5 Tips For Driving A Car Using CVT |C! Magazine

CVT, short for Continuously Variable Transmission, is becoming a popular choice for car manufacturers nowadays because of their ability to seamlessly change effective gear ratios without being complicated. It’s cheaper too! These are the 5 things to keep in mind while driving a CVT vehicle:

1. Do NOT Hold a Vehicle in an Uphill With the Throttle Pedal

Especially on traditional CVTs, these transmissions have a clutch that engages and disengages the power from the engine to the transmission. So when on an uphill incline, just hold on the brakes instead.

2. It’s Okay to Floor the Accelerator Pedal at a Low RPM

Because the nature of CVTs, putting the pedal-to-the-metal starting from a low RPM is perfectly fine. The car, its computer, and transmission will all adjust accordingly.

3. Inching Your Way in Traffic is Okay

Especially in the city streets of the Philippines, we are guilty of inching our way through traffic. For the new CVTs and E-CVT, they have torque converters that protect the transmission, so inching through traffic is okay.

4. Go to a Complete Stop When “Changing Gears”

When shifting from drive to reverse or vice versa, it is imperative to be at a complete stop so that mechanical parts that do their movements to accomplish the task aren’t damaged in the process.

5. Do NOT Neutral Drop Your Car

With more and more sporty cars adopting CVTs, it is tempting to launch those cars by applying power at neutral then quickly shifting to drive. This poses a problem. Revving at a neutral state will have the engine related shafts rotating but the transmission shafts on a still. When it gets dropped from neutral to drive, there is just so much power for the parts of the transmission like the torque converter, bands and clutches to grab on to. So when parts that are designed to shift gears are treated to handle launches, they wear out quicker than they should.