Patent ID: 7128678

Claim:
An automatic transmission for a vehicle comprising: an input shaft; an output shaft; a plurality of gears that cooperate to couple said input shaft to said output shaft to provide seven different gear ratios; a series of engagement elements operable between an engaged position and a disengaged position; and a controller operable to selectively toggle said series of engagement elements between said engaged position and said disengaged position to selectively couple at least one of said plurality of gears to said input shaft and said output shaft to achieve one of said seven gear ratios, said controller achieving a change in gear ratio from a current gear ratio by applying an additional single one of said series of engagement elements not currently applied and releasing a single one of said engagement elements currently applied; wherein said controller selects between eight different combinations of applied ones of said series of engagement elements to achieve one of said seven gear ratios based on operating conditions of at least one of the vehicle and the automatic transmission.