Exclusive: An Inside Look At Ford’s New 10 Speed Transmission

 

Gear arrangement for a 10 speed automatic from Patent # 8,834,310

Lately there has been a lot of speculation on what the Ford Motor Company has been up to with their 10 speed transmission design. All we know is that there is a joint venture between Ford and GM to develop the next generation 10 speed transmission for next generation RWD trucks and cars. This article pieces together the information available from the invention disclosures from Ford, and makes  educated guesses about the actual design. While the author sincerely hopes that these guesses are educated in nature,  there is a possibility that the guesses are completely off base. With that disclaimer out of the way, let us look at what facts are at our disposal, and what the Ford 10 speed automatic transmission design is likely to look like when it is sees the light of day. If you are interested, read on.

US Patent number 8,834,310 is one of the many many patents granted to Ford for the design or design elements of a 10 speed automatic transmission. This same basic power flow was first disclosed in US patent number 8,545,362 but clearly it has been refined as the project has progressed. In September 2014, the annual Henry Ford Technology Awards winners were announced. Every year a maximum of ten awards are given out by Ford to recognize and honor technical achievements in the fields of Product Development, Manufacturing, and Research. One of the awards was

 

"For the design and development of the Next Generation 10-Speed RWD Automatic Transmission Family; advanced automatic transmission technology is critical to meet stringent government fuel economy regulations and customer expectations for increased performance."

 

A major auto company like Ford applies for and receives hundreds of patents every year. Looking for what will actually make it to production can be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The names of the award recipients is an important bit of information that can be used to narrow the search down. But the recipient of such an award is likely to be a prolific inventor who has dozens of disclosed inventions to his or her credit. Thus even with this information, it is not a trivial task to filter out the noise.  In a modern automatic transmission, there are dozens of relatively minor but innovative things that are invented as the design is fleshed out. Typically the overall power flow is disclosed in one patent, the finer details are disclosed in subsequent patent applications as the design turns from a doodle to actual drawings that can be manufactured on a mass scale and work reliably over the expected life of a vehicle. An absence of such supporting patent disclosures can mean that the design concept is not being taken much further than a disclosed invention. Another clue is if the patent applications are being filed with international patent offices (EU, China, etc). International patent applications are not cheap, and typically inventions that are headed for production will turn into international patent applications as well to protect the intellectual property in jurisdictions besides NAFTA.

After reading through dozens of issued patents and patent applications, I have concluded that the design concept disclosed in part in Patent #8,834,310 is the concept going forward to production. A photochop of the likely cross section put together from the various supporting patents and applications is shown below. I am not sure if I got the width of the fourth planetary gear set and/or the width of clutch pack E correctly, but this should be pretty close to the finished product. The planetary gear set elements and the shafts connecting them are color coded along with the intermediate shaft which is connected to 3 of the shift elements but not to any of the planetary gear sets directly.

Ford 10 speed transmission cross section design pieced together from various patent disclosures

Summary of design features of the Ford 10 speed transmission

The salient features of the design are as follows:

• There are a total of 10 forward ratios (of course) and 1 reverse ratio
  • There are six forward under drive ratios (i.e. the input turns faster than the output)
  • There is a direct drive ratio where the input and the output shafts spin at the same speed
  • There are three overdrive ratios (i.e. the output turns spins faster that the input)
• There are 4 simple planetary gear sets, just like the ZF 8HP and the GM 8L transmission families
• There are six shift elements (as compared to 5 for the ZF 8HP and the GM 8L)
  • 2  brakes (A and B)  that are nested (one shift element is packaged inside the other)
  • 4 clutches (B, C, D, and E), two of the clutches (D and F) are nested as well
• For any of the 10 gear ratios, 4 shift elements are closed and two are open. Consequently the frictional losses are likely to be no worse than the 8 speed transmission designs
• The nesting of shift elements means that the overall package size will be pretty similar to the 8 speed transmission designs
• All shifts up and down need one shift element to be opened, and another one to be closed simultaneously. This is identical to how the ZF 8HP and the GM 8L transmissions work. The shift performance should therefore be very good.

