4X4Dodger wrote:
Transmission manufacturers have years and years of experience with high numbers of gears with excellent reliability. Europe (once again) has been ahead of us in this game for sometime.
For trucks they have as many as 18 gears or "speeds" with the most common now around ten. Both in Automatic, semi automatic and manual type gearboxes.
Reliability would not be my first concern.
To be fair though, an 18 speed auto / semi-auto, such as Eaton Auto-shift, Ultra-shift, and their equivalents in Euro Class 8 trucks, have NOTHING in common with a torque converter, planetary gear automatic. The former is simply a manual transmission with computer assist shifting and clutching.
Not saying the 10 speed auto won't be reliable, just that it is the very first. Euro / Asia does not have such a transmission before us.
