DETROIT, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co. on Thursday said it would spend $325 million to build new six-speed automatic transmissions aimed at improving fuel economy in larger vehicles.
The new transmissions are designed for rear-wheel-drive cars and trucks, such as sport utility vehicles, and promise a 4 percent to 8 percent improvement in fuel economy over the current four-speed transmissions used by Ford and many other automakers, Ford executives said.
Ford said it would spend about $170 million at a Michigan plant and $155 million at an Ohio plant to build the transmissions.
General Motors Corp. announced a similar program last January. In October 2002, GM and Ford agreed to jointly develop six-speed automatic transmissions for front-wheel-drive vehicles.
GM and Ford have lagged behind foreign competitors in recent years, relying heavily on four-speed automatic transmissions while Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. Ltd. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. have offered more vehicles with five-speed automatics.
The more gears an automatic transmission has, the more efficiently the vehicle's engine can run.
Ford, GM and other automakers have also promised a few models with "continuously variable" transmissions, which can be more efficient than other automatics but are more costly and work best with smaller engines.