How good is CVT- your opinion please

[Anupam Routh]

Greetings! How good is CVT transmission? How reliable they are in long term. I was looking at a Ford 500 all wheel drive. But AWD is available only with CVT drive. What is your opinion? With thanks.

 

[Bill Cooksley]

Its belt drive been around a long time go carts , lawn mowers ect If you dont drive hard you should have good luck with then. I dont like belt drive but to each there owne good luck with your choice. Bill

 

[EddieS'04]

Drove the freestyle with cvt. Did not have enough gearchange to throttle response for me.

 

[Evan F]

i have a Murano and it is amazing. It seems like no matter what speed you are going it is able to pull out hard with wonderful acceleration.

 

[Richard L]

You really have to drive different vehicles to see which is best for you. Most CVT's are programmed to be very conservative for better gas milage. Some may be too conservative that it appears underpowered, and others are more agressive.



...Rich

 

[Tom Schindler]

Most auto manufacturers have abandoned them. IIRC, Nissan is still the only one that thinks there is a future in it.



The latest issue of Car and Driver had an article about them.



Nissan claims the CVT system gets better gas mileage, but C&D's tests show otherwise.





Tom

 

[user 62394]

I have driven the new Nissan Altima, all of which have CVT and a Camry Hybrid. My impression was somewhat similar to what RichardL said -- that it seemed underpowered. It is a different experience from driving a traditional automatic transmission, and once you are used to it you may like it, but it felt odd to me. Always seemed like it was running at a lower RPM than I thought it should.



Something that I did find interesting is that the Altima still had the "AutoStick" feature. So basically, they have a couple of set ratios within the CVT that the autostick indexes to. I don't like the AutoStick in general, but to put it on a CVT to create "virtual gears" seemed laughable to me.



Rocks

 

[Gavin Allan]

I used to work for DAYCO when they were spending a bunch of money trying to develop the CVT 30 years ago. Most are actually chains, not belts. Also interesting is that in most of them the power is transferred by "pushing" the belt around the driven pulley, not "pulling" it like you would think.