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Hyundai working on 10-speed automatic transmission

By Brett Davis |

Hyundai is working on a 10-speed automatic transmission that will be used on a range of Hyundai and Kia vehicles in the future, particularly luxury models.

You’ve probably heard of a seven-speed auto, you may have heard of an eight-speed auto, but Hyundai plans to raise the bar by introducing a 10-speed auto in the next few years.

Hyundai Motor Group, the parent company of Hyundai and Kia, is engineering the 10-speed automatic in an effort to reduce fuel consumption in larger models. The development of the transmission will be part of Hyundai’s product strategy of developing major components in-house.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, president of Hyundai Motor Group, Park Seong Hyon, has said the transmission is being designed specifically for the luxury models in the Group’s range, and says it will join showroom line-ups in 2014.

Likely model candidates include the Hyundai Genesis and Equus sedans and their potential Kia counterparts. The transmission may span out into other models further down the track.

Mercedes-Benz announced last year that it was working on a nine-speed auto, but what do you think? Is 10 too many?


 
  • Baddass

    You would never use the top ratios in normal cruising conditions unless the ratios were very close together. It would never feel settled if it was always trying to shift to top gear. They might
    As well be a CVT!

  • AndyGF

    I dont think there is such a thing as too many gears. I have driven two totally different CVT cars (basically infinite numbers of gears) and I tell you, that ECU really does get its ratios spot on, allowing you to meeter out exactly the power you are looking for without having to (a) wait for the revs to climb/turbo to spool (b) manually drop a gear/overcompensate your accelerator pedal demands to force the auto to drop a gear.

    The only let down to CVT is the full power acceleration is way to clinical. With ten gears I fear it might be the same thing. 99% of the time, more gears is better!
    The only wildcard is the duel clutch transmissions, which does help to compensate for that effect by changing gear so rapidly.

  • http://caradvice OSU811

    Agreed, 10 is way to many for the car/computer/gearbox to choose which gear to be in!. Even some 6sp autos I have driven tend to hunt around way to much! Some of the 5sp autos around are the best autos I have driven, smooth, decisive and enough gears for normal driving (especially in our 110km/h max speed limits)

    • Matt

      Cars only hunt for a gear because there isn’t a perfect ratio to be in, with 10 ratio’s instead of 6, there is a much higher chance that your car won’t hunt for the right gear.

  • Harry

    It’s been a while since I have ridden a bicycle but I’m pretty sure back then you could get a Shimano 24 speed.

    • K20A

      With Campag’s 11-speed cog + triple chainrings, you have 33 gears under your foot..

      Yeah I agree for cars 10 is too many.. with power/torque bands becoming increasingly ‘fatter’ (thanks to forced induction), why bother?

      Will look good on the headlines though :)

      • Tom

        Who uses a triple these days anyway?

        • K20A

          No one.. in fact it’s probably sacrilege to run a 11-speed Campag group with triple chainrings!

      • Eric

        33 Gears yes, but are there 33 different ratios?

  • JP

    The 7 speed DSG in my Golf is beautifully smooth, so the more the merrier. I would have thought they’d develop a 10 speed as a DSG, rather than a conventional auto.

    I’ve never driven a CVT, but those I know who have driven the CVT in the current Lancer all hate it.

    • Azzaaa

      I agree with you. I had one as a rental and it was very very nice. I believe a 10 speed will work with a “quad” clutch setup it can i.e. go from gear 8 strait to 6 skipping 7. This way it will increase the speed of changed over more gears and not feel like it cant make up its mind… But I honestly don’t know if that is possible.. Ill let Hyundai & their billions develop such tech

    • Tom

      I drove a Dodge Caliber in the US as a rental with a CVT, and it was horrible. It felt like a manual with a badly slipping clutch. I suppose I would get used to it, and it didn’t help that the rest of the car was awful as well, but at present I would prefer any of a DSG/auto/manual.

    • Bimmerc

      How do you package the 10 gears as DSG form?
      3-set of plantary gear set can easily make 10-speed.

  • Tim Johnston

    Reminds me of the race to have as many blades as possible on a shaver!

