Energy efficiency and short response times are usually conflicting goals. In the case of hydrostatic gears, two basic system configurations are commonly used, which allow to obtain better efficiency—the primary control setup—or faster responses— the secondary control. In this paper, (1) a different control setup is proposed, combining both primary and secondary control, and this new setup is shown to allow even faster responses than the secondary control having, in general, much lower energyrequirements. We also address (2) the question of the design of a multiobjectiveoptimal control for the proposed nonlinear structure, showing that the noninferior set, i.e., the setof points where thereduction of one cost function needs the increase of the others, depends on the control algorithm used. It is shown that combined use of pump and motor swash plate displacement yieldsa better trade-offbetween response speed and efficiency, and that solving approximately the nonlinearoptimization problem delivers better efficiency than optimizing a system consisting of the original plant and a linearizing feedback. © 1996 ASME.