Images that make you laugh

[bilby]

Aint no design engineer, but continuously variable trannies would intuitively seem to to be the ticket to efficiency and comfort.

DAF tried that back in 1958; It never really caught on.

Turns out that the ticket to efficiency and comfort is electric motors; They can generate decent torque and power at any speed, so they don't need gearing at all. You can even power them from an internal combustion engine (running only at the optimum speed for power generation, so it too needs no gearing) if you want to avoid the delays inherent in recharging a battery.

Electric and hybrid cars were always the answer, only held back by the cost and weight of motors and of batteries - the latter of which have become far lighter and cheaper in recent years, as an unintended consequence of the (futile) effort to find ways to buffer intermittent grid-scale generation from wind and solar power (Motors too have become far smaller and lighter, due mainly to the availability of better and lighter magnets).

Hybrid railway locomotives have been a thing since 1925; Hybrid cars were the obvious next step, once the various components could be made small and lightweight enough to be viable.

 

[ZiprHead]

Aint no design engineer, but continuously variable trannies would intuitively seem to to be the ticket to efficiency and comfort.

CVTs had a pretty rocky start. They were quite prone to breakdowns. They've gotten better,

My wife's '23 Kia has a CVT but they make it feel like it has separate gears.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

 

[Elixir]

Aint no design engineer, but continuously variable trannies would intuitively seem to to be the ticket to efficiency and comfort.

CVTs had a pretty rocky start. They were quite prone to breakdowns. They've gotten better,

My wife's '23 Kia has a CVT but they make it feel like it has separate gears.

Is is simply a range of rpm’s, or does it “shift” between speeds? I guess (don’t know shit) the ideal engine speed for acceleration is different from what’s most efficient while cruising?

 

[ZiprHead]

“shift” between speeds

This.

 

[Elixir]

“shift” between speeds

This.

Not a whole lot different feel from a 6- speed automatic, then?

 

[ZiprHead]

“shift” between speeds

This.

Not a whole lot different feel from a 6- speed automatic, then?

Yup.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not enough people want them to make it economical to keep producing manual gearboxes.

And automatics have been getting better and better.

Early automatics only worked well for lighter vehicles with large engines - so they caught on for cars in the USA where gas was cheap and engine power and torque were high, but not so much in Europe where gas was expensive and engine capacity was much smaller, or for trucks, where the loads are extreme, and even small losses in the transmission would lead to very short lifespan due to heating and wear.

And the original automatics were sluggish to respond. I was a holdout for a long time--I'd tried automatic, found that if you stomped on the gas it was a few seconds before the car actually would accelerate. Useless for accelerating out of the way of an idiot. Now, there's no situation where I don't think it is as good as I could do it.

 

[Bomb#20]

Aint no design engineer, but continuously variable trannies would intuitively seem to to be the ticket to efficiency and comfort.

That may well be; but people are already griping about 87 genders, and now you want there to be infinitely many?!?

 

[TV and credit cards]

continuously variable trannies

Saved.