Jason, the host of Engineering Explained, gets the first point that we were going to make right out of the way. His latest video tackles things you should or should not be doing in a vehicle equipped with a CVT.
We'd say that step one is to avoid these vehicles, but as Jason points out, that is the cliche joke to make. We just got burned before the video even dives into technical bits.
Regardless, press on, because there are many of you out there that don't fully understand what you can and cannot do with a CVT. We'd argue that a number of you don't even get what those letters mean, because we see the term "CVT Transmission" written out so many times that it makes us want to get a gun and rob an ATM Machine.
Right, back to the video.
Jason uses a Lexus CT200h to highlight the do's and don'ts of driving with a CVT. Here are the don't for you to take in:
- Don't put the car in neutral at a stoplight. There's no need.
- Don't hold yourself on a hill using the throttle if it's a clutch-based CVT.
- Don't coast in neutral, because you're not helping the car here and now you're losing some regen if it's a hybrid.
- Don't neutral drop the car. Why would you do this? Seriously, why?
- Don't go from Drive to Reverse and vice versa without coming to a stop.
