Abstract: Hot spots can lead to a failure of vehicular clutches. A theoretical model was constructed to investigate thermoelastic instability (TEI) and hot spots in automotive clutches. When the sliding speed exceeds the critical speed, a spatially temperature perturbation growing with time can lead to hot spots. Hot spots appear mainly on the mating disk because of its high Peclet number. Mating disk has an anti-symmetric deformation due to the critical speed. A material with low elastic modulus and high thermal conductivity can experience a high critical speed, while the thermal expansion coefficient has little effect on it.