Archive for December, 2011

If vehicles such as the GT-R and the Leaf weren’t enough to get you excited about motoring, Nissan has made some recent announcements that will.

Changes made to the XTronic CVT will result in it having as wider gear ratio, 10% better fuel economy, 40% less friction than previously, adaptive shift logic and lower cabin noise.  This means a silky smooth driving experience with the transmission always taking advantage of the engine’s ideal power band.  It also means which I predict will amount to best in class fuel economy.  No other auto maker is using a CVT as widespread as Nissan and this I believe will prove to be a major competitive advantage going down the road.

Nissan Altima New CVT Test Mule

Autoblog wrote a great story yesterday about this technology.  When mated to a hybrid and a supercharged 2.5 cylinder motor (possibly completely different from the existing QR25 engine), we should see output matching the award-winning VQ series engine.

“Nissan developed a thinner pulley axle and a new aluminum belt that’s meticulously machined and stronger than the outgoing version, reducing flex. That, coupled with a more compact oil pump, means less pressure between the pulleys and belt, making for a more stout setup. All in, the gear ratio range is an impressive 7.0 for engines displacing anything above two liters, and when equipped with Nissan’s Adaptive Shift Control, engineers can program more than 1,000 different shift patterns to span the spectrum from city driving to sport. One engineer told us that the new CVT will continue to incorporate the faux ratios of previous vehicles, but at launch, this gearbox is likely to sport eight and, “if the market demands it, we could even do 10.” No, we have no idea why you’d want that, but when it comes to the average car buyer, sometimes it’s all about the specs.”

My car is 100% paid off,  warranty is good till 100k/2015 for major components and 2018/120k miles for the transmission.  In the interests of becoming debt-free and being practical, it doesn’t appear I’ll be upgrading anytime soon.  As with computers, the technological improvements are fun to think about even if the impact on my daily life is minimal.

After getting an ECM update and beefier torsion rods installed per TSB, I’m pretty happy with the CVT.  I thought it was gimmicky to have a ‘shiftless’ transmission in a car, but I really like it.  My partner’s Honda has a 5 speed transmission just feels different.  The extra second or however long it takes to switch a gear is perceivable.  If it was a powerful v6 or v8 I might be more used to it, but with a 4, it just feels like power lag.

This new transmission along with a new hybrid system should debut in the 2013 model year.