Yes!!!! Excellent! Any company which develops technology which can be retroactively fitted to the 600 million vehicles and make them cleaner when on the road already will ultimately be on a real winning streak! Just a shame it could be up to 10 years before it becomes common place, which does rather give the hybrids a long time to establish themselves in the market.

Is it just me, or is the wording a little odd?

It sounds like it's comparing a manual gasoline (NON hybrid) to a gasoline AND hybrid AND new transmission doubles mileage, not that the new transmission alone doubles mileage.

Either way, an improvement is an improvement, accidentally discovered or not!

About time. Everyone talks about electric and hybrids, but there are what 200 million cars in the states right now using internal combustion engines. To dump all those cars for $30,000 electric cars or hybrids would cause enormous damage to the environment not to mention who has an extra $30k or more laying around.

This is a great move. When it's time to buy a new car, i'll buy an electric or whatever is cleaner and more efficient, but I can't afford to dump my vehicle. This technology looks terrific if it works and is priced right.

About time. Everyone talks about electric and hybrids, but there are what 200 million cars in the states right now using internal combustion engines. To dump all those cars for $30,000 electric cars or hybrids would cause enormous damage to the environment not to mention who has an extra $30k or more laying around.

This is a great move. When it's time to buy a new car, i'll buy an electric or whatever is cleaner and more efficient, but I can't afford to dump my vehicle. This technology looks terrific if it works and is priced right.

It should be noted that the results of this test were achieved while using THE SAME ENGINE. An IVT/CVT provides a performance advantage over traditional fixed ratio gearboxes. Said performance advantage would allow for engine downsizing which would lead to further improvements in fuel efficiency.

(It would actually be a positive viscous cycle. Better performance->smaller engine needed->smaller gearbox needed->less overall weight->better performance->smaller engine needed)

I don't know about the durability claim: it's pretty hard to compete with solid state electronics.

One thing the author fails to mention: a CVT/IVT would have a significant performance advantage over a traditional transmission in terms of acceleration and passing ability.

In a racing scenario, an IVT could keep the engine at precisely the rpm at which peak horsepower is achieved while adjusting ratios for the desired speed. This would allow for maximum elasticity and would be a considerable advantage.

For this reason alone, I'd expect to see these gearboxes showing up sooner than later in high performance luxury vehicles.

Gerb, nothing in the article indicates that these new transmissons could or would be retrofited onto existing cars. Further, the article ALSO stated that it could be up to ten years before it's put into production.

And in the next ten years we WILL be dumping much of the existing auto fleet and converting to hybrids and electrics and smaller vehicles. If only due to wear and tear, accidents, rising fuel costs, and the normal turnaround cycle.

We've BEEN buying about 8 million new passenger vehicles a year, so if past numbers continue before this tech is even available we'll haved already replaced roughly 80 million existing vehicles.

And since we recycle almost everything in a used car, that's without "enormous damage to the environment".

I read a few years back that Ford would be introducing a pick up truck with this technology in 2010...

@Michael Long
"And since we recycle almost everything in a used car, that's without "enormous damage to the environment"."

You are confusing reusing versus recycling. The car still has a finite life as a car before it becomes scrap. If a car is being stripped and melted down, it is recycling. You are only reusing it on its way to the grave yard. You as a used car buyer have a responsibility to recycle the car when it is no longer a car. Only then do you get the benefit of closing the raw material food chain.

Put another way. The new car owner plans on selling the car anyway (planned reuse); Your sentiments suggest that all new car buyers will scrap the car after a few years of use. The used car buyer is just a responsible for pollution of the cars manufacturing as the new car owner.

Unless the raw materials in the car get reused, it is all a waste.

Don't get too excited by this technology. There are lots of techniques for saving fuel, but a automobile has many demands on it, not justfuel savings. What happens to performance, reliability, durability, ease of maintenance, passenger space, etc. By the manufacturers' own estimates, this is 10 years away, which often means never. They also cherry picking the results, comparing only selected test conditions.

The mechanism of the transmission is not clear from the website, but the animated graphics show lots of moving parts with difficult seals. In particular, the top of each major piston pivots. One of the beauties of the internal combustion engine is its robustness, partly due to simple and even pressured rig seal around the cylinder.

While I would love this to work, I'm guessing this will remain in the lab forever.

Wow - retrofitting makes sense right now, but is almost as expensive as a new compact. Hopefully this can be more affordable. And hypermiling could make these gains even better.
Hypermiling at Cleaning Green

"About time. Everyone talks about electric and hybrids, but there are what 200 million cars in the states right now using internal combustion engines. To dump all those cars for $30,000 electric cars or hybrids would cause enormous damage to the environment not to mention who has an extra $30k or more laying around."

One thing to keep in mind is that cars already are shipped from the US to Mexico and South America, typically from southern states bordering Mexico, and the cars are usually $500 to 1000 Hondas and Toyotas.

At least they are recycled.

At some point India and China will want more and more cars, and sending back inexpensive used cars might happen there as well.

"To dump all those cars for $30,000 electric cars or hybrids would cause enormous damage to the environment not to mention who has an extra $30k or more laying around."

Don't forget that today's shiny new cars that many people can't afford become affordable used cars in 5 years, and get handed off to teenagers looking for a cheap ride 5 years after that. It is in our interest to make cars more efficient at whatever price point it becomes possible to do so: that is how you get better at the technology, which ultimately makes it affordable enough to use in $10,000 cars.

It is like an architect I heard speak at a convention in Boston recently. He was talking about incorporating green design into McMansion-type houses. He said that, yeah, maybe you can't make such houses truly green. But the people who buy them a) have the most money to save in terms of energy costs and b) can afford the upfront premiums on new methods and technologies. And by showing that green methods really work, these houses make them acceptable and more affordable for later use in smaller homes.

there are tons of companies who have gadgets which claim to deliver unrealistic mileage claims....i'm sure this will not fair out any better than any of the others.

Great idea.

Make the transmission into a hydraulic pump and motor. Then add a storage tank to the automatic transmission and store pressurized hydraulic fluid.

10 years to availability. 30% savings.

In 10 years the ICE engine will be near dead for personal transportation. We will all be driving BEV. The savings will be over 75% just due to efficiency gains.

This could also have great benfits for EVs, by using a hydraulic drivetrain you remove the shock of the initial torque. Maybe Tesla should be looking at this...

They developed a hydraulic hybrid transmission that could potentially double the mileage of most vehicles??? Sure.

The auto industry is just holding ideas so that they can cash off of them. It's all about maximizing the profits $$$.