The AMG SpeedShift: This one’s exclusive to Mercedes Benz’s AMG performance division. Dubbed the SpeedShift, it amounts to a conventional automatic transmission, but without a torque converter. Instead, to handle application of engine power to the transmission, a compact clutch system is used. This enables various enhanced performance functions like Race Start (launch control), faster gear changes, and higher overall performance and efficiency.

Importantly, the clutch used on this type of transmission is operated by a computer and actuators, not the driver, so there’s no clutch pedal to press.

By doing away with the comparably inefficient torque converter, which wastes energy as a result of having to drive fluid through various components, the SpeedShift is basically a hybrid transmission with components of both a manual and automatic, combined to offer the best of both worlds. Most notable? This setup does away with the slippage characteristic of a torque-converter, providing the driver with faster, more precise off-the-line responses to throttle inputs. With no fluid to pump, churn and get moving, the SpeedShift transmission feels more direct and instantaneous to its driver.

The Acura 8-Speed DCT: The AMG Speedshift is only one example of a hybrid transmission which blends components from two other types of transmissions. Another was recently launched by Acura – consisting of an 8-speed DCT, with a torque converter. It’s similar to the SpeedShift’s polar opposite: rather than use gears like an automatic with a clutch like a manual, it uses the manual-like gears of a DCT, with a torque converter like an automatic.

Life is all about trade-offs, and though a torque converter wastes some energy because of how it operates, it is a smoother and more refined way to get a car moving off the line. So, says Acura, drivers get smoother performance in stop-and-go traffic, and other situations where using a clutch to get moving is less refined. Drivers get gearshifts at DCT speeds, and DCT levels of efficiency, but with smoother low-speed stops and starts.

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