Considering the financial savings involved in building transmissions with just three moving parts, you’ll realize why car companies have grown to be very interested in CVTs lately.

All this may audio complicated, but it isn’t. In theory, a CVT is much less complex when compared to a normal automated transmission. A planetary gear automatic transmission – sold in the tens of millions this past year – has a huge selection of finely machined moving parts. It provides wearable friction bands and elaborate digital and hydraulic controls. A CVT just like the one explained above has three fundamental shifting parts: the belt and both pulleys.

There’s another benefit: The lowest and highest ratios are also further apart than they might be in a conventional step-gear transmitting, giving the tranny a larger “ratio spread” This implies it is a lot more flexible.

The engine can always run at the optimum speed for power or for fuel economy, whatever the wheel speed, this means no revving up or down with each gear change, and the ideal rpm for the right speed at all times.

As a result, rather than five or six ratios, you get thousands of ratios between the lowest (smallest-diameter pulley Variable Speed Transmission environment) and highest (largest-diameter pulley establishing).

Here’s a good example: When you start from a stop, the control pc de-clamps the input pulley therefore the belt turns the tiniest diameter while the result pulley (which would go to the tires) clamps tighter to make the belt switch its largest diameter. This generates the cheapest gear ratio (say, 3.0-to-1) for the quickest acceleration. As quickness builds, the pc varies the pulley diameters, as conditions dictate, to get the best balance of fuel economic climate and power.