Many are the explanations why chief executives leave their companies. Some, like bankers, do so after feeling the ire of the public or government. Others feel they have reached the end of the road in what they can achieve. Others are tempted by new challenges.
Only Dick Elsy knows the real reason why he has left transmission innovator Torotrak to become chief executive officer of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. Elsy is replaced as chief executive at Torotrak by finance director Jeremy Deering. By his own admission, Elsy leaves Torotrak “at such an exciting time when our plans are starting to deliver”. If so, why not stay and enjoy the full rewards of his work?
When Elsy joined Torotrak in 2003, the share price was 12p; at the end of his first year it topped 70p. Before announcing his departure, eight years later, the share price languished at 38p.
Over the past nine years, almost routinely loss-making, Torotrak’s turnover has blossomed seventeen-fold to £4.3 million, while employee numbers have fallen 60% to just 40.
For more years than many can remember, Torotrak, based in Leyland, Lancashire, has toiled to develop stepless, friction-drive transmissions for city cars, buses and on- and off-highway vehicles. Its novel design of continuously (or infinitely) variable transmission – CVT/IVT – relies on toroidal cavity discs containing rollers that link the engine with final drive. Speed ratio is changed by varying roller angle.
After all these years, could the end be in sight as Torotrak views the prospect of its CVTs in trucks and buses?
In 2005, Torotrak formed Infinitrak with MTD Holdings of Cleveland, Ohio, signing away CVT rights in the 0-45kW range for outdoor power equipment such as sit-on mowers. This then offered the biggest potential IVT application.
The following year, Torotrak reported that it had worked with a European truck and bus maker to “achieve fuel economy and emissions reductions”. A project with a European bus maker led to an IVT bus.
By 2007 Xtrac, which designs gearboxes for racing cars, signed a licence agreement to develop part of a mechanical energy recovery device for use in F1. The hybrid system to store braking energy in a flywheel used Torotrak’s CVT, linked to the car’s existing gearbox. And Flybus appeared with its kinetic energy recovery system (KERS).
At last year’s Geneva motor show, Tata highlighted its Pixel city car. Its ability to park in tight spots was possible because of Torotrak’s “zero-turn” traction-drive IVT. Nothing more has been heard of this project which on paper offered much potential. That does not mean it is dead.
Tata claimed that Pixel, with its 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, could offer fuel economy of 3.4 litres/100km and CO2 emissions of only 89g/km.
In development, giving focus to the following can bring improved toroidal CVTs: film traction and suitable fluids; disc and roller design and related fatigue life; losses; noise; effects of temperature on maximum shear strength which in turn determines the limiting traction; regime gearing arrangements; materials development; machining; production packaging; and an effective and durable control system. Last year, Torotrak completed over 25,272 hours of durability and fatigue testing, with a design life of 300,000 miles declared.
Roller diameter is vital for compactness. For the same power rating, Torotrak has been able to reduce roller diameters. Rollers now range from 140mm for heavy trucks to only 47.5mm for the company’s new V-Charge supercharger.
Traction fluids too are critical to CVTs. The basic principle of a toroidal CVT is: the end-load which must be applied for the rolling assembly to transmit torque is inversely proportional to the coefficient of traction; and life is inversely proportional to the end-load cubed. So an increase in traction coefficient gives a cubic increase in life for the same torque, or a pro-rata improvement in torque rating for the same life, all for no change to transmission configuration.
High traction therefore has to be a prime goal of fluid suppliers as it impacts on fuel economy and durability. Shell has played an important role in developing traction fluids.
The quest for efficiency
What’s the appeal of continuously variable transmissions? In early cars, a one-to-one connection between engine and final drive was out of the question if the power unit was to operate at its most efficient. Early manual gearboxes had few fixed ratios but the number gradually increased – and so did complexity; today’s fully automatic gearboxes can offer eight ratios. Lately, dual-clutch transmissions (DCTs) have opened up new possibilities. VW and Ford have these in production. Compared with CVT/IVT, DCTs offer known technology, with cost and packaging understood. Meanwhile, inventors persist with their attempts to adjust speed ratio in a seamless, continuously variable manner to provide the right connection at all times between engine and final drive, including reverse.
