Ford and General Motors have signed an agreement to jointly develop next-generation 9- and 10-speed transmissions that both companies said will improve vehicle performance and fuel economy. The automakers said they plan to build front- and rear-wheel-drive variants of these transmissions.

“Engineering teams from GM and Ford have already started initial design work on these new transmissions,” said Jim Lanzon, GM vice president of global transmission engineering. “We expect these new transmissions to raise the standard of technology, performance and quality for our customers while helping drive fuel economy improvements into both companies’ future product portfolios.”

“The goal is to keep hardware identical in the Ford and GM transmissions. This will maximize parts commonality and give both companies economy of scale,” said Craig Renneker, Ford’s chief engineer for transmission and driveline component and pre-program engineering. “However, we will each use our own control software to ensure that each transmission is carefully matched to the individual brand-specific vehicle DNA for each company.”

According to the automakers, this agreement is the third time in the past 10 years that GM and Ford have collaborated on developing transmissions, which resulted in the creation of six-speed front-wheel-drive transmissions. Ford said it installs these transmissions in the Fusion, Edge, Escape, and Explorer SUVs, where as GM said it uses them in the Chevrolet Malibu, Traverse, Equinox, and Cruze.