Gaz Auto reported on February 9 that Ford has filed a patent for a new manual transmission that does not require a clutch, and the company has filed a patent for an innovative electronically controlled transmission device at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The system allows the driver to manually shift gears without having to worry about clutch engagement.
It is understood that one of the goals of Ford's development of the electronic clutch system is to eliminate some of the undesirable attributes that exist in daily driving manual transmission vehicles, which is also the main reason for the decline in the development speed of manual transmissions in the past 30 years. Unlike traditional clutch drives, Ford's idea was to eliminate the physical connection between the clutch pedal and the separating bearing, and instead, the clutch operation would become an electronic control based on sensor input algorithms. It's unclear whether Ford will actually put such systems into service.
According to the data of the query wisdom bud, the publication number of the patent is "US11174940B2" called "Manual transmission with electric clutch", and according to the patent abstract, the system will be equipped with a control module designed to automatically start the clutch. The driver simply moves the shift lever and can easily shift gears. When sensors in the shift lever sense that the driver has grabbed the lever and started moving it through the latch, the module will begin to separate the clutch. When the shift is complete, the clutch is re-engaged. Vehicles equipped with such electronic clutch systems do not require clutch pedals. However, Ford made it clear that the clutch pedal could still be present in the vehicle, simply connecting it to the control module rather than physically connecting it to the clutch master cylinder.
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