INTRODUCTION The ever-increasing regulatory requirement on CO2 emissions drives efficiency improvement of the vehicle powertrain system. Although the powertrain electrification and alternative fuel technologies will continue to advance and penetrate with a growing market share, conventional powertrain will still dominate the global powertrain marketplace in the foreseeable future. The stringent 2025 fuel economy targets will present tremendous challenges to the conventional powertrain system on efficiency improvement, and technology advancement is necessary across the board from the engine, transmission, system integration, and controls, etc. Future engines will have smaller displacements with power boost technologies, and advanced technologies will also enable flexible cylinder deactivation to truly optimize the engine operation efficiency by minimizing the number of cylinders according to the instant power demand. On the other hand, transmission systems will continue to evolve, with a balanced distribution of various transmission types in different market regions. Among them, automatic transmission (AT) will continue to dominate the North American market and account for the bulk of the global market. With all the technology advancements, there are three notable trends for the future ATs. First of all, future ATs will have more gear steps to offer a broader ratio spread and finer ratio steps, which can better enable the engine to operate at its most efficient regions. Secondly, future engines (with further downsizing and cylinder deactivation) demand advanced transmission dampers with improved torsional isolation capability. In the same time, the transmission torque converter clutch (TCC) will be operated in the lockup state more often for better fuel economy. Finally, future transmissions will have higher system efficiency due to new architectures used as well as component improvement. Thanks to the desired launch performance, smooth shift quality, wide ratio spread, and relatively low cost with ever-improving efficiency, AT will remain popular and continue to dominate in the global marketplace in the foreseeable future. The speeds race for AT has accelerated in the recent past, and the market moved from 3/4-speeds to 5/6-speed transmissions not long ago, and will continue to grow into 8/9/10-speed transmission systems in the near future. Transmissions with more gear steps can enable better fuel economy and vehicle performance. However, the trade-off comes with a higher system complexity and more components including gears, clutches and control devices, etc. The system overall mass and rotational inertias are likely to grow. Complexity for transmission controls will also increase as the shift scenarios grows exponentially with the gear steps. In practice, a future transmission will be shifted more frequently as the lines in a shift schedule become denser. However, maintaining the same or higher shift quality is critical because customers will associate the higher speed transmission with advanced technology and expect premium drive quality. Unfortunately, the Control and Integration Challenges for Future Automatic Transmissions Dongxu Li General Motors Co. ABSTRACT The ever-increasing regulatory requirement on CO2 emissions drives efficiency improvement of vehicle powertrain systems. In this context, three mega trends have been happening in the automotive transmission industry . First, future automatic transmissions will have more gear steps to offer a broader ratio spread and finer ratio steps, which may enable the engine to operate at its efficient regions more often. Second, engine downsizing with boosted power and flexible cylinder deactivation have been become the technology trend to achieve better thermal efficiency. These engine technologies demand improved transmission dampers with greater isolation capabilities to drive future transmission dampers to be equipped with softer springs. Third, future transmissions wil