Why dual clutch technology will be big business
It is as smooth as the most sophisticated automatic, but more economical than a conventional manual; it is as easy to drive as a standard auto, yet faster and more responsive than even the sportiest sportscar stick shift. Fun, versatile, user-friendly and CO2-saving at the same time, it’s no wonder dual cutch transmissions are headed for a bright future.
Dual clutch transmissions are set to take market share from all other transmission types over the next decade, agree industry analysts. Though DCT has yet to make an impression globally – the first DCT production car, the VW Golf R32, only came out in 2003 – Europeans are beginning to take to it in substantial numbers. By the end of 2008 Western European factories will have built more than 400,000 DCT-equipped cars and light commercials, equivalent to almost 2 percent of all production.
By 2014, predicts transmissions expert Chris Guile of analysts CSM Worldwide in London, eleven out of every hundred light vehicles made in Western Europe will feature a dual clutch transmission – that’s over two million cars and vans in total.
“Even this is probably a low forecast for DCTs, as some DCT programs for 2013/2014 will not have been approved yet, so won’t be on our radar,” said Guile. “The reality by 2014 could easily be 15 percent, or even 20 percent depending on how well the recently launched DCTs are received by the public.”
Guile’s upper-end scenario could see anything up to four million DCT-equipped vehicles streaming out of Europe’s factories by 2014; other analysts are less bullish about the upside potential, though there is a substantial consensus that on the basis of known automaker program decisions the European DCT market share will be well into double figure percentages by the middle of the next decade. But what about uptake in other major global markets?
“Europe has been leading the world in DCT use,” said Al Bedwell of JD Power Automotive Forecasting in Oxford, England. “The volumes could even potentially get higher than those for conventional automatic transmissions during the next decade.”
JD Power’s data puts today’s Western European DCT market share at 2.3 percent and the global share at 1 percent. That global figure will rise to 4.8 percent by 2015, says JD Power, boosted by a sharp rise in production in North America from 2011 onwards as key programs from GM and other automakers kick in. Other regions, notably Asia-Pacific and South America, will be slower to adopt DCT, notes JD Power, but even this conservative scenario points towards a global DCT production figure of over 3.5 million vehicles by 2015.
| West European Light Vehicle Production by Transmission Type |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
Type |
2002 |
2008 |
2014 |
AMT: |
1% |
4.30% |
5.50% |
Automatic: |
12% |
16.10% |
13.50% |
CVT: |
0.50% |
1.80% |
1.30% |
DCT: |
0% |
2.60% |
11.40% |
Manual: |
86.60% |
75.20% |
68.30% |
Grand total: |
100% |
100% |
100% |
Source: CSM Worldwide |
|||
Analysts Vik Barodia and Andrew Close at Global Insight, also London-based, are confident of a 4.6 percent share for dual clutch transmissions in a 2015 global market of 87 million light vehicles. This would indicate world demand for around 4 million DCT systems by that date, presenting major opportunities for suppliers of the gearboxes, clutches and control systems that make up a dual clutch transmission.
Timothy Manganello, CEO of BorgWarner, which supplied the first-ever commercially available DCT system for the Volkswagen Golf in 2003, is more bullish than most. Announcing BorgWarner’s third=quarter results earlier this year, he predicted DCT sales of 5 million units by 2013, equating to a global share of between 5.5 and 7 percent.
Last year, Dieter Schlenkermann, CEO of Getrag, which supplies complete DCT systems to Ford, Volvo, BMW and other automakers, said his company had half a million booked DCT orders for 2010 and two million for 2014; five additional customers would boost the total still further, he said.
However, in November this year Getrag abruptly reduced its outlook following what it described as two surprising contract cancellations in the wake of the financial crisis: the collapse of the joint venture with Chrysler to build 700,000 DCTs annually from 2009, and the postponement of a major contract with an unspecified German automaker.
Seen against a longer timescale, however, these are unikely to be permanent setbacks; a secure future, agree analysts, is assured for dual clutch transmissions. Global Insight even goes as far as anticipating a 5 percent market share for DCT in 2018, with its European take-up even higher at 13.5 percent.
DCT wins—but who loses out?
The auto industry is rarely one in which everybody wins, and each purchase of a dual clutch transmission means one less sale of a manual gearbox, an automatic, a CVT, an automated manual (AMT) -- or, for that matter, one of several new types of transmission still seeking a production opening.
“The big question about DCT is not its performance or its attributes, but what it will substitute for,” says Vik Barodia of analysts Global Insight. “We at first expected to see manuals decline, but with VW the experience has been the opposite.”
As a result of the success of its DCT offering, says Barodia, the German company has reduced its requirement for automatic transmissions for transverse-engined front wheel drive cars.
This, he says, could indicate a tendency for medium-sized cars with transverse engines to home in on dual clutch transmissions for their automatic models, while the generally larger models with inline engines may stay faithful to traditional torque-converter planetary automatics.
In smaller cars, however, the dual clutch is much more likely to be replacing a manual transmission – critically, it is smoother and more convenient but also performs just as well, if not better, in the all-important area of CO2 emissions. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in large luxury cars where costs and consumption are not such crucial issues, dual clutch transmissions are not expected to be such a powerful force in displacing traditional automatics. These are steadily increasing in complexity and sophistication in pursuit of top standards of driving comfort; current units have up to eight speeds and future developments in replacing the energy-sapping torque converter with a clutch may see them rival manuals over the official drive cycle for fuel efficiency.
All in all, DCTs are expected to make gains right across the market, taking sales from manuals in small cars and autos and CVTs in medium and upper-medium models. Yet in the shorter term, says Chris Guile of CSM, both CVTs and AMTs will display a small rise. CVT take-up is being heavily influenced, especially in Europe, by Renault’s choice of CVT for its new Mégane (the system comes from Jatco, part-owned by its partner Nissan) and by the fact that Toyota is opting for CVT in its Avensis and other models, perhaps as an interim step as it seeks a supplier capable of providing a suitable DCT solution. The rise in AMTs will come as buyers of cheaper cars seek to combine the economy of a manual with the convenience of an automatic transmission, but are not prepared to pay the substantial premium for a full DCT system.
On a worldwide level, Global Insight sees both DCT and CVT gaining substantially by 2018, with conventional automatics as the principal loser: its forecast predicts that just under half of all 2018 cars will be manual, one-third conventional automatic, 5 percent DCT and some 8 percent CVT
Dual clutch transmission is quite rightly branded a game changer. It allows automakers to achieve what previously had seemed impossible: to increase both comfort and sportiness, whilst at the same time fulfilling that most essential or requirements, reducing fuel consumption.
Dual clutch is to transmissions what common rail is to diesel, observes Vik Barodia. And we all know how spectacularly diesel took off once common rail had become available.