I have drivenvehicles with aCVT a few times, they are interesting,the main thing the current oneslack is giving the driver an ability to rev up the engine for torque/power, like we M3 owners have with a stick or the tiptronic. I have read engineers are currently working to develop different ways to give the drivermore input - perhaps a switch toflick (ie. economy versusperformance mode), or a lever to move (the further you move the lever, the higher the engine revs when accelerating, but not beyond where maximum torque is delivered).

 

They could try to make CVT more like a 21-speed bike with an array of cogs.....i have not driven a CVT, Urb, what would you do with CVR if you are in a hurry (like with MTX, you can drop down a gear or two)?
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Og kush seeds

 

If you had a "pure" CVT, you'dpunch thegas, and you'd livewiththe performance the CVT chose to give you. Which in my experience (since I tried punching the gas just to see) is not bad, but not great either,smoother and betterthan a non-tiptronic traditional geared auto, but the CVT certainly does not allow the engine to rev up much, which limits the power.

Audi has a CVT available(they call it a multitronic transmission) in several of its models, which they purposely programmed to have 'slight hiccups' so that it would feel like it has gears when in fact it does not. And it has a manual shift mode, which has 6 simulated gears, which functions just like the Mazda tiptronic, but since the gears are fake and no real shifting is occuring, there is no shift lag and thus better performance,with the additional plus being thatrapidfire shifting activity puts virtually no additionalstrain on the tranny (versus whatwould be the case in a tranny with real gears). Audi has had this out for about 4 or 5 years now in various models.

The Dodge Caliber (a mediocre car IMO, butnevertheless a cheaper production model on which you canget a CVT now), has whatDodge hasdubbed a "CVT2" which gives the driver manual control with six simulated gears -marketed as theautostickĀ® feature- which is a not very well disguised ripoff of the Audi idea.