Quote:
Originally Posted by Osnabrueck  Boooo.
The number of gears in you luxo-barge has much more to do with marketing than it has to do with performance. I couldn't be any less enthusiastic about BMW & Audi trying to follow Lexus' lead on this. It's "Very Lexus" to have 8 gears - but the "smoothness" benefits of 8 gears is mitigated by the dynamic shortcomings that come with such a setup. |
ZF and BMW won't agree with you on that, Osna.
At least judging by this message EnI posted a year ago
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EnI Interesting fact:
ZF & BMW had a goal to develop an auto gearbox that will offer optimal combination of low fuel consumption & performance & smooth shifting. No fixed total number of gears was chosen in advance.
The engineers tested several solutions: from 6- to 10-speed gearboxes. 6- & 7-spped trannies were not efficient enough (to small improvement over current 6-speed auto), while 9- and 10-speed gearboxes even increased fuel consumption. So the most optimal prototype was an 8-speed gearbox. So, it was a perfect choice for production.
I doubt we will see more than 8-speed auto trannies in the future - since they are more fuel thirsty than this optimal 8-speed auto. And car makers tend to lower fuel consumption as much as possible - and will try to do it even more in the future. |