British Technology Group gears up for CVT
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• The future of Leyland's Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) looks like being settled — at least in the short term — with the news that British Technology Group, is poised to buy all the CVT patents, technology and hardware currently held by the Rover Group.
If the deal goes through BTG, the self-financing public organisation, will hold all the intellectual property rights for the Leyland and Perhury CVT systems, Loth of which use a combination of rollers and toroidal discs to provide stepless, automatically-variable transmission. If Rover agrees to sell its stake in the Leyland-developed Continuously Variable Transmission to British Technology Group, Leyland Daf will keep TX450 — but its CVT will belong to BTG.
Along with the Rover Group's patents, BTG would also acquire three demonstration vehicles fitted with CVT from Leyland Daf. These include a 16-tonne Freighter and two Leyland National single-deck buses, one of which is also fitted with a flywheel regenerative braking system. Despite this Leyland's CVTequipped TX450 concept truck would continue to be the property of Leyland Daf (its CVT having become BTG property).
In addition to the vehicles, BTG would also obtain test equipment and the services of seven development engineers, who have been working on CVI at the Leyland Technical Centre at Preston.
BIG is the umbrella organisation formed in 1981 following the merger of the National Research and Development Corporation and the National Enterprise Board. BIG says it first became interested in CVT many years ago and plans to attract the interest of a vehicle manufacturer to build the Leyland CVT under licence.
BTG is not saying which manufacturer it has been talking to, but hopes to "get something moving within a couple of months". If a deal is struck with a truck manufacturer, BTG claims the CVT could be in full production before the end of the decade.