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

All of this may audio complicated, but it isn’t. Theoretically, a CVT is far less complex when compared to a normal automated transmission. A planetary equipment automatic transmission - marketed in the tens of millions last year - has hundreds of finely machined shifting parts. It offers wearable friction bands and elaborate digital and hydraulic regulates. A CVT like the one referred to above has three simple moving parts: the belt and both pulleys.

There’s another benefit: The cheapest and best ratios are also further apart than they might be in a typical step-gear tranny, giving the transmission a larger “ratio spread” This means it is even 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 just the right rpm for the right speed at all times.

As a result, rather than five or six ratios, you get an infinite number of ratios between the lowest (smallest-diameter pulley setting) and highest (largest-diameter pulley establishing).

Here’s a good example: When you begin from an end, the control pc de-clamps the input pulley therefore the belt turns the smallest diameter while the result pulley (which goes to the Variable Speed Transmission wheels) clamps tighter to help make the belt turn its largest diameter. This generates the lowest gear ratio (say, 3.0-to-1) for the quickest acceleration. As velocity builds, the pc varies the pulley diameters, as conditions dictate, to find the best balance of fuel economy and power.