News

Leyland-based transmission manufacturer Torotrak has signed a licensing deal to provide Tata Motors with its innovative Infinitely Variable Transmission (IVT). The announcement is the culmination of a busy few days for Torotrak: it has just published the initial results of tests at Millbrook with an Optare  midi-bus, showing urban route fuel savings of 19% over a conventional five-speed automatic, and has also recently signed a deal with an as-yet-unnamed Formula 1 team.

The Tata deal is to provide transmissions for four vehicle categories: passenger cars, light CVs, medium and heavy CVs and construction equipment. Tata, already a major force at home in India, is fast becoming a name to be reckoned with on the global stage. Its recent developments include acquiring steel maker Corus, and it is widely expected to be the next owner of Ford's Jaguar and Land Rover brands.

The IVT is based around the toroidal variator, a unit that in simple terms has opposing concave driving and driven discs connected by a roller. Swivelling the roller changes the points of contact on the curved internal walls, thus changing the effective diameters of the driving and driven discs. The concept is well proven in applications such as smaller agricultural  machines, but the Optare trial is the first use in larger vehicles. The IVT is particularly well suited to use in hybrid drivelines.