Two previous successul collaborations have led Ford and General Motors to a new agreement to jointly develop a new generation of nine- and 10-speed automatic transmissions for cars, crossovers, SUVs and trucks, again primarily for North America.
The new transmissions, to be built in both front- and rear-wheel-drive variants, will improve vehicle performance and increase fuel economy.
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The collaboration enables both automakers to design, develop, engineer, test, validate and deliver these new transmissions for their vehicles faster and at lower cost than if each company worked independently.
“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. “We expect these new transmissions to raise the standard of technology, performance and quality for our customers while helping drive fuel economy improvements into both companies’ future product portfolios.”
This new agreement marks the third time in the past decade that GM and Ford have collaborated on transmissions. These collaborative efforts have enabled both companies together to deliver over 8m six-speed front-wheel-drive transmissions.
Ford installs the transmissions in the Fusion, Edge Escape and Explorer while GM installs them in the Chevrolet Malibu, Traverse, Equinox and Cruze.
That original collaboration served as a template for the new one. As before, each company will manufacture its own transmissions in its own plants with many common components.
“The goal is to keep hardware identical in the Ford and GM transmissions. This will maximise parts commonality and give both companies economy of scale,” said Craig Renneker, Ford’s chief engineer for transmission and driveline component and pre-program engineering.
“However, we will each use our own control softwareto ensure that each transmission is carefully matched to the individual brand-specific vehicle DNA for each company.”
“With the jointly developed six-speed automatics we have in production today, we’ve already proven that Ford and GM transmission engineers work extremely well together,” said Joe Bakaj, Ford vice president of powertrain engineering. “Our front wheel drive transmissions have exceeded expectations and there is every reason to believe we will have the same success with these all-new transmissions.”
“This agreement provides tremendous benefits for both companies, and it will pay big dividends for our customers and shareholders,” added Lanzon. “By jointly sharing the development of these two new families of transmissions, both GM and Ford will be able to more efficiently use our respective manpower resources to develop additional future advanced transmissions and bring them to market faster than if we worked alone.”