So in effect, what this design provides is an additional over drive gear and an additional under drive gear at the cost of an added shift element. The packaging room is similar to the 8 speed designs, and the difference in weight for a given torque capacity should be minimal (within 5 lbs for a given torque capacity with equivalent levels of engineering diligence). The first 2 planetary gear sets and the fourth planetary gear sets are laid out pretty much exactly like the ZF 8HP transmission design. Therefore it is not surprising that first gear is achieved in a manner very similar to the ZF 8HP transmission, i.e. both the brakes are locked which grounds the ring gear, the sun gear, and consequently the planetary carrier of gear set 1. Since The planetary carrier of gear set 1 is connected to the ring gear of gear set 4, the ring gear of gear set 4 is therefore grounded. The engagement of clutch E connects the input shaft to the sun gear of gear set 1. Though not strictly necessary for the operation of first gear, clutch D is also engaged because clutch D needs to be connected for a shift to second gear or to reverse gear. Clutches C and F are the two open shift elements for first gear operation. This sets up an under drive ratio because the carrier of gear set 4 is the output shaft of the transmission, the ring gear is grounded, and the sun gear is connected the input shaft.

The ratio of first gear is therefore

1st   =

S4+R4 S4

 

This equation is identical to the first gear ratio equation for the GM 8L90 transmission, as well as the ZF 8HP transmission. The GM design has a first gear ratio of 4.55:1, while the ZF design has a first gear ratio of 4.70:1. The second generation ZF 8HP transmission offers first gear ratio of 5.0:1, which is  the practical upper limit of the gear ratio such an arrangement can yield. Therefore, I do not expect that the Ford 10R family offers a much shorter ratio than 5.0:1 for the first gear. The 10th gear ratio is expected to be in the 0.6:1 to 0.64:1 range. For comparison, the GM 8L90 has a 0.65:1 ratio for the tallest gear, and the second generation ZF 8HP has a 0.64:1 ratio for the tallest gear.

Overall ratio spread and an example of design refinement

Therefore in terms of the overall ratio spread (ratio of the shortest gear to the tallest gear), this transmission design is not going to break new ground, and will likely be similar to the second generation ZF 8HP. I would project an over all ratio spread of around 7.5.  So while the ratio spread is similar to the 8 speed designs, the ratio spacing is going to be better because there are 10 steps between the numerically highest and the numerically lowest gear instead of 8.

Additionally this transmission design has many refinements that are not immediately obvious, e.g. the nested layout of the 2 brakes has a measurable advantage over the ZF or the GM friction element layout. The ZF 8HP design and the Ford 10R designs are compared in the figure below

Comparison of the brake arrangements for ZF 8HP and Ford 10R designs

With the ZF design, brake B is disengaged for 8th gear operation. At 3000 rpm transmission output speed (approximately 80 mph), brake B sees a relative speed of 4500 rpm. Therefore even a small amount of drag torque can translate to a substantial power loss and therefore a reduction in the fuel economy. The stationary plates are splined directly to the housing, which is smart because it saves a component but at the cost of added complexity to the transmission housing. But this design decision also has a downside, it limits the ability of transmission fluid to flow through the brake. It is customary to put holes in clutch drums to provide a path for the fluid to flow out of the clutch when it is open. With the transmission housing serving the role of the clutch drum, such holes are not possible because while you want the fluid to be able to leave the shift element, you do not want it to be able to leave the transmission housing (that leads to unhappy customers, warranty, etc). In the ZF 8HP design, the centripetal acceleration due to the angular velocity is slinging the fluid outwards, and that fluid has nowhere to go so it sits inside the brake and causes drag. Even a third of a lb-ft of additional drag torque is a quarter horsepower of power loss, i.e. approximately a quarter of an mpg loss in highway fuel economy.

