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BMW Patent Shows Manual Transmission That Won’t Let You Pick the Wrong Gear
June 7th, 2012
The manual transmission has been slowly falling out of favor with many drivers. In days past, two groups of people opted for manual transmission, the enthusiast and people looking for overall fuel economy. With automatic transmissions often delivering better fuel economy today thanks to more forward speeds, the main supporter of the manual transmission is now the automotive enthusiast.
BMW has a new patent application that has turned up that shows the company isn’t ready to give up on the manual transmission, even though more automatics are sold these days. The patent is showing off a new transmission that can have seven or more forward gears and a clutch pedal. According to BMW the problem with adding more speeds to a traditional six speed transmission becomes one of increased shift gates and difficulty for drivers in missing shifts.
Basically, with more gates there’s a bigger chance of missing a downshift, over-revving the engine, and destroying your motor. BMW’s patent shows a special fluid that will physically block the selection of any gear ratio but the correct gear on downshifts when a voltage is applied. I think this is a great idea and I hope BMW and other manufacturers get transmissions using this technology on the market soon. This sort of technology may usher in an era of eight or even nine speed manual transmissions.
[via E90 Post]
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Great! I just hope it will let drivers select more than just the previous gear, i.e. going from 7th to 4th.
BMW does it again! xoxox
“8 or 9-speed manual transmissions.”
Just… why? Six is plenty for me, and I only have five in my car!
This blog post is excellent probably because of how well the subject was developped. I like some of the comments too though I would prefer we all stay on the suject in order add value to the subject!
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I feel this blog is very well organized and is quite interesting. I really want to join this kind of events.Thanks for the post.
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