After more than two years of COVID isolation, it feels good to be getting out of our bunkers and interacting with people again. Last month, I had the great pleasure of attending the AGMA Annual Meeting, where executives from member companies got together in person for the first time since 2019. The 2020 meeting was canceled at the last minute due to COVID. Last year’s meeting was held virtually, with an electronic meeting room and videoconference presentations. But this year felt like a return to normal.

Fully electric vehicle drives usually require two-stage, non-switchable transmissions. One would think that this greatly simplifies the production. Finally, the described transmission structure has just four gears, distributed on the drive shaft, the second stage with fixed wheel and intermediate shaft as well as the axle drive wheel. But the conditions are not that simple: First of all, the engine speeds of the electric drive with up to 16,000 rpm are much higher than those of the combustion engine. For this purpose, electric motors deliver an almost constant torque over a wide speed range. Unlike the combustion engine, it is already attached to the transmission from zero speed. In addition, there is an additional boundary condition that makes production much more demanding than with the conventional powertrain.