With that said, Stellantis has rights to build the transmissions for use in their fleet of vehicles. With that said, who is the manufacturer?
That is a good question. I would argue they are licensing out the technology and product to make it in house. It is still by ZF even if created in another factory that Ram owns to decrease the cost using their spec.
Is Stellantis allow to make changes to the transmissions without a breach of contract? At what point can they steal the design and make a few changes then claim it is not ZF branded?
I think that question might be harder to answer then you thought it was.
Base warranty for the transmission I believe caps out at 60k, I believe in miles it's like 76k ZF recommends the oil to be changed under normal duty, which would mean it's outside the "lifetime" of the warranty and thus "lifetime fluid" in Ram's.
There's a reason why Ram doesn't say the truck will last 10 years, or 100k miles as these are all claims that can either be proved or considered false advertisement.
They use terms like dependable and other vague terms such as "lifetime" do you think the oil would be fine after 300k miles?
The lifetime of a truck can be determined on if the frame rots out which in some places could be never, engines require oil changes and can be rebuilt or replaced. A transmission can't in theory have lifetime fluid even in a perfect world imo.