CVT reliability in a long term

[gtman]

I drove manuals for 25 years and city stop and go mostly never bothered me. I looked at all the clutch work as leg exercise. I'm only driving a CVT Civic because Honda doesn't offer the upper models in manual. I actually almost bought a Sport hatch with a manual but couldn't get past the stripped down feature set.

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[Dicecube]

I prefer CVT over manual because I drive 90% in the city. If I had more experience with manual I'd enjoy it more. Test drove a Si 2 weeks ago and I was awful changing gears. I understand the concept but in person it was different.

The driving experience is beautiful with a manual. Cvt is mind numbing boring imo. I understand people with longer commutes prefer a cvt, my question is why I endured a cvt car for this long? My answer is financially it made sense and the direction of my life pointed towards one. In my heart, I will always dislike the cvt.

 

[mis3]

I drove manuals for 25 years and city stop and go mostly never bothered me. I looked at all the clutch work as leg exercise. I'm only driving a CVT Civic because Honda doesn't offer the upper models in manual. I actually almost bought a Sport hatch with a manual but couldn't get past the stripped down feature set.

I guess we luck out in Canada.
SI in Canada is actually the upper trim. It has most of the features of Touring and I think the only features lacking are Honda Sensing, rain sensing wiper.

I actually wanted to buy a Touring but could not get pass the CVT.

 

[Gruber]

Here in southern CA, alot of people doesnt like the city like traffic, faster pace of living and busy street in orange county. They have no problem commuting 1 - 1.5 hr 1 way and move to riverside county. The housing price is also relatively cheaper.

I have a hard time accepting that some people would call 2-3 hours a day spent listening to the radio and staring out the window "a faster pace of living". I like driving too, but I treat it as a pleasure and idle time (even when I'm in gear and in heavy traffic).

 

[xcoreflyup]

I have a hard time accepting that some people would call 2-3 hours a day spent listening to the radio and staring out the window "a faster pace of living". I like driving too, but I treat it as a pleasure and idle time (even when I'm in gear and in heavy traffic).

Out of curiosity, what other place you have lived before beside TN?

 

[CivicXI]

I have a hard time accepting that some people would call 2-3 hours a day spent listening to the radio and staring out the window "a faster pace of living". I like driving too, but I treat it as a pleasure and idle time (even when I'm in gear and in heavy traffic).

I have a hard time accepting that there are some people in this world who are too dense to understand that not everyone is as fortunate as they are. But whatever makes you feel better.

 

[Gruber]

Out of curiosity, what other place you have lived before beside TN?

I guess this is directly related to CVT reliability, so it's not off topic....

I'm in turn curious how this is relevant because spending hours in the car every day remains just that regardless where you live. To satisfy your curiosity, I was born in a city (not suburbia) of more than 1.5 million and I lived in such places as SLC Wasatch Front with over 2 million population in a string of continuous cites connected by one freeway I15. Or Newark-Wilmington - Philadelphia area along I-95.

I'm not a traveling salesman, but when traveling for business I always rent a car and I drove repeatedly in most major metropolitan areas in the US and a few places in Canada and elsewhere, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego Atlanta, New Orleans, Phoenix, Dallas/FW, Denver, Vancouver, Calgary, Detroit, Berlin etc. Not counting just driving through. Traffic jams don't depend only on the traffic magnitude, but also on the available road network. Usually, more populated places have more and wider roads. Everyday stop-and go traffic or a total jam delaying a commute by half an hour and more is not rare in small places. Maybe even more so than for example in California, where usually the freeway may be stuffed for a couple hundred miles and going slow and boring, but steady. If you think the chance of being caught in a long slow commute around Memphis, Nashville or even Knoxville is slim, you are simply mistaken.

 

[frontlinegeek]

I have a hard time accepting that there are some people in this world who are too dense to understand that not everyone is as fortunate as they are.

This is true on so many levels.

