Stop fighting over which is the best between manual and dual-clutch transmissions; both of them might soon be gone.
Quote:
http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/b...rticleResults8
BMW M-Division: Dual-clutch gearbox dead on water
And the days looked numbered for manual transmission too.
The passenger-car transmission war will ultimately be won by the conventional, torque-converter automatic, according to BMW's M division.
And M's vice-president of sales and marketing, Peter Quintus, has given both the conventional manual and the double-clutch transmission just a handful of years to live.
When questioned by Drive on the subject of transmission technology and how it relates to the BMW version of the double-clutch, the DCT, Quintus' response was a surprising one.
"It's more a question of how long has the DCT got to go," he said. "How long will it last?"
Having already predicted the end of manual transmissions in the next six or seven years, Quintus confirmed that he believed we would all soon be making a return to the torque converter automatic.
"We are now seeing automatic transmissions with nine and even 10 speeds, so there's a lot of technology in modern automatics," he said.
"The DCT once had two advantages: it was light and its shift speeds were higher.
"Now, a lot of that shift-time advantage has disappeared as automatics get better and smarter."
Interestingly, Quintus' view that the conventional manual is also doomed is not based solely on emissions. Instead, it's a case of being able to make a manual gearbox strong enough for the super-torquey new generation of engines. He said about 450 horsepower (335kW) and 600Nm was more or less the limit of manual-gearbox durability. Beyond that, he said, durability couldn't be guaranteed.
So why not just shop somewhere like the USA for a manual transmission that can cope with the output of big, burly V8 engines?
"We looked at US gearboxes. We found they were heavy and the shift quality was awful," he said.
"I'm not even sure the next generation of M3 and M4 models from BMW will have the option of a manual gearbox.
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