Honda/Nissan/(Mitsubishi) merger

[GS1150Pilot]

I think this is an interesting development in hydrogen:

One of hydrogen’s biggest advantages over EVs is that one can refuel the car about as quickly as filling a tank of gasoline. However, Toyota is striving to make this even easier. Instead of going to a hydrogen station to pump fuel into the car, Toyota has proposed making small cartridges that one simply plugs into the vehicle’s fuel inlet. They operate similarly to those finger-sized compressed air cartridges that some cyclists use to refill their tires on the road.

How Toyota Is Balancing Its Hydrogen And 745-mile Solid-state Battery Efforts

[argonsagas]

That being said, CVTs ARE cheaper to manufacture and are about as exciting to drive as a lawn mower. I do not believe that Nissan went down the CVT road to enhance the driver experience so much as to angle vehicles toward drivers who do not love the feel of gears but who love fuel economy-and to cut costs.

That just about covers it.
My neighbour owns a low-mileage Nissan Pathfinder that is out of warranty.r. After we discussed the symptoms he was having I thought it sounded like low fluid, but I could not find a way to check the level.
I looked up the CVT history and then gave him the first part of the bad news: there is no way that an average owner can check transmission fluid level.
That is because the vehicle has no external dipstick or any other accessible physical or electronic means to do a simple fluid check.

Instead the vehicle must be raised on a level hoist and then you have to find a bolt/plug from underneath the vehicle and remove it.
At that point it gets "funny"...or, if you wish, close to stupid.
Removing the plug/bolt does not allow you to check the actual fluid level. You do this only to see if any fluid runs out.

If fluid does run out then there is enough fluid.
If nothing comes out you have an instant problem: as the level is below the hole, and thus low, but you cannot tell by how much. That means you must drain the CVT entirely and replace all the fluid with new stock.

Nissan says it is highly recommended that only a dealership do this as it requires special tools and expertise to do this and it is critically important that only the exact recommended amount of fluid is installed.

The second bad news was the tranny problems are common and, as in his case the CVT must be replaced.....$4,000 please and thank you.
.

[GS1150Pilot]

That just about covers it.
My neighbour owns a low-mileage Nissan Pathfinder that is out of warranty.r. After we discussed the symptoms he was having I thought it sounded like low fluid, but I could not find a way to check the level.
I looked up the CVT history and then gave him the first part of the bad news: there is no way that an average owner can check transmission fluid level.
That is because the vehicle has no external dipstick or any other accessible physical or electronic means to do a simple fluid check.

Instead the vehicle must be raised on a level hoist and then you have to find a bolt/plug from underneath the vehicle and remove it.
At that point it gets "funny"...or, if you wish, close to stupid.
Removing the plug/bolt does not allow you to check the actual fluid level. You do this only to see if any fluid runs out.

If fluid does run out then there is enough fluid.
If nothing comes out you have an instant problem: as the level is below the hole, and thus low, but you cannot tell by how much. That means you must drain the CVT entirely and replace all the fluid with new stock.

Nissan says it is highly recommended that only a dealership do this as it requires special tools and expertise to do this and it is critically important that only the exact recommended amount of fluid is installed.

The second bad news was the tranny problems are common and, as in his case the CVT must be replaced.....$4,000 please and thank you.
.

That happened to a friend of mine with his Dodge Caliber. We were headed from Phoenix to Flagstaff and the car went into limp mode as the grade increased. I checked the oil in the crankcase and it was fine. Fuel was over 3/4 of a tank on a reasonably accurate gauge. I looked for the transmission dipstick and discovered there was no such item. The vehicle was towed to Dodge in Flag, where the dealer gave my friend the exact same rigmarole of an evaluation. He chose to have them exchange the fluid but traded it in on a used Toyota Tacoma 2wd the next week. Any fluid filled system on a passenger car that cannot be serviced by the lay person, or at least by the average shop, should raise eyebrows.

[oldGSfan]

I had a Subaru Outback with CVT and it's the only car I ever found myself driving under the speed limit when just toodling along, where the normal 15 mph over the speed limit race track isn't happening - rare times these days. It's sort of weird. It's nothing in the grand scheme of things, but I do like to feel a mechanical engagement with machinery. That will pass as time goes on. I think some have put fake electronically controlled 'gears' in them.

[GS1150Pilot]

That lack of gears is another thing I dislike about EVs like Teslas.

[Baatfam]

Toyota probably knows better than we do.

Maybe....But if so, how come they can't make a vehicle I would be interested in buying?

