JATCO to produce CVTs with auxiliary gearbox

JATCO, a Japanese manufacturer of automatic and continuously variable transmissions (AT/CVT), has announced that it will begin production of CVTs with auxiliary gearbox for mini and small front-wheel drive (FWD) vehicles at the company’s China-based production plant, JATCO (Guangzhou) Automatic Transmission Ltd., starting in April 2011. This is the latest CVT model from JATCO and the first time that CVTs with auxiliary gearbox will be produced at a plant outside Japan. With an original structure which adds an auxiliary gearbox to the standard belt CVT, this CVT significantly expands the transmission gear ratio while gaining improvements, such as reduced size and weight, as well as high efficiency. JATCO’s production capability for CVTs with auxiliary gearbox is 240,000 units per year. With this expansion, production capacity will be expanded to 380,000 units per year as of April 2011. (November 17, 2010)