My mother drives a 2012 Murano with a super sweet CVT. I've never met a CVT I liked, so for me to say this surprises me. Prior to this she drove a 2004 Murano with a [censored] arse piece-o-garbage how-i-loathed-thee CVT. The mannerisms and personality between these two are night and day, and I am amazed how much can change in a generation.
There is a single negative characteristic that has carried over to the current Nissan CVT: it will not "downshift" when going down hills. For example, I'm travelling 70mph at 2k rpm and approach a 1mi decline, revs stay at 2k rpm for the downward run. Being the engineer nerd that I am, I throw the gearbox to neutral to save this wasted energy and add the extra .0000001 miles to the tank of gas.
A regular geared automatic will drop to near-idle revs when the energy is not needed on a downhill slope. On my stick shift Volvo I drop it in neutral as well.
I am curious, is this shifting to and from neutral at speed doing any long term harm to the transmission? Can my OCD regarding wasted energy be justified? Thanks.
There is a single negative characteristic that has carried over to the current Nissan CVT: it will not "downshift" when going down hills. For example, I'm travelling 70mph at 2k rpm and approach a 1mi decline, revs stay at 2k rpm for the downward run. Being the engineer nerd that I am, I throw the gearbox to neutral to save this wasted energy and add the extra .0000001 miles to the tank of gas.
A regular geared automatic will drop to near-idle revs when the energy is not needed on a downhill slope. On my stick shift Volvo I drop it in neutral as well.
I am curious, is this shifting to and from neutral at speed doing any long term harm to the transmission? Can my OCD regarding wasted energy be justified? Thanks.
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