In the Indian automobile market most luxury cars have automatic transmission in comparison to those of the European and American markets. The reason behind is that the people who buy these luxury cars, prefer to drive themselves and avoid giving the vehicle to the chauffeur. Looking at this problem, the manufacturers provide manual transmission variants of their performance vehicles to these countries. BMW has filed for a patent of a 7 speed manual gearbox, whose images are leaked online. The expectations are that BMW will start the production of 7 speed manual gearbox probably by next year because the company filed in for the patent last year.
Though BMW is manufacturing the manual 7 speed gearbox but it is not the first to manufacture the manual gearbox. The first 7-speed manual gearbox was manufactured by Porsche incorporated in the 911 launched in 2011. The Bavarian automakers are trying to address a very prominent issue with manual transmission, which also has more than 6-gears in it. The chances of wrong gear selection increase in this 7 speed transmission because the gears are positioned too closely. The BMW is trying to evolve a manual gear shifter to avoid sudden or jerky gear shifts.
The German automaker is using electrorheologic or magnetorheologic fluids around the shift gates to ensure this system along with an electronic system. Various sensors have been used to apply the electric voltage for changing the viscosity of the fluid, which is around the shift gates. These electrorheologic or magnetorheologic fluids block the gearshifts, which ensure that the driver doesn’t end up in the wrong gear by mistake. Though, everything above sounds quite confusing but it is a to work efficiently in the engine. The same technology can be used to offer the 8-speed manual gearbox in near future by BMW.