The Ford 10 speed transmission design on the other hand moves the ground element of the brake to a nested clutch and hub design. Since the 2 brakes are now entirely  internal to the transmission, it is now possible to design in the appropriate passages for the fluid to leave. Therefore for the overdrive gears, when  brake A (outer brake) has to be open by design, the fluid has a way out of the clutch and therefore the plates spin in air instead of a bath of fluid. This leads to lower drag torques, and could easily account for a 0.1 mpg or more highway fuel economy enhancement over the ZF 8HP design. The original patent disclosure for the power flow had a brake arrangement very similar to the ZF 8HP, while the later invention disclosures go to the nested design. This is an example of the design being refined as the development progresses.

What is the competition doing?

The Daimler 9G-Tronic 9 speed gear box also had 4 simple planetary gear sets and 6 shift elements. But it only accomplishes 9 speeds from the layout as compared to the 10 from the Ford 10R design. At the expense of 1 gear ratio, the Daimler 9G-Tronic design gains a wider ratio spread of 9.16 (first gear ratio of 5.5:1, 9th gear ratio of 0.6:1). On the flip side however 3 of the 6 shift elements are disengaged/open for any given gear, as compared to 2 for the Ford 10R design thereby giving Ford the slight edge in parasitic frictional losses.  You win some, you lose some.

ZF CEO has emphatically stated that his company is not going after 10 speed designs for now. Therefore the long list of clients ZF has are presumably happy with the 8HP and the forward evolution of the design. But ZF engineers do have a few disclosures with 10 speed power flows similar to this one (6 shift elements, 4 planetary gear sets, 2 open shift elements in any gear) going back to 2007-9 time frame.

Hyundai and Kia also have invention disclosures with a power flow that is in effect very similar. So it is possible that  10 speed transmissions are also on the horizon for the luxury offerings from the 2 brands.

General Motors has officially partnered up with Ford to use this design in the future. Ford appears to be leading this design effort, and in return GM appears to be leading the design effort for the 9 speed FWD transmissions. Though the GM 8L family is an excellent design in its own right, but perhaps the economies of scale inherent in a partnership are attractive enough for them to adopt this design after a relatively short time with the 8L family.

Conclusions 

The rumor has it the first prototypes were installed in test vehicles late last year, and the controller software development is in full swing right now. Unless the software team is working extra fast, 2015 CY is unlikely. Likewise for the production tooling, I doubt that it is possible to tool up this transmission within 18 months  of first vehicles level prototypes. While it is possible that this transmission shows up for 2016 model year in late 2015, it seems more likely that it actually does not show up till the middle of 2016  for 2017 model year vehicles.

This is a good solid design, kudos to the design engineers at Ford for making this happen. A project of this kind is not a trivial undertaking, and I am sure there is a tale of blood, sweat, and tears behind this design. While the mechanical design seems fairly complete, the Tresmonos of the world are probably slaving away to get the tooling all set up as this article is run. At the same time the code monkeys are likely working just as hard on the software to make sure that this transmission shifts like the best. It is safe to say that there are more missed anniversaries and birthdays ahead for a large team at Ford and GM.

Forward progress seldom comes without an effort. This is forward progress.

A saturation dive on the details of the power flow for all the gear ratios on this transmission will come later this week. The first commentator to say CVTs are better shall find coal in his or her stockings. A CVT design with this much torque capacity is yet to be seen. Physics, it can be a pesky thing.

The author would like to stress again that all information presented in this article is from publicly available sources, mostly the USPTO website. Internet, it can be a wonderful source of information.

