How to drive CVT

An '03 Solara is a pretty conventional slushbox that could benefit greatly for a fluid change--unless if you are ok with the transmission dying with its "lifetime" fluid in it--thought differently, lots of engines have lifetime oil in them, they will run until they don't, and the oil will have made it to the end of the lifetime of the engine.
When I took my Malibu in for service, the advisor asked if I wanted to change the transmission fluid. I asked something along the lines of "isn't it supposed to be lifetime? and he answered along the lines of what you said. (y)
 
Yeah, I hate that car. It was a family hand me down. Has the turning radius of a cruise ship. LOL Doesn't even have a cabin air filter.:( But, was I a rough patch, and needed some wheels. Healing up from back surgery, again. Once that's healed, I'll change the fluid and filter, then do some spill and fills to get he muck out. Useless car, 2 door with 4 bucket seats. Runs well though. I'll give it some TLC when I get better. Don't use it much, I'm retired. Gonna need it to get back and forth to Physical Therapy. Easy to work on. Has that 4cyl in it. Plenty of room under the hood
 
On a Prius, the throttle isn't directly connected to the engine. It's more like a suggestion from the the driver about how fast you want the car to go. The computer makes all the decisions regarding the throttle body position, as the engine load varies relative to the amount of acceleration depending on how much energy the ECU decides to take from the traction battery at any particular time.

As was mentioned before, the CVT in a Prius operates entirely differently than "normal" CVT transmissions and has no chains or or belts. They are very robust and rarely wear out before the car does.

To prevent excess engine wear, treat it the same as any ICE vehicle and drive it gently at first when the engine is cold to give it a chance to warm up before doing any heavy accelerating.
 
That's fantastic news ! 2 Toyo trannys that don't need service. Somebody tell Honda how to build a tranny :)
They do, have had at least 9 Honda CVTs, always serviced by a Honda Certified Master Technician who has consistently reccomended driving them normally, NEVER shifting from forward to reverse (or the opposite) unless COMPLETELY stopped and a spill-n-fill using ONLY genuine Honda fluid at 30k intervals. Have never had an issue following this advice.
 
The one thing with CVTs is that you should stay on top of the fluid changes. I don’t think that they can handle neglect like a conventional automatic transmission
I’m in that camp and change my fluid once a year. So far so good. But, my niece through marriage proved this theory wrong. She went to Penn state, so lots of hot highway cruises the the hills from northern Ohio in a 2017 Altima. @150k I serviced her cvt (never touched). What came out resembled a neglected diesel oil change, I was in shock that not only did the cvt shift well, it drove as nice as one of my new well maintained cvts. Two drain and fills later and the fluid was clear. A pan drop reveled next to no fuzz on the magnets. Meanwhile, not long ago, a cvt may grenade at low miles. This was over a year ago and it still runs like a Swiss watch. My 07 murano is probably still running a college kid around @ over 300k. A trusted mechanic for Nissan says that cvt failures are a rare occurrence compared to 10 yrs ago, and they’ve strangely tuned them to run hotter to burn off condensation. Common sense would say to service now more than ever.
 
There are thousands and thousands of Prius cabs that get driven with 80%+ throttle everywhere for 3-4-500k miles, and not too many transmission failures. 40% throttle to your desired speed would be fine. I tend to run the Outback at about 25% throttle to 95km/h just to avoid fake gear shifts and maximize efficiency, but I assume a Prius doesn't simulate shifts?
 
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