I was trying to find more information about how some of the transmissions work, and afterreading a bit on the IS-F Sport Direct Shift I have a few questions. Have the "manual modes" that they use in the Lexus lines ever appear on their other cars? I noticed on wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimo...l_transmission that Toyota has employed that fancy named transmission with paddle-shifters onto European cars but not in North America.
Referring to the Truthaboutcars interview, we assume that there might be less computing power (or I suppose a more efficient use?) on the FR-S. There is "No DSG or anything of that kind" is what was said. But, I was reading
this article from autotech and I noticed this little bit of info: "The transmission uses planetary gearsets and clutches like most common automatic transmissions, but the Lexus IS F has large, high flow control solenoids to shift each gear. The rapid response of the solenoids and application of the clutches enables the transmission to upshift gears in only one-tenth of a second."
So... what in the world are planetary gearsets and high control solenoids? And I'm still wallowing through some information (Also... my career path isn't in physics/mech engineering... its in uh... biology lol so spare me) but do manual cars and automatics use a clutch? I thought automatics typically had a torque converter or I'm misreading everything. Thanks!