Patent ID: 8562486

Claim:
A vehicle comprising: an internal combustion engine; and a transmission having: a plurality of gear sets each having a plurality of nodes, with each node being one of a sun gear, a ring gear, and a planetary carrier of the gear set; a plurality of rotating clutches, the application of any two of which results in a direct drive mode wherein all of the nodes rotate at a common speed, including a first rotating clutch that is engaged as an oncoming clutch during execution of a predetermined shift maneuver having a total required clutch energy, and a second rotating clutch that is engaged as a holding clutch during execution of the predetermined shift maneuver, wherein the predetermined shift maneuver is a shift to the direct drive mode; a plurality of braking clutches, wherein the plurality of gear sets are selectively connected to and disconnected from each other via actuation of different ones of the rotating and braking clutches, alone or in combination, to thereby establish multiple forward drive states of the transmission; an input member connected to the engine and to a node of at least one of the plurality of gear sets; and an output member connected to a node of a different one of the plurality gear sets; wherein the rotating clutches also include a third rotating clutch that, when not engaged, would otherwise have a zero slip speed relative to the input member during the predetermined shift maneuver, and wherein the third clutch is engaged as an additional oncoming clutch during the predetermined shift maneuver to thereby share the total required clutch energy with the first clutch.