Cars, etc.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

I need to read up on those since I've fallen out of the loop on them. I'm thinking the old Subaru Justy used a belt running on a pair of pulleys that'd open/compress to change the circumference of the part the belt ran on.

My daughter's Civic also has a CVT. But I wouldn't think the belt/pulley thing could handle 118 horses. And do so without huge power losses. Belt would have to be pretty darned tight to not slip and that would mean a lot of friction.

It's pretty cool, though. You can be at a stop, hit the throttle just enough to get up to 2k rpm, then keep the tach needle there and it'll go from zero to 60 (eventually) without the tach moving and no perception of any kind of shifting.