Nine Speed Gearbox Announced by Mercedes Benz

Mercedes-Benz is going to put more effort into creating a new nine-speed shifter for its large displacement engines. While other automakers are still offering four-speed automatic transmissions, Mercedes-Benz is confident that the nine-speed unit can meet the strict CO2 emissions and fuel economy standards while also ensuring high performance on its engines.

Mercedes-Benz is going for the nine speed technical maximum for an engine with traditional internal combustion. Up until now there is no other automaker that is interested in more than eight-speed units. Audi and Chrysler have just joined Toyota in the efforts to offer eight speed versions.

The 9G-Tronic gearbox will be a great improvement to the 7G-Tronic seven speed gearbox. It will probably make its debut on the 2012 S-Class. The 7G-Tronic was the first seven-speed automatic transmission introduced in 2003. However, recently new eight-speed ZF transmission used by BMW and Audi has outranked Mercedes Benz.

Audi has already announced that all of its 2011 main lineup, namely A4, A5 and Q5 will have eight-speed automatic transmission going under the brand Tiptronic. The 2011 version of BMW X6 will also have an eight speed version.

Automatic transmission means automatically shifting gear ratios as the car moves, thus the driver does not have to change gears manually. Larger cars and worse traffic were the incentives for automakers to improve transmission from manual to automated. Cars with such transmission have been on sale in North America since the 1950s. In Europe, such transmission is less popular and on Asian markets automatic transmission has become popular since the 1990s.

Cars with automatic transmission can be driven more easily. Henry Ford's Model T was a significant development in the car transmission history. ZF Friedrichshafen together with BMW were the first to introduce the first six-speed in 2003, seven-speed came with Mercedes-Benz 7G-Tronic and Toyota introduced the eight-speed on Lexus LS 460 in 2007.

ZF has developed the eight-speed automatic transmission that can achieve 11% fuel savings, as the priority was not the number of gears, but minimum consumption. The six-speed transmission developed by ZF in 2006 featured high standards on reaction time that was faster than human perception, adaptive control software that can read the intentions of the driver from his foot. The newer standards were meant to improve fuel consumption. However, the eight speed transmission also had shorter gear steps, ensured faster acceleration and improved shift quality. Only 200 milliseconds were required for the eight-speed automatic transmission to carry out a gear shift.

If a decade ago four-speed automatic transmission seemed sophisticated enough, recently automakers have continuously added numbers. However, it seems that the nine-speed will be the limit. One factor is that consumers do not seem to be interested in accepting more. Even though most car drivers consider six-speed transmission more convenient than older four-speed automatics, the cost of developing new transmissions is not compensated by potential savings on fuel. Gear changes on eight-speed transmission cars are already so smooth that another cog will not be perceived as earth shattering.