Today I have driven in town a Honda Jazz/Fit with CVT (4 years old, 83HP vs 136HP, 1102kg vs 1445kg, that is 13kg/HP vs 10.6kg/HP) after 1 year of driving my Prius 2010. I drove about 15km-9mi in town. My impressions... 1) CVT simply sucks vs HSD: you floor the accelerator and nothing happens - just the engine whining and you are not moving, while the CVT is heating up the oil in the hydraulic torque converter (if it has one, otherwise I don't know what the engine was moving really) - OK, the Honda has to move 3kg more than the Prius per single HP of available power, but the difference was truly striking 2) the engine running all the time...and the fan turning on and off (you can hear it in this car) to cool the ICE down - you get off the car and you can feel the hot air coming from the engine - I haven't felt that on the Prius once... 3) no matter how you brake your FE will not go up... 4) consumed 10.5L/100km-22MPG... Compared to the Prius? 1) you floor the gas pedal and you jolt forward - no engine revving up, moving fluid in a torque converter to no use, no clutch - only the electric motor giving you 100% of torque plus the torque that the ICE can additionally provide, while charging the HV battery via the generator 2) quiet 95% of the time - I have still to hear the cooling fan of the Prius ICE once... 3) if you brake properly, your FE can go up because you charge the HV battery that helps you drive at 0L/100km 4) on a similar type of trip I normally get 5-6L/100km.... So, nice to have a Prius, pushing the owner of the Honda to get a Prius or Auris Hybrid (when available) and thinking: "how can people still drive such cars?" - there are a few alternatives on the market (Prius, Insight, Fusion) or at least a car with Start/Stop and brake regen. Money permitting, that is (not everybody can or want to change their car "now" - plus many hybrids are still too "big" compared to many EU cars out there - the Prius is considered a "big" car around here). The trip today was a "Back to the Future" kind of experience, which was even more striking since, in practice but not in theory, the behaviour of the transmission on this Honda Jazz is similar to the HSD of the Prius (i.e. CVT-like). Have you had any similar experiences since driving your Prius?
I swap back and forth between my 2009 Prius and my wife's automatic 2006 Xterra The doors do not unlock themselves when I grab them, I feel like Scotty reduced to using a mouse: "How Quaint." I have to insert a key to make it start. Some low life deliberately reduced the headroom over just the front seats. Huge vehicle, but I can't get through the door. (I fit in back, and have no issues in front or back of the Prius) 90% of the throttle is there right off idle, I burn rubber over half the time, who planned a digital throttle? It has on and off, I wanted a whole range of control. No matter how I drive it, 18 MPG. (2wd) It is a good thing it is a company car, so they pay for all that gas. (One headlight aims up, in 50,000 miles Nissan service has failed to find any way to adjust the headlights)
Yes, I was actually considering one of these to replace my Ford Explorer, but I don't fit because of the retarded design of the front seat/roofline. Wth?
The superiority of the E-CVT is striking. It is 4% more fuel efficient than Honda mechanical CVT. You don't appreciate until you loose it. It is one of the FULL hybrid exclusive premium feature that often overlooked when calculating the "payback".
The only other master of the CVT is Nissan. I had a Murano for 4 years and I can honestly say that that CVT rocked. They really got the calibration right for the vehicle. Its "tuning" meant a slower 0-60 time than a conventional transmission would have given but the 30-70 time blew the doors off other cars. I understood the low end was shaved to spare the transmission from a stop and I can understand given the 230+ HP it was dealing with. Anyway I love the Toyota Tranny but the Nissan one is indeed very good too..and as a bonus the Murano always got 21 mpg overall...this compared to a friends Highlander that got around 19.
Yes, it's not really a CVT but a planetary gear. I tried to explain that to a Toyota salesman once. Toyota simply markets it as a CVT so since it "acts" ultimately like a continuously variable transmission, they don't bother to go to the trouble of explaining the difference between what is really a computer controlled planetary gear, as opposed to what is defined as a CVT in most other automobiles.
I alternate between a 2010 Prius and a 207 Fit. The Fit has the 5 speed automatic, not the CVT. It is quite peppy off the line, but looses steam rather quickly. It is loud (engine/road noise), but it corners like it's on rails! It really is a blast to drive, and I do manage between 30 - 34 mpg out of it on my daily commute. The Prius, on the other hand, is much more refined. It's quieter, feels more stable on the road, has far more front leg room, and I'm currently registering 48 mpg on my daily commute. They are definitely different vehicles intended for different purposes, but they both do what they do very well. In our case, the Prius is our Luxury car, and our Fit is essentially our grocery grabbing, errand running, load and go, micro-SUV!
Having driven a manual all my life, and then the prius for four months, i got back in a manual for a work trip and got quite confused, and then angry. though the worst thing i think is other cars idling at the lights, seems so antiquated!
Prior to my Prius I had a Ford Five Hundred AWD with the CVT-in many ways I find the behaviour between the two very similar in terms of acceleration. Where I found the big difference is that the Five Hundred's traction control is nowhere as twitchy as the Prius's was-maybe because of the AWD, possibly.
i laugh at people who have to press buttons on their remotes to unlock their cars or turn keys to start their engines. that's like using a choke in you car...lol.
Haha, yes i remember my wifes first car had a manual choke, and i felt SO DAMNED SMUG when i got my first car and it had an automatic choke (well, fuel injection, but you know what i mean) and a five speed box. In years to come we'll all be crazy old codgers telling the grand kids about "in my day, there were these things called petrol stations!"
My 3rd car was an 83 RX7...It had a manual Choke...I would give anything to have that car again...so fun, so nimble. The manual choke was easy to ignore. Let's hear it for manual chokes and manual shifers....In a few years we will all be riding bikes to work anyway.