[Mary Hinge]

Hydrogen will never be viable.

Having worked in the Industrial Gases industry for 30+yrs I can't agree with "never"

[Mary Hinge]

CVT is not about being cheap. They have a wider gear ratio spread than a geared transmission, and they can be electronically tuned, to keep the engine at the torque peak at all times. They are a brilliant idea, in concept. My Civic has a CVT and it's the least of my cars concerns.

Near the end of my carreer with Nissan, several old Nissan folk, who had moved over to the transmission affiliate, Jatco, were calling me, trying to get me to join. They knew Nissan was going all in on CVT, and they needed field service engineers to get ready. Thank god my (ex) wife said no, to another physical move. Living those years of mass failures wouldn't have been fun.

My Wife bought a new Nissan in 2012, in the 5yrs she owned it it had the CVT replaced 3 times under warranty but, for reasons beyond me, she still loved it. The POS had only covered 32,000mls total when I finally persuaded her to get it gone.

[Nessism]

That just about covers it.
My neighbour owns a low-mileage Nissan Pathfinder that is out of warranty.r. After we discussed the symptoms he was having I thought it sounded like low fluid, but I could not find a way to check the level.
I looked up the CVT history and then gave him the first part of the bad news: there is no way that an average owner can check transmission fluid level.
That is because the vehicle has no external dipstick or any other accessible physical or electronic means to do a simple fluid check.

Instead the vehicle must be raised on a level hoist and then you have to find a bolt/plug from underneath the vehicle and remove it.
At that point it gets "funny"...or, if you wish, close to stupid.
Removing the plug/bolt does not allow you to check the actual fluid level. You do this only to see if any fluid runs out.

If fluid does run out then there is enough fluid.
If nothing comes out you have an instant problem: as the level is below the hole, and thus low, but you cannot tell by how much. That means you must drain the CVT entirely and replace all the fluid with new stock.

Nissan says it is highly recommended that only a dealership do this as it requires special tools and expertise to do this and it is critically important that only the exact recommended amount of fluid is installed.

The second bad news was the tranny problems are common and, as in his case the CVT must be replaced.....$4,000 please and thank you.
.

Manual transmissions don't have a dipstick. Same routine. As long as there isn't an oil leak, you don't need to worry about the fluid level. The vehicle doesn't consume trans fluid, like some engines burn oil, thus a dipstick is not needed.

[Nessism]

I had a Subaru Outback with CVT and it's the only car I ever found myself driving under the speed limit when just toodling along, where the normal 15 mph over the speed limit race track isn't happening - rare times these days. It's sort of weird. It's nothing in the grand scheme of things, but I do like to feel a mechanical engagement with machinery. That will pass as time goes on. I think some have put fake electronically controlled 'gears' in them.

I'm not sure about the Outback, but the Imprenza I drove, had fake shifts coded into the CVT controller logic. Honda's new Civic hybrid has simulated shifts also, and there isn't any transmission at all.

[GS1150Pilot]

Manual transmissions don't have a dipstick. Same routine. As long as there isn't an oil leak, you don't need to worry about the fluid level. The vehicle doesn't consume trans fluid, like some engines burn oil, thus a dipstick is not needed.

Manual transmissions are easy to check, though, and mostly don't burn fluid. I've seen a ton of CVTs that have roasted the fluid.

[GS1150Pilot]

Nissan recommends CVT fluid changes every 60K under hard driving conditions, but at the shop, we saw burnt fluid in vehicles with less than 40K and were replacing transmissions in cars with less than 100K with some regularity (well, I should qualify that, since a fair number of customers elected to ditch the car when they got the estimate of a new transmission-and when LKQ was out of stock on decent used ones).

[Grimly]

Manual transmissions don't have a dipstick. Same routine. As long as there isn't an oil leak, you don't need to worry about the fluid level. The vehicle doesn't consume trans fluid, like some engines burn oil, thus a dipstick is not needed.

Yes, but traditionally there is at least a means of checking it via a level/ filler plug.

[Nessism]

Manual transmissions are easy to check, though, and mostly don't burn fluid. I've seen a ton of CVTs that have roasted the fluid.

"Roasted the fluid" won't affect the level. You guys are complaining that there is no dipstick, and I'm just pointing out that many transmissions don't have them. You check the level the same way as a manual transmission.

The Nissan Consult diagnostic computer can check the transmission control module for logged high temperature events. Change the fluid when such events exceed the threshold in the factory manual for the vehicle in question.

[rphillips]

Is anybody going to say the CVT's are any better, or cheaper, than what we've had previously?