratio.

The Corolla CVT goes from 2.480 to 0.396 with a 4.761 final drive ratio.

The six speed auto in the Cruze has 4.58, 2.96, 1.91, 1.44, 1, and 0.74 for gear ratios, with a final drive ratio of 3.53, for comparison.

When automatics get over 5 and 6 speeds, the extra speeds are more overdrive ratios. CVTs can match those overdrives, but outside Asia, many don't care for how they drive. Which is why many CVTs have pseudo speeds; to make them drive more like a step transmission. There is also the issue of how well a CVT will hold up a true work truck.

The wife's new 2016 Rogue (CVT) got 40 MPG US (48 Brit) driving home with the cruise set at 55 MPH (90KPH). About 1250 RPM. Rated 33 highway US.

Is that 40mpg on the dash computer or 40mpg with filling and real arithmetic? How far a distance?

I have a 9 speed but you have to use the paddles to engage the extremely low 1st gear. Top gear engages around 105kph

When you have virtually infinite ratios, you can use the transmission to control engine speed, while maintaining the ideal (high) load, instead of choking off atmospheric pressure to control engine power production, with a throttle plate, which is very inefficient.

These ideas appear good on paper, but truth be told, all the 8+ speed boxes you see on the German, Japanese cars here make very little difference to the fuel numbers. I thinks it's better to have fewer gears and be in top gear at as low a speed as you can afford. They tend to get slated by the press too, they are over fidgety, flapping around changing gear all the time at lower speeds etc, almost as annoying as a CVT.

The Prius CVT is awesome! I still drive the 6 speed manual diesel Honda CR-V once a week, which is a nice drive, but I definitely prefer the CVT. If you ever have to boot it, it does lose the super smoothness - but no more than as you charge up through a gear in a manual.
As for being in the highest gear asap, I found that to be a myth in the i20. You could easily drive in 6th when you were doing 50, the "eco" shift indicators encouraging you to do so. Yet the scangauge, with proof at the pumps, showed often staying a gear or two below top gear was actually better for economy. You'll have 6 in yours will you Paul?

There is more to it than meets the eye. In general an engine operates most efficiently at the speed at which it produces maximum torque. It produces maximum torque at the speed at which its internal losses are minimum. It will pull at lower speeds, but its efficiency will be lower.

Elon Musk attended Stanford University for the specific purpose to research super capacitors and then dropped out to start PayPal.

Despite the battery factory, you can be certain Tesla engineers are monitoring current super cap research.

Mine is a 5 speed, but I read the new Clio, which has literally just come out (more of an update/facelift) has a 6 speed, I've just been to look at it and the diesel still had 5, but the petrol had 6. Less is sometimes more, maybe a lower revving diesel doesn't need extra gears to lower the revs as they are naturally lower anyway. And yea, now I want a new Clio, damn showrooms making their cars look all pretty and appealing...

I almost got suckered into swapping my old i20 for a new one on that basis - till i remembered how awful the first one was!
The new model was nicer all round, but i bet it shared the same shoddy mechanics, cheap materials and poor service.
Any plans for a new battery for the insight...?

Nah, was hoping for some time off this month, didn't happen, was also hoping for a week off next month but checking the diary, both my bosses have a week off each in October. Getting annoyed really, might have to sell it on a lack of spare time basis.

September is our busiest month, otherwise no real holiday restrictions here. Shame you can't get the time off you want. Is it a big job, swapping out the pack? I was expecting you to do up the Insight and sell the Clio!
You do far fewer miles than me, bet you could keep that Honda running well for years.

Or they wanted to squeeze a little more value out of their 5 speed factory tooling. ;)

Adding more speeds doesn't always result in better fuel economy, because of the choice in the new gearing ratios. When manuals here went from 4 to 5 speeds, the top gear in many cases didn't change. Honda still does this with their manuals; the Fit will pull 3000rpm in top gear at freeway speeds, while a Sonic will do just 2000rpm.

Since many will cruise at speeds higher than the peak ones on the EPA test cycles, extra transmission speeds that are overdrives will help people's real world fuel economy.

Latest 10-speed automatic news:

Peeking Inside the GM/Ford Transverse Nine-Speed Automatic

Hmm latest news about the 10 speed is that it is a 9 speed. Or is it ???

Already have a 9 speed

Interesting. Can you sense all 9-speeds shifting? Does it getcha much better MPG? What's the chief advantage?

Starts in second gear normally but can be manually shifted into 1st for extra power taking off or in off road driving. Benz also has it's cars start in 2nd as well.

Originally could feel shifting below 60 KPH but with a software upgrade not very noticeable, already in 5th gear at 70 KPH. In normal city driving you can see the tachometer rise to about 2200 RPM before shifting.

I guess it helps with fuel economy as the last gears are like over drive, but gives a very quiet drive with the motor seldom revving very high.

Cars | 9-Speed Automatic Transmission - ZF Friedrichshafen AG

Same transmission is also used in Jeep products and I believe on the Honda Pilot

ZF's 9-Speed 9HP Transmission Puts Dog Clutches On The Leash

Any speed with a gear ratio of one or less is an overdrive.

Actaully a ratio of 1 to 1 is direct drive (engine speed-pinion shaft speed identical). In some 4&5 speeds the main shaft and input shafts are directly connected in 4th gear. Nissans are my experience particularly RWD versions.
One customer lost the key in the countershaft front gear and the transmission only worked in 4th gear, all others requiring the countershaft to transmit torque. He drove 250 miles home with only 4th gear. 3 decades later he is my family doctor.

I think you are are talking about a subsystem in an automatic, if I'm correct in thinking direct drive is the same as lock up. This is when the torque convertor physically connects to the transmission, as oppose to pushing fluid through fan blades. Thus lock up was more efficient during cruising.

In older automatics, the lock up only occurred in the highest gear. In modern transmissions, it can occur in nearly any gear.

Overdrive isn't limited to a type of transmission. It is just a term for those higher speed gear ratios, whether they are in an automatic or manual.