Hello

Mincey · May 14, 2020

Talking of going as fast backwards, this is awesome!

BigChange · May 14, 2020

Paddle shifts are useful for controlling speed on a long downhill without having to on/off brake or worse, sit on the brakes. Very occasionally might use them to change down before overtaking but otherwise they are of little use (to me).

Ardent · May 14, 2020

Good to read the replies. I can see they have a use, if limited.

Mincey · May 15, 2020

21 hours ago, Ardent said:

I found the same vid last night. I also tend to think the E often gets dropped in conversation. E-CVT and CVT are not the same, but used interchangeably. I believe the e-cvt in the new corolla is slightly different again. A sort of actual 1st gear before transitioning to normal.

Scotty, the shy and reserved car expert on YouTube has done a video about the Corolla's E-CVT:

Thackeray · May 15, 2020

6 hours ago, Mincey said:

Scotty, the shy and reserved car expert on YouTube has done a video about the Corolla's E-CVT:

He talks a lot but it's a bit misleading that he's standing next to a hybrid Toyota. I don't think he's actually talking about the e-CVT or power split device on hybrid Toyotas and Lexuses. Instead he seems to be talking about a conventional belt-drive CVT that Toyota announced in the last couple of years with something called a launch gear.

As far as I can see, lacking many clear details,Toyota were trying to deal with the problem that a lot of people like their gearboxes to jolt as they switch ratios (because people have been used to this for 100 years and can't get used to the idea that it's not necessary). So this belt-drive CVT has a launch gear to get you started quickly (by contrast, the hybrid e-CVT has electric motors to get you started quickly) and it has fixed ratios so that the driver can feel the jolt as it changes ratios. Here's a video that explains what this new belt drive CVT gear box does.

So presumably it also has a torque converter like a conventional automatic. Maybe I've misunderstood this - if anyone has more details it would be interesting to hear them.

It also seems to have a lot more moving parts than the mechanically simple and elegant e-CVT. I'm sure it works well but for reliability I'd choose the hybrid transmission with few moving parts.

Ardent · May 15, 2020

No further posts from the poster that started the cvt debate. 🧐

Jayw13702 · May 15, 2020

No further posts from the poster that started the cvt debate. [emoji3166]

A troll

Sent from my Iphone using Tapatalk

royoftherovers · May 15, 2020

20 minutes ago, Ardent said:

No further posts from the poster that started the cvt debate. 🧐

If you mean ROYT then send him a pm?

If not him,then who are you referring to Jason ?

It would be really really helpful if each post was numbered sequentially, you know !

Ardent · May 17, 2020

As a slight digression. The RX400h must know I am thinking of changing as she put in a fantastic performance today on a 160 mile round trip.

On board puter AVG MPG 36.2.

For a 15 year old 3.2 V6 152,000 mile RX400h I think that is pretty damn good.

Thackeray · May 20, 2020

On 5/14/2020 at 7:12 PM, BigChange said:

Paddle shifts are useful for controlling speed on a long downhill without having to on/off brake or worse, sit on the brakes.

On conventional cars I've always rigorously avoided riding the brakes to avoid wear and changed down a gear to use engine braking.

But on the Lexus hybrid drive I've adopted the habit of using the brakes instead of engine braking on a long downhill to make use of the energy regeneration. I try to keep the needle away from the limit on the energy regeneration gauge as I assume that the mechanical brakes begin to come on when the needle reaches its lower limit.

The Hybrid Assistant app suggests that it's possible to brake without using the mechanical brakes at all. This page from their website also includes some interesting graphs generated from the app which show the contribution to braking force at varying car speeds both from regeneration and from the mechanical braking. As I understand it, the first graph represents braking force in Nm as the brake pedal is applied four times while the car slows (blue line). The orange line shows the regenerative braking force; the grey line shows the total braking force. The second graph shows a closeup of the first section of the first graph. The note says that braking is entirely mechanical below 7 km/h.

Also interesting from the other graphs is that when the hybrid Battery temperature goes above 46C, braking is entirely mechanical with no regeneration.