When shopping for a vehicle, you’ll hear terms like manual, automatic, and continuously variable (CVT), all pertaining to the type of transmission found under the hood. Automatic tend to be the most popular because they offer the most comfortable and easiest drive. Unlike a manual transmission, drivers don’t have to worry about shifting gears mid-drive, but they also don’t lose that gentle physical jolt that occurs when an automatic transmission changes gears as one does with a CVT.
Regardless of the type of transmission you’re most comfortable with, though, they all pretty much do the same thing. As the car’s engine produces power, it needs a way to distribute some of that to the wheels of the car to propel the vehicle forward. That’s where the transmission comes in. As the name implies, it transmits power to the rest of the drivetrain, which includes parts associated with the wheels, like the wheels themselves, axles, and driveshaft.
But what, exactly, does that mean? What is an automatic transmission doing under the hood, and how does it work with the other drivetrain components to move the car forward?