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Piston Slap: Byzantine Transmissions in Frozen Highlands

 

Dat Complexity. (photo courtesy: byzantineempire1.weebly.com)

Mehran writes:

Greetings to you Sajeev and your evil twin Sanjeev, (yeah he's dead to me – SM)

First of all thank you very much for answering my other question, just to give you an update on that, I ended up not buying the extended warranty. Now we recently bought a 2012 Toyota Highlander Limited to replace my wife's old car(V6, 5 Speed automatic with the towing package which adds the trans cooler) it has 34K miles and this one has the extended warranty (100K or 2019). The issue that we have with the car is as follow, after a cold start (in the morning) if I put it in any gear (D or R) something funny happens, the transmission acts funny, it goes in and out of the gear couple of times. For example if I want to back-out of the garage when I put in R and give it a little gas it starts going but for a quick second it seems like that the transmission dis-engages and then re-engages and the tachometer jumps from 1K to 3K. If I wait about 10 sec after I start the car and then put in gear everything is OK.

The other day something strange happened, 3 min after cold start, I wanted to merge onto the highway so I mashed the gas all the way to the floor but it stayed in the same gear and did not kick down, now this has only happened once.

I did take it to the dealer and they gave me the "Could not replicate the issue" answer. I looked at the Highlander forums but did not find anything.

Any idea what might be the issue? I looked at the trans fluid, it seems OK and there is no evidence that the previous owner has done any towing with the car and it has always been serviced at the dealer.

Regards,
Mehran

Sajeev answers:

Automatic transmissions (and transaxles) are smart cookies, what with all their fancy electronic controls controlling a byzantine system of fluid pipes, valves, clutches, fans etc. There's a reason why internal transmission problems are normally handled by repair techs with a particular set of skills. Like this guy:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If there are no check engine lights, the electronics are probably spot on.  That leaves the fluid or that byzantine system to blame. Since your ride is under warranty, I'd leave it with them overnight to see if they can recreate the problem first thing in the morning. Pick an especially cold week for this, and insist it's kept outside (if they don't already).  Odds are the dealer is right, it's operating within specifications. It's just that the fluid is maple syrup-ish when cold.

There's a good chance that switching to fresh fluid (maybe even synthetic, if this is true) will help the byzantine system work better when cold, mostly because newer fluid could be more viscous when cold. That is, cold fluid can be thicker, harder to move in the system and resulting in everything moving much sloooooower.  Be respectful of that and the transmission will respect your time and money.

If you want to keep the Highlander past the warranty, consider a preemptive fluid change at 75,000-ish miles.

 

Send your queries to sajeev@thetruthaboutcars.com. Spare no details and ask for a speedy resolution if you're in a hurry…but be realistic, and use your make/model specific forums instead of TTAC for more timely advice.

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Fuel Prices To Hit $2.55 By Christmas With Help From OPEC

Is your wallet feeling heavier these days, despite all of the blackened Thanksgivings and cybernetic Mondays meant to liberate you from your money? It's about to become more so, thanks to an early Christmas present from OPEC.

CNBC reports OPEC decided in its meeting last week not to cut back oil production, preferring to defend its piece of the petroleum pie from shale drillers in the United States, whose efforts added 1 million barrels/day to the nation's oil production in less than a year.

In turn, prices for West Texas Intermediate fell to $66.15/barrel, while fuel prices averaged $2.79/gallon over Thanksgiving, the lowest average since the same time in 2009. The price is expected to fall further, per Lipow Oil Associates president Andrew Lipow, who expects the average to hit between $2.55 and $2.60 per gallon nationwide by Christmas.

However, if OPEC hoped to thwart U.S. production — currently at 9 million barrels per day, a rate not seen since 1986 — the organization may be in for a shock. Lipow explains:

I expect oil production is going to continue to increase in the U.S. over the next three to four months as shale oil and Gulf of Mexico projects that are underway get completed.

Meanwhile, production at existing wells would be cut back as exploration and production companies look to refocus their budgets toward the most productive sites.

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2015 Toyota Sienna: Is It New or Just More of the Same?

Toyota has advertised its Sienna minivan as a "swagger wagon," but the family hauler was short on bravado for many families. For 2015, Toyota has refreshed the Sienna, but is it enough to put a little strut in its step, err, ride?