    • davie

      Sadly, Mail shaver technology appears to stagnated at 5 blades for a while now.

      The female shaver boffins are still trying to break past the difficult 3 blade limit.

      Maybe human kind has reached its technological limit. With our puny brains unable to facilitate any further increase in shaver blades, we now dabble in lesser challenges like 10 speed automatic transmissions

    • Monk

      Reminds me of the old D-Generation Late Show skit for the 16 blade razor.

      “The 15th and 16th blades? Well, they’re just along for the ride!”

      I suspect that may be the case with 9th and 10th here… As Badass said earlier, the ratios must be very close together or a standard tinny Yun-day engine just wouldn’t have the torque to do anything other than downhill stretches in the highest gears.

      • Matt

        The whole point of it is to have close ratios! This means the car doesn’t have to rev as high to change up a gear yet still be comfortable, thus saving fuel.
        They’re trying to get closer to the low fuel consumption of a CVT without having a transmission so many people don’t like.

  • Ox

    Ah, remember the days of the good old 4 speeder

    • Harry

      trimatic too. Jatco works for drag cars

      all this gearbox talk is partly to do with the problem of congestion on our roads, if we had nice flowing freeways and highways, leaving it in the top gear of a nice 6 speed manual would be more than adequate.

    • AndyGF

      Try the Turbo Glide two speed auto… (one was considered for a big-block cobra a family member was building, apparently they were virtually unbreakable.)
      Like a 1990 washing machine… Hi-Lo gears. Haha, those were the days they have the ‘emissions free’ grunt to make those things work.

      • Mad Max

        Its a bit like the old 308´s. We all thought 125kw was brilliant! You get that out of a Mazda 6 now with a 1/4 the emissions and fuel useage a lot less oil leaks and more reliability!

    • davie

      I remember Toyota’s obsession with 4 speed autos (3+OD) with the mandatory overdrive lock-out button that everyone ignored anyway.

    • kejovi

      we have a four speed auto in our ’95 rodeo pity it and the engine have pathological hatred of each other!

    • TV Gamer

      4 speed? it reminds me about Daytoooooooonaaaa~

  • Jake Williams

    Stupid…

  • dadar

    Lets just hope it’ll be able to drop down a few gears in one go. Otherwise overtaking will probably be a pain. Imagine cruising in 10th, and having to go 9th, 8th, 7th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd and then accelerate. Lol.

    But it’ll be interesting to see how this pans out though.
    If they do it well, car will probably be smooth as.

    But it’ll add a whole lot of moving parts in the transmission design though? Hmmm…..

    • laurie

      Actually the ZF 8 speed auto that BMW & Jaguar uses are so quick it can go from 8th gear to second in less than 400ms! who needs an dual-clutch with autos like ZF :-)

      • dadar

        We’ll wait and see. Fingers crossed they do it right.
        Because lately Hyundai really is on the roll eh.

  • John B

    They should get there quality right first. There is simply too much techno stuff in cars these days. Just more to go wrong and more costly to fix. They should all take a step back and “keep it simple stupid” A reliable cost effective car will sell the most in the long run.

    • laurie

      The techno stuff is ok its finding someone to fix it when it goes wrong!

    • Mad Max

      Not so sure about that. That was Tata´s design brief with the Nano but its not selling THAT well. A lot of people say that. You know bring back vinyl seat´s and vinyl floor covering etc etc, my dads one of them, having worked at Holden 40+ years. But I own a 68 Camaro and an EH Holden. I take him for a blast in either one and after he has a think he admits that new cars are not so bad with their creature comforts, quiet gentle rides and comfortable non-slip seats.

    • http://www.facebook.com/priusfreezone Matthew Werner

      I was just reading an article from the US saying that Hyundai/Kia weren’t going to worry about making a vehicle for every niche market out there, but were going to now work on putting out the best quality they can

  • http://www.ss.com Tom

    meh, bring on the economy

  • Jason Stefanac

    Why

  • F1m

    Then someone else will developed a 12 Gear transmission before this is out lol.. I remember back a few years ago Mercedes planned to reveal worlds first 7 gears then Lexus introduced 8 gears before Mercedes introduced 7..

