JATCO Develops New CVT for Small Cars

JATCO Ltd has designed a new CVT solution for small cars, named as the CVT-S (JF021E). The newly designed solution is a compact, light-weight, and fuel-saving product with optimized ratio span that is suitable for small cars, which occupy a significant market share (approx. 40%) in Japan.

Picture from the CVT-S presentation

Its main peculiarities are as follows:

Optimized ratio span for small cars

Ratio span has been refined at 6.0, considering Japan’s traffic peculiarities and aspects of the small car use. This enables the CVT-S to ensure both fuel efficiency and operating capacities suitable for small cars.

Lower friction

The CVT-S is notable for a cascading piston design, for the pulley pressure cavity, and low-friction ball bearings. Moreover, there is a baffle plate available for the gears. Fluid spreading, pulley hold pressure, and final drive ratio have all been refined. Therefore, friction is decreased by 8% in contrast to the CVT7 solution.

More compact and lightweight

All steps on weight saving were elaborated in detail for each element, resulting in a cut-down of the internal diameter of the pulleys and a refining of both the sheave walls and the walls of the pressure chamber elements. All these steps helped to decrease the weight by approx. 6% (about 4.2 kg) in contrast to the CVT7 transmission.

Jatco CVT7

Optimized performance

A double-pinion 4-planetary-gear design was implemented to lower grating of gears when engaging the R gear. Moreover, the stiffness of coupling with the engine was enhanced by improving the coupling configuration and coupling points between the engine and transmission.

JATCO’s overall volume of CVT production progressed to the level of forty million units since the start of production more than two decades ago. The company has a strong belief in its advanced developments and professionalism of its employees, which will be certainly reflected in the new CVT-S.