Related: 2015 Toyota Sienna Price Jumps $1,680 Over 2014 Model

After driving it at a Toyota event in the Los Angeles area, the 2015 Sienna touts enough improvements to keep up with the competition — the Honda Odyssey, Chrysler Town & Country and even the all-new Kia Sedona — but it's not a class leader.

Toyota says that most of the changes for 2015 are to the Sienna's interior. It now has soft-touch materials on the dash and upper door trim that blow away the hard-plastic wasteland found in past Siennas. Upgrade to the highest Limited trim level to find the new Chestnut Brown premium leather front seats, but even the midlevel SE and LE trims have leather-trimmed front seats and feature a lot less of the dreaded hard plastic and a lot more thoughtful design details.

The Entune multimedia system's 6.1- or 7.0-inch touch-screen has been updated across all trims as well; the 7-inch touch-screen's glossy setting gives the appearance of an iPad screen versus a computer monitor. I'm a big fan of the Sienna's new multi-information display in the driver's instrument panel; it comes in a base 3.5-inch screen or 4.2-inch color display on higher trims. This screen gives the driver access to the trip computer, navigation commands, audio track information and more. For families who like to travel with movies and video games, the optional DVD entertainment system's 16.4-inch screen can display up to two images and has RCA jacks, an SD card and HDMI inputs as well as two sets of wireless headphones.

If your family is more concerned with packing in people rather than frills, the Sienna, which can hold seven or eight passengers depending on seating configuration, now has four sets Latch anchors up from three. There are two sets in both the second and third rows, making it easier to carpool with other families or even to reconfigure seating arrangements when Grandma and Grandpa are in town.

No mechanical changes to the engine or transmission were made to the 2015 model. Its 266-horsepower, 3.5-liter V-6 and six-speed automatic transmission delivered sufficient power, but I found it to be noisy.

Perhaps the noisy engine is why Toyota added its Driver Easy Speak system to the 2015 Sienna; this feature allows the driver to broadcast his or her voice through the speakers directly to the third row. You'll need to dig through the apps menu to find it, but the idea is that you can communicate with your third-row rascals without raising your voice. However, with all the cabin noise, perhaps it's the only way your voice will be heard. Frankly, I think it comes off more gimmicky than helpful, but paired with the conversation mirror in front, your family may use these tools to keep the lines of communication open in the Sienna.

With the 2015 Sienna refresh, Toyota has addressed the design complaints and requests for a more upscale, "parent-friendly" minivan. If you're looking for bells and whistles, Toyota joins its competitors and offers them, too. However, just as with any other vehicle, those upgrades are going to cost you, and without them, the 2015 Sienna will probably land somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Cars.com photos by Carrie Kim

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Get Winter-Ready for the Road

Just like every character in "Game of Thrones," we know that winter is coming. According to the 2015 Farmer's Almanac, this winter promises to be packed with freezing temperatures and above-average snowfall, which can only mean lots of fun on the roads.

Related: How to Survive Winter With Rear-Wheel Drive

Bridgestone Tires recently conducted a survey of people in the Snow Belt to get an idea of how winter impacts driving behaviors and attitudes. It turns out that a majority of folks simply don't like to drive in winter. In fact, they don't like how others drive in winter, either.

The online survey of 2,031 adults 18 and older found that 25 percent of Snow Belt drivers had been in a crash caused by winter weather, and 40 percent had witness a crash in those same conditions. The survey found that people are so loathe driving in winter weather that they'd rather shovel their sidewalks or engage in Black Friday craziness. In light of this, we'd like to offer a few tips on how to make sure you and your car are prepared for the coming winter.

Winter tires: Bridgestone's survey found that while a whopping 84 percent of people prepare their cars in some way for winter, only 25 percent of them use winter tires. Winter tires are engineered for colder temperatures and as a result, improve the car's handling in winter conditions.

