Emailing "Green Car Tech, Soon at a Dealership Near You"
If in the next couple of years you find yourself in the market for a new car, things will start to look a noticeably different when you peek under the hood.
Forbes has a story on
efficient car engines and a slideshow on the
10 green car technologies that can dramatically improve MPG ratings for near-future cars. These include continuously clean diesel, variable transmissions like Nissan's (pictured above, under the Volt), which is already available in some of its vehicles direct-injection, by-wire vehicle control systems, and plug-in hybrids like Chevy's Volt.
Maybe a 30+ MPG baseline isn't so crazy after all.
Wikipedia has some interesting entries in its CVT "advantages" list.
- CVTs can compensate for changing vehicle speeds, allowing the engine speed to remain at its level of peak efficiency. This improves fuel economy and by effect, exhaust emissions.
- CVTs operate smoothly since there are no gear changes which cause sudden jerks.
- Very few problems have been reported with the CVT transmission, Thus it is cheaper to have.
- There are 25% less moving parts to a CVT transmission
- It is also cheaper to repair.
- The fluids do not have to be changed as often as an automatic transmission
Given these, the disadvantages, most of which boil down to preference, seem easily surmountable.