Automated Manual Transmission - The Next Big Thing

Magneti Marelli, a part of fiat Group expects huge demand for the Automated Manual Transmission in India. It already is in a joint venture with Maruti – Suzuki to manufacture the kits in India. It took almost three years for the company to convince Indian Manufacturers to use the AMT kit and now in the recent months has been facing supply problems due to huge demand.

Is Automated Manual Transmission the next big thing? We give you a brief on what actually is AMT

The new AMT transmission is new to India but has been used in the overseas market for quite some time now. Indian Automobile market is majorly focused on manual transmission, as the country is more focused to ‘Kitna deti Hai’ funda (How much fuel efficient a vehicle is). Automatic Transmissions have a high cost of maintenance as well as fuel efficiency goes down terribly.

Changing Needs of Indian Drivers focused towards more comfort

In recent years traffic conditions in India has been a big problem in metro cities, making it painful to operate a clutch. In order to cope up with this situation manufacturers are coming up with AMT equipped models which help in giving the convenience of an automatic transmission without the compromising on maintenance cost or Fuel Efficiency.

The concept of Automated Manual Transmission

Automated Manual Transmission can be easily understood as a manual transmission without a clutch, providing you with the ease of comfort without reduction in fuel efficiency. The AMT unit can be applied to any vehicle without changing the manual transmission, instead the manufacturer needs to use just an ad – on hydraulic kit coupled with an electronic control unit.

The hydraulic kit and the electronic control unit supervise the clutch in order to change gears, the AMT box can be used as a fully automatic unit, in which the control unit decides which gear the vehicle needs to run, or manually where the driver can shift gears according to his needs.

However AMT cannot be retrofitted. Once the factory fitted kit is installed the hydraulic kit automatically communicates with the drive shaft in comparison to the toque converter on a traditional Automatic vehicle. This technology has been in use since 1997. Ferrari 355 F1 featured such set up during the Formula one race.

Thus AMT is a motorized version of a manual transmission providing a clutch free experience.

Magneti Merelli based Automated manual transmission is being offered in Petrol as well as Diesel options in India. The basic price difference between the traditional Manual and AMT variant of a vehicle is roughly INR 35,000 to 45,000, which is expected to go down as the demand increases and more manufacturers opt to provide this in India.

Maruti Suzuki Alto K-10 and Celerio are available with the AMT box in petrol and Tata is the first Indian Manufacturer with a diesel powered AMT vehicle THE ZEST

Traffic Congestion and young buyers in India who prefer more comfortable drive, The Automated Manual transmission is surely gonna be the next big thing in India.

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