Considering the savings involved in building transmissions with just three shifting parts, you’ll understand why car companies have become very thinking about CVTs lately.

All of this may sound complicated, but it isn’t. Theoretically, a CVT is much less complex than a normal automatic transmission. A planetary equipment automatic transmission – sold in the tens of millions this past year – has hundreds of finely machined moving parts. It offers wearable friction bands and elaborate digital and hydraulic handles. A CVT like the one Variable Speed Transmission explained above has three basic shifting parts: the belt and the two pulleys.

There’s another benefit: The lowest and best ratios are also additional apart than they would be in a conventional step-gear transmitting, giving the transmission a larger “ratio spread” This implies it is even more flexible.

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

As a result, instead of five or six ratios, you get thousands of ratios between the lowest (smallest-diameter pulley setting) and highest (largest-diameter pulley environment).

Here’s a good example: When you start from an end, the control computer de-clamps the insight pulley so the belt turns the smallest diameter while the output pulley (which goes to the tires) clamps tighter to make the belt change its largest diameter. This creates the lowest gear ratio (say, 3.0-to-1) for the quickest acceleration. As acceleration builds, the pc varies the pulley diameters, as conditions dictate, to get the best balance of fuel economic climate and power.