Honda Patents an 11-Speed Transmission
How many gears are necessary for a vehicle to work? If you grew up during the musclecar era, you’ll probably say that three are enough, while a fourth can be fitted to high-performance cars. If you're a fan of the cars of the 90s, a sporty coupe should have no more than five forward gears. Today’s cars routinely have six, seven, eight and even nine gears!
Ford and GM recently became the first to offer a 10-speed gearbox in a production car. Now however, Honda recently took the mantle in the transmission department, filing a patent for an eleven-speed gearbox with robotized clutches.
Speaking of clutch, this transmission has another impressive feature: whereas most automated manuals have two, which is why we took to calling them double-clutch gearboxes, Honda’s new transmission uses three. Despite not sharing a lot of technical details yet, we can gather that this third disc is used to reduce shift times as well as allowing gear skip.
Any ideas on where this technology might be used? The most luxurious models might make good use of it, but the smaller vehicles (like the Fit) could also use it for added fuel economy.