The popularity of AT and AMT automatic transmissions continues to increase

As one of the key components of a car, transmission technology is continuously advancing with the times in the 100-year history of the birth of a car. Due to the direct and high-efficiency of the manual transmission and the maturity and low cost of its production technology, manual transmissions still have a large proportion of vehicles equipped with manual transmissions. However, as people's requirements for automobile comfort become higher and higher, the mounting rate of Hyundai's automatic transmission is becoming more and more an indisputable fact, especially when the automatic transmission can gradually take care of handling. In the domestic automobile market, while the automatic transmission is becoming more and more popular among passenger vehicles, the technology and types are becoming more and more abundant, and the automatic transmission technology has become a competitive weapon for manufacturers.

Popularization rate continues to increase

Technology dispute three points of the world independent way flowers bloom

According to German ZF, the world's largest manual transmission manufacturer, only 6% of cars sold in the North American market by 2012 will be manually blocked. Of the cars sold in the United States and Canada in 2002, 10% were equipped with manual transmissions. The same situation also occurred in the European market, which was originally a manual transmission market and was constantly occupied by automatic transmissions. According to recent statistics from the European Automobile Manufacturers and Distributors Association, in the UK, cars equipped with automatic transmissions now account for 15% of the total vehicle volume, compared with 13.5% five years ago. It is predicted that in the European transmission market in 2013, vehicles with manual transmissions (MT) will account for 52%, those equipped with manual automatic transmissions (AMTs) will account for 10%, and those equipped with continuously variable transmissions (CVTs) will account for 2%. A double clutch transmission (DCT) will account for 16%, and an automatic transmission (AT) will account for 20%. Another report shows that in heavy trucks and commercial vehicles, the proportion of automatic transmissions is also increasing. In the 10 years from 1996 to 2006, the proportion of automatic transmissions in heavy trucks has risen from 5% to 18%.

For the Chinese auto market, it will certainly be “in line with the international”—the market share of manual transmissions will decline. According to statistics, currently the proportion of passenger cars and automatic transmissions in domestic passenger cars is 6:4. Among them, 89% are equipped with automatic transmissions on high-grade passenger cars. The proportions of mid-range and economic family-owned passenger cars are respectively 40% and 10%. In fact, from 2005 to 2009, the proportion of passenger vehicles equipped with automatic transmissions in China has increased by nearly 6% each year. Compared with the North American automobile market, the proportion of automatic transmission assembly for domestic high-end passenger vehicles is already quite close. The automatic transmission assembly ratio of mid-range and economy passenger cars still has a lot of room for improvement. Li Jun, deputy chief engineer and director of the Technical Center of China FAW Group Corporation, predicts that by 2015, the ratio of auto transmissions in China will reach 35% to 40%, which means that about 5 million cars will be equipped with automatic transmissions. .

Three-point dispute over technology

In the current market, automatic transmissions are mainly divided into four categories: AT, CVT, DCT, and AMT. These types of transmissions have their own technical route advocates in the market, and representatives are multinational auto giants and component suppliers. They are While vigorously promoting models, it is also advocating the superiority of its own choice of automatic transmission technology, because the popularity of automatic transmission is the general trend, who can win more support for their technology, you can gain greater market interest.

The performance of various types of automatic transmission technologies varies across markets around the world: In the United States, AT transmissions have an absolute advantage. This is mainly because consumers demand that cars must be easy to handle and comfortable to drive, but not sensitive to fuel consumption. The habit has created the AT-based automatic transmission market in the United States. European consumers pay attention to the driving experience and driving pleasure. They like to manually control the feeling brought by the machine, and they value the fuel consumption very much. Therefore, the development space of automatic transmission has not been large. However, with the appearance of energy-saving and sporty DCTs, it immediately became the darling of the European market.

Japan is the country with the highest CVT loading rate in the world, and Japanese consumers favor CVT transmissions.

In China's emerging automotive market, traditional AT automatic transmissions used to be the only choice for automatic transmission models. However, in recent years, more and more models equipped with CVT and DCT have been installed. The goal of multinational companies is very clear. The public has already put into production DCT in China. , And launched a variety of models equipped with DCT; CVT has always been the focus of Nissan sales, in Nissan's mid-range family cars and higher-level models, CVT has become one of their selling points. The independent brands also have their own “support objects”: Geely Automobile has developed a 4-speed AT, and also locked 6-speed and 7-speed DCT as development targets, and has made breakthroughs in some key technologies; Chery chose to develop CVT transmissions, The prototype has been demonstrated externally. It can be found that China's automatic transmission technology presents AT, DCT and CVT three points of the world, but the popularity of AT in the domestic automatic car models as high as 80%, although DCT and CVT won the favor of many consumers, AT in the future a long period Time will still occupy an important position in the domestic automatic transmission market.

The road to independence

The core technology of automatic transmission was once the biggest technical shortcoming in the automotive industry in China. However, through the joint efforts of all parties involved in production, research, and cooperation and effective cooperation with well-known foreign companies, this embarrassing situation has been improved. Recently, the good news of domestic automatic transmission research and development has continued. Whether it is the hydraulic automatic transmission (AT), CVT or DCT, domestic enterprises have made remarkable progress in their respective selected technical routes.

For example, Chery Automobile's first self-developed CVT was released in May 2011. The CVT can be matched with a 1.6-2.0-liter engine. The first-stage CVT production capacity is 50,000 units per year. The second-phase production capacity For an annual output of 150,000 units, Chery equipped with CVT models are expected to be listed this year. At the Beijing Auto Show in 2011, Shandong Shengrui Drive Co., Ltd. brought a new 8-speed automatic transmission (8AT), which is the first 8-speed automatic transmission with complete independent intellectual property rights in China. It is reported that Shengrui has been with FAW. Haima Motor Co., Ltd. has established a cooperation intention of 60,000 sets. It will begin mass shipment of two complete vehicles to Haima in October 2012. Geely Automobile is concentrating its efforts on the development of advanced AT and 7-speed wet DCT products. At present, it has completed the prototype development of the 7-speed DCT. It is estimated that it will take another two years or so to complete the mass production of the 7-speed DCT and the key technologies for DCT development. . Jianghuai Automobile is recruiting for the DCT project. Its DCT project was formally launched in November 2009. It will focus on the development of a 6-speed wet double clutch, which mainly matches the passenger car platforms independently developed by JAC Automobiles of Class B, C, and S. The DCT transmission jointly developed by Gif Power (GIF) and SAIC will be put on the market this year. Sample testing has been completed and will be fitted to SAIC Roewe and other models. This will be the first mass-produced DCT with independent intellectual property rights in China.

At present, the research and development of automatic transmission technology by domestic enterprises is in a state of contention and flourishing. However, it is undeniable that China's independent research and development of the automatic transmission industrialization level is still quite low, statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers show that in the domestic automatic transmission passenger car, about 80% is equipped with imported automatic transmission, and left The next 20% are also mainly from foreign-funded joint ventures. From 2001 to 2009, the annual import volume of China's auto transmissions increased by about 28.9%, which greatly exceeded the average annual growth rate of vehicle imports. In 2009, the imports of automatic transmissions for cars reached US$3.723 billion, an increase of 26% over 2008.