The future
Torotrak’s annual reports have grown thicker and glossier over the years, but the company’s main ethos remains unchanged: “The design and development of traction drive technology based on the toroidal variator as a means of infinitely changing gear ratio.”
The latest report – for 2012 and Elsy’s last – gives the clearest indication of where the future lies: cars and light vans using M-KERS, the mechanical kinetic energy recovery system; city buses using M-KERS; hybrids; off-highway vehicles using IVTs; and finally medium-size and heavy trucks, again using IVTs.
Across all these fronts, in Europe and the US, change is being driven by emissions legislation and demands for fuel improvements of 20%. Torotrak claims its systems can deliver this level of fuel saving.
Torotrak has secured £600,000 additional fees from Tata to extend its non-exclusive licence to encompass M-KERS and V-Charge. And in May Torotrak signed a co-operation and licence agreement with Univance, one of Japan’s leading makers of transmissions for cars and industrial vehicles.
Tata, Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo Cars are Torotrak’s partners for passenger car applications, with Flybrid Automotive of Silverstone playing a vital part.
In particular, Volvo Car Corporation, Volvo Powertrain and SKF are engaged in a development programme that brought together Flybrid’s flywheel technology and Torotrak’s CVT for use in volume car applications.
For buses, Optare, Ricardo and the ever-elusive “European truck and bus manufacturer” or ETBM are Torotrak’s principal partners. And the Flybus M-KERS system for city buses is moving to next-stage hardware for fitting to fleet trial vehicles.
Carraro of Italy, and farm machinery maker Iseki of Tokyo, are Torotrak’s partners for construction equipment applications. But the first big returns could come from distribution trucks. Here ETBM, Allison Transmission of the US and Volvo Powertrain are all in various partnerships with Torotrak.
Allison is the world’s largest manufacturer of fully automatic transmissions for medium-size and heavy-duty trucks. Its total cumulative licence fees paid to Torotrak have passed £15 million since the agreement was signed in March 2009.
Allison continues its commitment to Torotrak through a multi-million dollar option, implying it has ample resources to develop toroidal technology. If Allison is equipping a facility to make the new IVT, it is tight-lipped; it is certainly keeping quiet about how many engineers are engaged on the project and what they are doing.
Allison’s headquarters in Indianapolis could be the first to produce any novel design, as this is where development has been conducted under tight security.
Tide turning?
So is the tide turning in Torotrak’s favour? In July the company announced that Allison had agreed “an advance commitment of £2.5 million against its final £10.62 million option, to be paid this August. The final option, exercisable in 2013, would secure exclusive rights for main drive transmission applications in commercial vehicles.”
In Europe, Allison’s rights will co-exist with Torotrak’s other two commercial vehicle licensees: Tata and ETBM. Shareholders can but hope that any such transmissions will catch the doubling of global new commercial vehicle registrations expected by 2020, with ETBM in a “strong first-to-market position”.
However, such is the clandestine nature of the ETBM programme that no one will declare how well this activity is performing, or even hint at percentage fuel economy gains. As fuel economy is an important parameter in commercial vehicle operation, any figure would yield an insight into how effective or ineffective the IVT development work has been. But it has to be assumed that gains of more than 20% have been achieved.
The latest company statement continues the mystique of smoke and mirrors that has surrounded the programme for years, claiming that “further testing has now been concluded with very positive results”. It suggests that fuel economy gains from Torotrak’s technology extend “further into their vehicle range. This presents a stronger opportunity than previously thought.” This statement contains no precise depth of meaning – except to those in the know.
Torotrak has another iron in the fire, although not yet as significant as the Allison project. V-Charge (previously called Rotrak) supercharger boost technology is said to be “seeing significant strengthening of interest”.
Torotrak claims V-Charge, a forced induction system that combines supercharging with the best of turbocharging, provides “the only cost-effective route to affordable downsized engines” and low CO2 with the driveability of a larger, naturally aspirated engine. Tests in a development vehicle confirm that the system can boost torque from zero to 95% in 400ms.
Such programmes are work in progress. Meanwhile, shareholders continue to wait for a return on their investment. As they do so, some might ask if this technology is one in which the goalposts are constantly moving? Others might begin to wonder, if they have not done so already, whether Torotrak can ever deliver on its potential?