Chrysler and ZF in US$300m manufacturing deal

Chrysler is set to offer customers its vehicles fitted with ZF's new 8HP70 eight-speed transmission (pictured), the unit designed to retain the market dominance the German company's venerable six-speed has built up since 2001. The US giant has announced a US$300 million investment in regearing its Kokomo, Indiana based transmission plant for manufacture of the new unit, starting in 2013. It will also import ZF-made units from Germany.

ZF came up with the eight-speed to build on the success of the benchmark six-speed unit that has found its way into millions of cars, from BMWs through Astons and Jaguars to the Ford Falcon, since 2001.

The new unit looks set to go the same way. It's already going into top-end models like Rolls Royce's 'baby' Ghost and Bentley's new Mulsanne, and if the six-speed's history is anything to go by, it will over subsequent years achieve the economies of scale to filter downmarket into everyman models. The Chrysler deal takes it a fair way towards that from the outset.

The attractions of the new unit are many. ZF has designed it for immediate installation into hybrid models, without modification. Its modular housing allows manufacturers to move between torque converter for conventional internal combustion engines and electric motors for micro, mild or full hybrid configuration.

The new transmission extends an engine's legs by around 15 percent in high gears, with the top ratio growing from the existing 6.05 to 7.05:1. Despite the extra two speeds, it uses fewer moving parts, meaning fewer points of energy dissipation and palpably quicker shifts. ZF claims that hitched up to a conventional internal combustion engine it reduces fuel consumption by an average six percent. Under hybrid power, those fuel savings can extend as far as 25 percent. Neither company has yet released actual figures to support the claims.

For Chrysler, the new transmission program plays a key part in its declared aim to cut corporate fuel consumption by more than 25 percent by 2014.

Coming with substantial tax breaks from the city of Kokomo, the investment will fund makeovers of the company's previously doomed Indiana transmission casting and assembly plants. Chrysler claims it saves nearly 1200 jobs. Kokomo will also benefit from a further US$43 million spend on improvements to other plants for existing transmission systems and its World Engine project. Since 2007, even as it divorced Daimler and went through bankruptcy and bailout proceedings, the company has sunk nearly US$1.3 billion dollars into overhauling its Michigan plants, developing new product and modernising its existing powertrains.

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