They may be archenemies when it comes to sales, but General Motors and the Ford Motor Corp. can put their differences aside occasionally when it comes to cutting costs and benefitting from joint ventures. The two largest U.S. carmakers announced today that they have signed an agreement to work together to develop a new generation of fuel-efficient, 9- and 10-speed automatic transmissions.
We first heard about the project from a New York Times report last year, but now it’s official and we have preliminary details about the transmissions that will be used in a variety of cars, crossovers, SUVs and trucks in in both front- and rear-wheel drive variants. According to industry analysts, the use of a 9-speed auto on a compact-sized car can yield a 10 percent improvement in fuel economy over a six-speed model.
“Engineering teams from GM and Ford have already started initial design work on these new transmissions,” said Jim Lanzon, GM vice president of global transmission engineering.
In a joint press statement, the two automakers said that the collaboration will allow them to design, develop, engineer, test, validate and deliver these new transmissions much faster and at a lower cost if each company worked on its own.
“The goal is to keep hardware identical in the Ford and GM transmissions. This will maximize parts commonality and give both companies economy of scale,” said Craig Renneker, Ford’s Chief Engineer, Transmission & Driveline Component & Pre-Program Engineering. “However, we will each use our own control software to ensure that each transmission is carefully matched to the individual brand-specific vehicle DNA for each company,” he added.
This is the third time that GM and Ford have cooperated in the development of transmissions. The two previous efforts resulted in the delivery of 8 million 6-speed automatic gearboxes (pictured below) for front-wheel drive vehicles around the world.
GM and Ford said that they will release further technical details and vehicle applications for these transmissions “at the appropriate time before launch”.
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