Recent years have seen a rapid growth in automatic transmission use in European countries, but it took a long time to get there.
According to a 1997 article from Automotive News Europe, only 10- 12 percent of new cars in Europe had automatic transmissions at the time, compared to over 90 percent use of automatics seen in the United States. There was intense opposition to automatic cars in Europe, especially in the southern countries of Spain, Italy, and southern France, each having 1 percent, 2 percent, and 2.6 percent automatic vehicles, respectively.
Automotive News Europe had predicted a growth in demand for automatic transmissions in the coming five to ten years due to improved products, changing of drivers’ habits, and new marketing strategies.
A major obstacle that kept automatic transmissions limited in Europe was the price. Similarly seen in US automatic trends in the 1940s, automatic transmissions have for some time been exclusive to European luxury cars, with 42 percent of German Mercedes sales in 1997 involving automatic, for example. Since the market was small, the prices were high, excluding the masses from the opportunity to switch to automatic.
While the US market grew out of this exclusive luxury car niche for automatic transmissions by the 1980s, the European market has taken some time to alter its manufacturing system to make room for prices to fall.
“Ten years ago, automatic transmissions were typically in the premium car: bigger models with the bigger engines. Statistics [suggest] 10- 20 percent of annual new car sales were automatic,” said Michel Ganzeboom, of Ganzeboom Transmission BV out of Amsterdam. “This has changed over the last three or four years. Automatic transmissions are no longer just for the luxury cars, but also for high volume models.”
It was predicted that a change had to be made in manufacturers’ industrial strategies, including the incorporation of new technologies, to create more affordable products, allowing for more to enjoy automatic transmissions. This, it was predicted, would lead to a steady rise in European automatic transmission use in the coming years.
“Manufacturers use more CVTs and DSGs as well as conventional automatics,” said Ganzeboom. “Technology gives them more options to install a suitable transmission for a specific model. They choose the type of transmission taking cost, fuel economy, emissions, etc., into account.”
This change in manufacturing opened up the market for both producers and consumers, granting more with the opportunity to acquire automatics for their vehicle, if they wished. “Automatics are now more easily obtainable,” said Bruce Palmer of JP Automatic Transmissions Ltd., of the UK. “They used to be a rare option in many brands, but are now more readily available and not as expensive as they used to be.”
In 2020 Europe, Mobility Foresights estimated a 75 percent penetration of automatic transmissions. This was due to changes in consumer behavior in major cities, as 6-speed and 8-speed automatics became more popular.
There was significant growth in the last five years in the amount of automatic vehicles on European roads, from 25 percent in 2014 to approximately 44 percent in 2019. This was because all top-selling passenger vehicles began to be launched with an automatic transmission variant as an option, giving consumers a choice rather than having to go with manual by default.
Ford Motor Company estimated that the number of cars and multipurpose vehicles that they sell equipped with automatic transmissions has more than tripled in the last three years, from 10 percent of Ford Europe sales in 2017 to 31 percent in the first month of the 2020 calendar year. Specifically, UK automatics accounted for 40 percent of vehicle sales in 2017, up from 25 percent five years earlier.
“The increase in the automatic transmission market is due to many factors,” said Antonio Buglione, of Trans Tek SRL out of Naples, Italy. “These include no interruption to flow of force, low fuel consumption, and driving comfort, among others.”
Ford also predicted that due to increased features and comforts, like reduction of cabin noise and the alleviation of car sickness, an increasing number of European drivers are selecting small and medium sized cars with an automatic transmission. In 2019, across the five largest European markets, the highest proportion of automatic Ford vehicles were sold in Germany, followed by France, the UK, Spain, and Italy.
This Ford statistic is not surprising, though, as Germany has always been ahead of the rest of the European market in terms of automatic trends. Daimler AG, the producer of Mercedes-Benz, has long been utilizing automatic transmissions as the preferred model of its vehicles.
“Mercedes has always been very strong in automatics, and still is,” said Palmer. “They were the exception to the rule for many years: where automatic was the main choice and manual was the option.”
Germany’s superpower stance in the automatic transmission market is predicted only to grow further as time goes on.
“The percentage of German automatic transmissions is very high,” said Buglione. “By 2030, cars with manual transmissions will no longer be produced [in Germany].” In spring of 2021, Knibb Gormezano and Partners released a study evaluating European automatic transmission trends. They claimed that the perception of automatic transmissions by the general European public is beginning to change as they become more familiar with the products, and a wider choice of technology becomes available.
“Automatic driving is more commonly accepted,” said Maron de Groot of Automatic Choice Europe. “[This is] due to the increased comfort in driving, as well as government support of the hybrid and electrical [model] cars.” While historically European manufacturers bought automatics from outside, six of the eight major OEMs now produce all or most of their automatics in-house or in partnership with other suppliers.
de Groot noted this change, stating that there used to be more American automatics on European roads, but “the EU and the East have taken over” in manufacturing dominance. This is not noted without the acknowledgement that the future of automatic transmissions is dependent upon the growth of the electric vehicle market that is currently on the rise throughout Europe.
“I think the market will contain more alternatives to fossil fuels in the years to come,” said de Groot. “This includes electric cars or other new developments.”
While the rise of electric could hinder automatic’s further European growth, the hybrid model has helped increase automatic’s market share in conjunction with the electric option. “Many electric hybrid cars are only available with an automatic option,” said Palmer. “The increase in hybrid sales has improved automatic sales as well.”
This shift in the industrial process, along with the ever-evolving market, has allowed for more technological development, choice, and availability for European consumers, keeping automatic transmissions on the rise in some capacity for years to come.
Cassidy Sollazzo is a recent UCLA graduate with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Film, Television, and Digital Media. She is doing freelance writing and working with Precision International’s social media efforts.
