General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) agreed to collaborate in developing advanced technology for 9-speed and 10-speed automatic transmissions for cars, crossovers, SUVs, and trucks.
According to the General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), the automakers will design the new 9-speed and 10-speed transmissions for front and rear wheel drive variants to improve the performance of the vehicles and to increase fuel efficiency.
General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) explained that working together with Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) to design, develop, engineer, test, validate and deliver the new generation advance automatic transmission for their vehicles allows each automaker to save costs and produce results faster.
In a statement, GM’s vice president of global transmission engineering, Jim Lanzon said, “Engineering teams from GM and Ford have already started initial design work on these new transmissions. 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.”
This is the third time for both automakers to work together in developing transmissions. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) & Ford previously collaborated in delivering 8 million vehicles to consumers worldwide with high-quality 6-speed front-wheel drive transmissions.
According to Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) chief engineer, Craig Rennerker, “The goal is to keep hardware identical in the Ford and GM transmissions. This will maximize parts commonality and give both companies economy of scale. However, we will each use our own control software to ensure that each transmission is carefully matched to the individual brand-specific vehicle DNA for each company.”
The automaker’s current collaborative agreement is similar with their previous efforts. Both companies will manufacture its own transmissions in its own plan with many common components.
Joe Bakaj, Ford vice president of Powertrain engineering, is confident that the new partnership in developing 9-speed and 10-speed transmissions will be successful. He said, the transmission engineers for both automakers already proved in the previous collaborations that they can work extremely well together. Bakaj said, “Our 6F family of transmissions has exceeded expectations and there is every reason to believe we will have the same success with these all new transmissions.”
On the other hand, Lanzon believed that the agreement will be beneficial for both companies and consumers.
“This agreement provides tremendous benefits for both companies, and it will pay big dividends for our customers and shareholders. By jointly sharing the development of these two new families of transmissions, both General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) will be able to more efficiently use our respective manpower resources to develop additional future advanced transmissions and bring them to market faster than if we worked alone.”
