In 2016 it has been tough for many car makers with many of them seeing significant reduction in sales volume compared to 2015. This can be blamed on rising cost of living and the drop in the local currency against the US dollar. The economic contraction is very evident and banks are also issuing fewer car loans since they need to protect themselves from losing money from repossession. It is a difficult situation to be in. However, not all car makers are seeing big reductions in car sales. Honda for one has been enjoying records sales and same for Mercedes Benz. The ones that has been suffering the most surprisingly has been Toyota.
Toyota being one of the market leaders for many years for the non-local car brand suffered significant reduction in sales volume in 2016. The sales volume dropped by more than 30% and this allowed Honda to take the lead which is unprecedented. Honda has always been a distant second to Toyota but not any more. The new models such as the HRV and the new Civic really took the fight to Toyota. Despite Toyota introducing the new Hilux and Fortuner models it was not enough to keep the lead. The popular models such as the Vios and Camry lost a lot of ground when compared to the City and the Accord. This hurt Toyota massively and they looked out of sorts not knowing what to do and how to recover the lost sales. Toyota had to quickly do a mid life cycle face lift within 18 months of the car's launch. This is unheard of.
Toyota can no longer rest on their laurels and believe that the brand name alone can keep them at the top. The models introduced by Toyota have been very out of date and looked aged. The younger buyers are looking for fresher and newer designs which Honda has cleverly benefited from. It is unsure if the models introduced by Toyota was selected by Thailand or Japan but it appears that the better and newer models are held in Japan. Toyota cannot keep having this type of attitude if it is to lead the market once again.
Hopefully Toyota will learn from Nokia's mistake and not think that it is too big to fail. With the power of the internet and mobility, the younger generation are the ones who will be buying the cars and if Toyota cannot offer models that will appeal to the younger generation then Toyota's future will be doomed.
Mazda did a turn around one generation ago with their Kodo designed models and it has paid dividends. Toyota really needs to think about this approach and not be so ultra conservative. Conservative business has been left in the dust, it is time to be up to date or even ahead of its time.
Tuesday 27 December 2016
Tuesday 6 December 2016
the number of gears in transmissions
In the past 4 gears was the norm for car transmissions and this stayed for a long time from the 1970s to the 1980s then a gradual change took place where car transmissions moved on to have 5 gears. This stayed the same for over a decade until a few car companies decided to offer 6 gears. This was limited to some top end luxury cars such as BMW, Mercedes and Porsche.
Since the mid 2000 where the oil price shot up every car maker was rushing to introduce cars that offer better fuel economy and seeing that it was difficult to squeeze more efficiency from an engine the next best route was to improve the transmission by offering more gears. It was proven that with more gears and lower gearing at cruising speed the engine would rev lower thus saving fuel. This concept did make sense but it was somehow got carried away with car maker nows push up to 10 gears in their transmission system. BMW started using their 8 speed automatic in the F10 5 series and F30 3 series, then came Mercedes with their 9 speed automatic in the S and E Class models. Ford and Honda and Hyundai took one step further by introducing 10 gears.
Honda was previously focused on using the CVT system but it was not well received and had problems. Honda filed for patent for their triple clutch 10 speed transmission making it the first in the world triple clutch 10 speed. Ford and Hyundai were using conventional automatic transmission but adding the gears to make up 10. With this number of gears the transmission would have to be automatic as it would not be practical to swap gears manually. Porsche pushed the maximum number of gears for manual transmission to 7 and this was getting troublesome. With so many gears the driver will be spending too much time holding onto the gear level changing gears all the time. It didn't make practical sense.
Transmission systems with high number of gears have been around for a long time but those are installed in trucks and buses where the truck or bus has to lug heavy weight and being diesel the rev band is very short. the bus or truck had to be in the power band to be able to lug the heavy payload.
On the flip side electric cars have no gears and is able to run without using a conventional transmission. It will be interesting to see how far transmission technology will change in the near future.
Since the mid 2000 where the oil price shot up every car maker was rushing to introduce cars that offer better fuel economy and seeing that it was difficult to squeeze more efficiency from an engine the next best route was to improve the transmission by offering more gears. It was proven that with more gears and lower gearing at cruising speed the engine would rev lower thus saving fuel. This concept did make sense but it was somehow got carried away with car maker nows push up to 10 gears in their transmission system. BMW started using their 8 speed automatic in the F10 5 series and F30 3 series, then came Mercedes with their 9 speed automatic in the S and E Class models. Ford and Honda and Hyundai took one step further by introducing 10 gears.
Honda was previously focused on using the CVT system but it was not well received and had problems. Honda filed for patent for their triple clutch 10 speed transmission making it the first in the world triple clutch 10 speed. Ford and Hyundai were using conventional automatic transmission but adding the gears to make up 10. With this number of gears the transmission would have to be automatic as it would not be practical to swap gears manually. Porsche pushed the maximum number of gears for manual transmission to 7 and this was getting troublesome. With so many gears the driver will be spending too much time holding onto the gear level changing gears all the time. It didn't make practical sense.
Transmission systems with high number of gears have been around for a long time but those are installed in trucks and buses where the truck or bus has to lug heavy weight and being diesel the rev band is very short. the bus or truck had to be in the power band to be able to lug the heavy payload.
On the flip side electric cars have no gears and is able to run without using a conventional transmission. It will be interesting to see how far transmission technology will change in the near future.
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