Patent ID: 6889131
Filing Date: 2005-05-03
Classification: F16H,Y10S,Y10T

Abstract:
1. A method of selecting gear ratios for use in a motor vehicle transmission having a plurality of gears, which comprises: determining a low gear ratio, and a high gear ratio; determining a total ratio spread by dividing said low gear ratio by said high gear ratio; determining a number of gear ratios; determining a number of ratio steps by subtracting one from said number of gear ratios; determining a ratio variable by raising said total ratio spread to a power inverse of said number of ratio steps; determining values for said ratio steps by creating a geometric sequence having a plurality of terms representing each of said respective steps such that a ratio of any two consecutive of ratio steps is a common percent constant; and determining a gear ratio for each of the gears in the transmission by dividing the immediately previous gear ratio by its respective ratio step plus one so as to have uniformly progressive ratio steps, wherein narrow step ratios provide for a smaller skip shift index and wide step ratios provide for a larger skip shift index.