Blackraven

Shimano will soon meet its match

madmax2k1

I remember the Euro-Trash crowd including Top Gear mocking the IS-F for having 8 gears since it causes unnecessary gear hunting.

LexFather

I agree with both. Lexus does it= stupid. Euro does it= OMG great idea

There was endless bashing of the Lexus 8 speed for being "too much". Now a 9 speed comes and its innovative or good?

Wow.

T0ked

iTrader: (2)

Top Gear UK is the worst. Obviously biased towards their preferences which all happen to be European. Good thing they are stupid and hilarious... that's why I still watch.

At some point there will be diminishing returns. The amount of programming needed to shift through the increasing number of gears will get so daunting. Most of these transmissions will be used with powerful engines. The real innovation will be when they trickle down into econo cars to make more efficient use of the smaller and less powerful engines.

Eventually there will be a melding of the CVT and these transmissions. Can only get better.

I shudder at the thought of MB and a new 9-speed auto transmission. The ridiculous issues when the 7-speed was initially introduced was horrendous.

ArmyofOne

I find myself wondering why Hyundai, Kia, Ford, etc...havent put 7/8 speed autos in their SUV's like the Santa Fe, Sorento and Explorer? I am looking around at midsized SUV's and find they get the same Fuel economy on a V6 that my Full Sized 4x4 pickup gets with a V8...

Hell for that matter, Maybe my Ram would get 26-28mpg HWY with another gear or 2...doubt it though with cruising speeds (hwy) under 2,000 rpm, its hard to get much more efficient with a 5500lb pickup.

GS69

ZF Boss Says Transmission Gear Count 1-UpManShip Nearing End

Remember the Powerglide? An automatic with 2 forward speeds, it's almost inconceivable today that such a transmission was ever state of the art. Why, we've heard plenty of grumbling from the peanut gallery about Honda and its continued widespread use of a 5-speed automatic when most of the rest of the world is offering 6 speeds. And then there are those carmakers engaging in the mine-is-bigger-than-yours battle of transmissions that resulted in 8-speed automatics in cars like the Chrysler 300 and Hyundai Genesis pictured above.

German transmission supplier ZF has a 9-speed automatic that will be introduced next year, and reports have said Hyundai is looking to pack 10 forward gears into a forthcoming gearbox. What's next? Cars with as many gears as mountain bikes?

That's unlikely, says ZF North American president Julio Caspari, who tells Automotive News that the gear race is "close to the limit." AN says Caspari thinks marketing may be a bigger factor than engineering when it comes to developing transmissions with additional gears, citing just an 11% difference between the best transmissions today and a theoretically perfect unit.

Caspari questions the cost-effectiveness of building a so-called "perfect" transmission, saying that further friction reduction would require expensive materials, like ceramic ball bearings.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

^^ at that point might as well go CVT

ABC

Yep, CVT all the way. Power when you need it; MPG when you don't.

I8ABMR

straight up !! I have never felt like the 8 speed on my LS was shifting to much or had any issues what gear to select. THe extra gears help performance since the ratios are closer together and at the same time you can significantly enhance highway mpg

geko29

My Shimano gearset has 24 ratios (many have more than that), so they've got a ways to go.

mmarshall

Not from me, Mike. In my book, if eight speeds are overkill, then so are nine.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

ZF CEO cites 9 speeds as "natural limit" for transmissions

How many is too many? When you're talking the number of ratios offered in automatic transmissions, it seems the industry is always interested in adding one more gear; four-speeds turned into five, then six, seven and now eight. Where will it all end? According to Stefan Sommer, CEO of transmission maker ZF, nine is the ultimate endgame.

"There is no hard line, but you have to consider the law of diminishing returns. The question is whether adding even more gears makes sense," he said, speaking at the Automobilwoche Congress in Germany. Back in July, ZF North American president Julio Caspari voiced similar statements, saying that today's best automatic transmissions are very nearly perfect – just 11 percent shy of their theoretical apogee – in efficiency.

Does this mean the race for more gears is officially over? Don't count on it. Automakers ranging from Ford and General Motors to Hyundai are all rumored to be working on automatic gearboxes with as many ratios as you have fingers and thumbs. As we're so often reminded, it seems the mine-is-bigger-than-yours marketing ethos will always be in play...

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/11/07/z...transmissions/

SteVTEC

There are more than a few BMW owners who dislike the 8 speed transmissions, myself included. 6 is just right. A nice spread of gearing, and still few enough gears that you can actually keep track of what gear you're in in your head for manual mode use and not get "lost" like you start to with 7/8 and now 9 speed gearboxes! BMW engineers (not marketing guys) are even on the record saying that the laws of diminishing returns are kicking in at 6 gears already. So it is really just a game of one-upmanship for the most part.

I like to drive my E93 in manual mode a lot, especially when I'm driving more aggressively. I took the new F30 328i with an 8AT for a spin and was completely lost. I'm sure you could get used to it, but geez it's really excessive especially here in the U.S. In Germany on the autobahns I can see how extra gears would be handy as you need to keep the engine in the peak powerband when accelerating to higher speeds, but that's irrelevant here in the U.S. No reason at all why 6AT couldn't have a slightly wider spread of gearing to give the same fuel economy as the 8 speeds.

I thought the Lexus 8 speed was silly, and I still think these things are silly in BMWs so no bias. The ZF is indeed an excellent transmission and I didn't feel that it was overly shifty either, it's just the driver experience if you like to hit manual mode a lot gets way confusing and degrades when you have that many gears to keep track of.....

LexFather

HAHAHA we are back to agreeing

I am a big fan of CVTs in most applications expect maybe high hp/fun cars where the "shift" adds to the excitement. Having now driven 7 speeds from Benz/Infiniti, 8 speeds from BMW/Lexus etc etc it doesn't bug me EXCEPT when I use paddle shifters. I always seem to stop at 6 and forget the top 2 gears when I'm cruising. To me it also complicates downshifting as I am slapping the paddles like 900 times to get to the right gear Otherwise though the MPG benefits and the aggressive gearing do show the additional gears make sense. At this rate I've been driving 8 speeds for 5+ years now in different Lexus cars and now others. I still forget.

Meanwhile Acura just debuted another 5 speed auto in their ILX Talk about behind the curve.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

^^ hah I pray it's cost savings and not some other dumb reason