That's far from a new technology. While it's had somewhat of a resurgence lately (my wife's 2003 MINI has the CVT transmission) the first car I drove with such a transmission was a DAF in 1970 or so, and DAF had been building CVTs since the late '50s.
The DAF was most definitely a low-level consumer car, but the technology is even older than that - it was used in motorcycles almost 50 years earlier! On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:54:36PM -0400, Igor Roshchin wrote: > > Sorry, Paul, - it might not be exactly what you a looking for, but > I thought I'd share this thought. > > This is not the cutting-edge technology, but it is something I am > rather impressed from the technical point of view: the stepless > transmission in mid-consumer-level passenger cars (e.g. Nissan Rogue, > Nissan Versa). > > I heard about their existence several years ago, and I heard > that some companies have been simulating gear-shifting (the jerky > motion) on top of it, but I didn't appreciate that they appeared > in mid-to-low level consumer cars. > They came to the market so quietly that many consumers (including > technically-reasonable ones) don't even know about existence of such > technology. > > Igor > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 04:13:55PM -0400, paul stenquist wrote: > > What's the latest gee-whiz technology in the auto biz. Looking for > > topics that are unusual and somewhat obscure. For example the ceramic > > brake disc is potentially a good topic, the hydrogen fuel cell is > > probably not. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
