Tuesday 16 April 2013

Ford and GM team up on fuel efficiency

Ford and GM team up on fuel efficiency

US car making rivals Ford and General Motors (GM) are teaming up to design car parts which will increase their fuel economy, they announced yesterday.

Whereas in the UK manual gearboxes are popular, automatic vehicles - with automatic transmission boxes - are dominant in the States.

Together the firms will design, develop, engineer, test and deliver new transmissions for nine- and ten-speed automatic cars, trucks and SUVs. This is the third time in the past decade the pair has collaborated on transmissions.

Craig Renneker, Chief Engineer at Ford said the goal is to keep hardware identical to give both firms “economy of scale” but the control software will be different.

Engineering teams from the two have already started work added Jim Lanzon, GM’s 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.”

Earlier this month, GM announced it is investing nearly $332 million (£217m) at four of its manufacturing sites to make more fuel-efficient engines and transmissions.

 

Written by

Bruna Pinhoni

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