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Photo: Wolfram Schroll / Bloomberg |
Owners of Ford Focus and Ford Fiesta with automatic speeds produced between 2011 and 2016 can receive up to $ 20,000 in compensation from the company due to the notorious PowerShift transmission problem, Jalopnik reports. The United States giant finally reached a settlement out of the thousands of United States class actions initiated in 2012.
PowerShift is a dual-clutch automatic developed by Ford in a joint venture with the former Getrag, now part of the Canadian Magna. Dual clutch systems, as the name implies, use two clutches, one for even gears and one for odd gears. When one gear splits, the other gear is already engaged, making shifting quicker and more efficient and fuel-efficient.
Dual clutch automation is used by almost all manufacturers. The difference between the Ford system and those of Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW, etc. is that the American company uses dry connectors. With wet couplings, the friction discs are “bathed” in hydraulic fluid, making their operation smoother and easier to cool. Dry ones are more efficient because friction is better and cheaper to produce. But in Ford’s case, they are much more fragile. Furthermore, humidity is better able to withstand the high torque of modern turbocharged and diesel engines.
Since the European debut of this DPS6 automatic code, the company has issued more than 20 technical bulletins for its problems. Ford performed a system overhaul in 2012 and then a second overhaul in 2016, after which the issues are believed to have been resolved.
Most cars made by Ford in Europe use wet clutch systems and are not affected. The problem boxes are installed in approximately 2 million vehicles, mainly for the markets in North America, Australia and some in Asia. Dry Powershift is also available from India’s first generation EcoSort, which is also sold in the EU, including Bulgaria.
The scandal escalated a year ago when an investigation by the Detroit Free Press revealed that Ford was aware of the problem before they even put the transmission into production. The company’s engineers acknowledged that their attempts to draw attention to the flaws were stifled “from above,” “for political reasons.” In the United States, they recalled the scandal with the Pinto model from the 70s, which burst into flames, even with a slight violent reaction. Then it turned out that engineers had warned the problem beforehand, but accountants estimated that the cost of correcting it before production, $ 121 million, would be much higher than the potential legal damages to victims, estimated at $ 50 million.
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