Volkswagen has stopped all development work on its ground-breaking 10-speed dual-clutch transmission.
Volkswagen sources admitted yesterday that the gearbox, due to find its way into the Golf and Polo as early as next year, had been shelved.
"It's a very expensive development and it's very complex," the source said.
"In the end, we had to balance what our priorities were with our transmissions and other things are more important and more urgent."
The rollout plan for the transmission, which was conceived to save fuel in three- and small four-cylinder models, included Audi, Volkswagen, Seat and Skoda cars. Rated to handle up to 500Nm of torque, it was also scheduled to slot inside the 300kW Golf R400 hyperhatch.
The transmission was announced at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2013 and unveiled at the Vienna Engine Symposium in April this year, even if at least one rival transmission development boss derided it as a "nine-speed with a drop gear". It was engineered to be used in transverse (front-wheel drive) and longitudinal (rear-wheel drive) applications.
"We will stay with DSG technology," Volkswagen's director of powertrain, Dr Hans-Jakob Neusser, said at the transmission's debut, "but we will improve it and we will have more gears, 10 gears."
The setback is an embarrassing one for Volkswagen, which hasn't been able to make the 10-speed production-viable, even though General Motors, Ford and Hyundai have. Its highest dual-clutch gear count is seven.
"It could have been nine or 11, but we said 10 because we have two more gears for take-off, a short first gear and a simultaneous second gear, a blending of the clutches," Dr Neusser said at the time.
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