  • Sumpguard

    As oil prises soar efficiency will become most people’s first priority and one way to achieve it is to remove the need to regain revs each time you change gears. So these types of gear boxes are inevitable imo.

  • Stumpy

    This thread has been won by “Davie” for the use of the word boffins /my inner Hamster salutes you.

  • Ford Fairlane

    I think a 10 speed would be ok for small diesels,with there narrow powerband,low revs and good torque.

    A large petrol engine,NA or turbo with strong early delivered low end torque,moving to high power at high revs does not need heaps of gears,there mainly an fuel economy selling point,which 6-7 gears is about the opitium amount.

    The fuel economy benefit of anymore gears would be very very slight.

  • Bangel

    The fun , remember the GM powerglide all of 2 speeds , honda had a 2 speed as well , but the most fun was the yukolt by mitsubishi with the high/low range 4 speed

    • Mad Max

      Yep, the old Powerslide. Too high first ratio and way too low second.The slush matic three speed was a revalation when it first came out.

    • Don Quay

      Don’t knock the powerglide! I learnt to drive on a HK Holden Brougham (remember them?) that had the 307 Chevrolet V8. It was pretty cool then or so I thought. My manual learning was with three on the tree. Time have changed and 6 or 7 is the norm.

  • Westie

    Suzuki had a two speed semi auto in the (not)Mighty Boy.
    Anyone do any worse than two gears, a torque converter and 550cc? Wasn’t there some horrid semi auto in the original/real Fiat 500 family?

  • Sam 300TD

    For my 2 cents I reckon, these days, we should be able to ‘dial up’ what ratios you would like. Perhaps choose from some preset combinations. Ultimately though I would like to be able to set the lowest ratio possible for top gear for those long highway runs to maximise fuel economy and help the engine relax, regardless matter how many ratios there are. Plus, 10 gears seems like too many for roads which have a 100km speed limit. If we had autobahns it would be a different story.

  • james cortez

    Gearbox will be very heavy and that means it only reserve to big capacity luxury car.

  • Carter

    We have hit our technological limit.. for now, we just need the motivation to try harder. Think of something that is totally new since WW2. Jet engines & the internet are the 2 things that came out of wars that made the world smaller better place. Electric, and internal combustion are still essentially the same technology since they were first invented. Everything has just been an improvement upon existing technology. Look back at history, the greatest technological achievements are as a result of trying to win a war. We need something new and hopefully war isn’t the motivator behind it.

  • Tom R

    I think we reach a point where there are so many gears the damn thing is just going to feel like a CVT anyway… which begs the question, why not just use a CVT?

    • Matt

      Because a lot of people don’t like the feel of a CVT, they prefer the engine revving up, shifting up a gear and having the revs drop

  • Don Quay

    I can’t see the point of it really. I’ve been driving an Avis i45 this week and the 6 speed is very smooth. I would have thought Hyundai would be better off spending their resources on the fundamentals such as steering, ride, touchy brakes and of course styling.

  • eightiesman

    If MB/Audi/BMW were developing this 10spd auto, people would proclaim ‘Wow, what a technological breakthrough! All hail thee Euro Gods.’

    When any Korean/Jap car manufacturer does it, it’s branded as useless.

    • AndyGF

      I think it is getting credit where its due…

      Most of the EURO GOD thing these days is nothing to do with how many speeds they have, although it is many, and more to do with how they change gear, sequential manuals or double clutch, ect.

  • Bob

    Seems fairly pointless, developing a good CVT would be the smarter way to go. The CVT used in the larger Audi’s is beautiful, with a really tall final ratio which lets you cruise at 100 kph doing 1,100 rpm.

    The CVT used in the Lancers etc. is a totally different beast to that in the Audi, the lancer uses a torque converter and reinforced metal belt instead of the Audis dry multi plate clutch and chain drive system.

  • BOB REDFORD

    would work in a diesel ute….or big 4wd…

    when will hyundai make a 3ltr diesel with 700nm/200kw ..put that in this car….lookout bmw 7 series..half the price with hyundai.

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