We recently put this notion to the test. We drove a car with all-season tires and another with winter tires on the ice rink at Denver's Pepsi Center, home to the Colorado Avalanche, during a winter driving event sponsored by Tire Rack and Bridgestone. The winter tires accelerated, cornered and braked with greater efficiency and control than the all-seasons on the ice. The difference was nothing short of staggering.

Antifreeze and windshield wiper fluid: This is something you can do yourself, contributing both to your confidence as a responsible adult and to your car's cold weather stamina. Make sure your radiator is topped off to ensure the internal combustion engine doesn't totally internally combust as it works overtime through the ice and snow. Fill up the windshield wiper fluid reservoir so your windshield can stay clear of the mud and muck that gathers from wet roads. You may want to check out the winter blends of windshield wiper fluid that contain de-icing agents. Also, give a close look to your windshield wipers and replace them, if needed; they'll be working hard once the snow falls.

Check, check, check: Whether you've had any thoughts about needing new brakes, now is a good time to get them checked to ensure proper function before winter weather is here to stay. It's also time to have a mechanic check your battery and look for leaks or worn hoses under the hood.

No brake pumping and allow some space: Assuming you have antilock brakes, which most cars do these days, one of the important things to remember about winter driving is to simply push firmly on your brakes and hold if you hit a slick patch and start slipping. That pumping stuff you learned back in the day? That was pre-ABS, so forget it. Of course, if you are driving a car that hails from the 1980s or earlier, pumping the brakes is still a good idea. And even though tailgating before a football game is fun, don't tail other drivers. Give everyone a little more room on the road in winter.

Roadside emergency kit: This isn't the first time you've heard this from us, but repetition eventually sinks in (we hope). We wouldn't wish an icy breakdown on anyone, but in the unlikely event that it happens, it's good to be prepared. Items like a flashlight with extra batteries, a wool blanket, WD-40, a set of tools, nonperishable snacks and some jumper cables fill an emergency kit nicely. A small snow shovel is another good item to keep in the trunk, if you live in a snowy state. You can even buy a roadside emergency kit already assembled from your local auto-parts store or Target.

AGrigorjeva/iStock/Thinkstock

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Toyota: Don’t Drink The (Mirai’s) Water

Want to literally taste the future? Toyota would like for you to reconsider that notion.

Automotive News reports the 2016 Toyota Mirai's exhaust — consisting of water vapor and heat — may have "much fewer organic impurities" than milk, per the FCV's fuel stack power generator designer, Seiji Mizuno, but what impurities the byproduct does have depend on what passed through the stack in the first place:

Depending on the place you are driving, some parts of the world might have certain issues, such as organisms like E. coli, which could be hazardous to your health. You never know what the quality of the air intake is.

That said, if you are interested/desperate enough to wonder if the Mirai produces Evian, you'll be happy to know that the water is said to be "slight acidic," with a pH of 5 to 6, just below the levels found in acid rain and beer.

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Swearingen: No Evos Planned After X, GSR 5-Speed Coming Summer 2015

Bad news: Mitsubishi's storied Lancer Evolution will stop at 10 after the 2015 model year. Good news: It will go out with a bang.

Jalopnik recently held an AMA with Mitsubishi Motors USA executive vice president Don Swearingen. There, one of the commentariat asked if there would be an Evo XI. His response:

There are currently no plans for an Evo XI.

We do plan on launching a special edition in June/July of next year as a going away edition. It's a GSR 5-speed. More horsepower, some suspension tuning, and some bits pieces that are still being finalized. Around 2,000 units will be available.

Other notable statements from the AMA: Mitsubishi wants to return to the D-segment with a replacement for the Galant; is considering more electrification of its lineup, including a PHEV; says no Delicas will be sent to the United States anytime soon; and will be bringing a concept to the 2015 Chicago Auto Show heralding what the new Montero could look like.

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