ZF’s Gearboxes role on the road

ZF Friedrichshafen is a key technology provider to the automotive industry and is one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world. They are a specialist engineering company that has built a reputation for its design, research and development, and manufacturing ventures. With their roots firmly planted in Germany, the automotive body provides its technology to giants of the likes of BMW, Porsche, Mercedes Benz, and Alfa Romeo. They have branched out around the globe and are now operative in 162 production locations in 31 countries.

The company provides both manual and automatic truck and bus transmissions and with the rise in automatic transmission popularity, ZF introduced the now very popular ZF AS Tronic gearbox. This is an automated manual transmission that we see in a lot of trucks today. They are also responsible for the ZF 6-speed and ZF 8-speed transmissions.

Interestingly enough, the ZF 12-speed and ZF 16-speed AS Tronic are used in the Hino 700 and in some DAF trucks. The Hino 500 uses a completely different gearbox from the Hino 700 – it makes use of the Eaton gearbox.

In terms of their bus transmissions, the Ecomat is the most commonly used ZF transmission with its automatic transmission range. Then there is the Ecolite which is used within the manual transmission range.

Apart from trucks and buses, the company has a very broad focus within the automotive industry and covers areas within commercial vehicles, construction, and plant vehicles and interestingly enough in defense, marine, and aviation industries as well. ZF also provides aftermarket parts for trucks, buses agricultural vehicles, and machines.

Excluding truck and bus transmissions their production line includes driveline technology, chassis technology, axle systems and drops, steering technology, diagnostic software and systems, lubricants, and electronics.