 

[frontlinegeek]

If you think the chance of being caught in a long slow commute around Memphis, Nashville or even Knoxville is slim, you are simply mistaken.

Any city with a river and an insufficient number of crossings will experience this frequently. Almost regardless of population. Where I live, the regional pop is only about 120,000 but there are only two bridges across the river and the population is evenly split between the sides. One stupid driver on the main bridge and you went from 15-20 minutes to well over an hour.

 

[Baime]

Again, slightly off topic. I drove manual transmissions for 40 years. I was having the same thoughts as OP.
- I live in the city, and often get caught in traffic. The CVT would work better for stop and go traffic.
- I was concerned about CVT reliability. I did read that this is Honda's 3rd or 4th iteration of the CVT, and they hold up much better. I also read that the EX-T has the slightly larger Accord CVT. I like that.
- The CVT does offer decent accelleration compared to older standard automatic transmissions with 4 cylinder engines.
- The dealers stock very few of the MT cars. I was standing in front of a CVT version that I liked. (Impatient).

The result: I took a chance, and bought a car with the CVT, hoping that I would like it.

My review after 100 miles of ownership:
- The CVT is a solid automatic transmission, and I believe it will work just fine for me.
- I believe I would like the car better with the manual transmission. If I still feel strongly this way in a couple of years, I will consider taking the financial hit, and selling my car to get one of the last 2019s with the manual transmissions.

PS: I'm a strong believer in buying a good car, maintaining it properly, and keeping if for at least 10 years to minimize the total annual cost of owning and operating the car. (I'm cheap, or more correctly, frugal.) Cheap = not buying beer for your buddies at the pub when it is your turn to buy. Frugal = not being wasteful with your money. Fixing your own house and cars when possible, and keeping old cars going longer is very frugal.

JP

 

[xcoreflyup]

I guess this is directly related to CVT reliability, so it's not off topic....

I'm in turn curious how this is relevant because spending hours in the car every day remains just that regardless where you live. To satisfy your curiosity, I was born in a city (not suburbia) of more than 1.5 million and I lived in such places as SLC Wasatch Front with over 2 million population in a string of continuous cites connected by one freeway I15. Or Newark-Wilmington - Philadelphia area along I-95.

I'm not a traveling salesman, but when traveling for business I always rent a car and I drove repeatedly in most major metropolitan areas in the US and a few places in Canada and elsewhere, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego Atlanta, New Orleans, Phoenix, Dallas/FW, Denver, Vancouver, Calgary, Detroit, Berlin etc. Not counting just driving through. Traffic jams don't depend only on the traffic magnitude, but also on the available road network. Usually, more populated places have more and wider roads. Everyday stop-and go traffic or a total jam delaying a commute by half an hour and more is not rare in small places. Maybe even more so than for example in California, where usually the freeway may be stuffed for a couple hundred miles and going slow and boring, but steady. If you think the chance of being caught in a long slow commute around Memphis, Nashville or even Knoxville is slim, you are simply mistaken.

I would share why would I think the pace is faster here.

As someone who grew up in Hong Kong and now live in Orange County (which is a tab slower in contrast)

You don't just sit there when you hit a jam. You find a way to blow through the jam and get to the destination on time. There are sections of my daily commute feels like a slow version of Morocco street Grand Prix mix with SUV, trucks, minivan and old camry...pack as hel! but everyone is looking for the changing lane spot to get ahead. It is obvious that Cops more than likely to turn a blind eye to speeder during rush hours.

You might ask why being on time? No customer in the world would be happy if you are charging over $200-400 an hour and be late 10-20 min every other day.

This is just the part on daily commute. I havent start other aspect of our daily activity.

Just give you an idea, This is an accurate depiction of Hong Kong. 7 million of people in an island peninsula city that is slight bigger than orange county.

 

[BarracksSi]

I have a hard time accepting that some people would call 2-3 hours a day spent listening to the radio and staring out the window "a faster pace of living". I like driving too, but I treat it as a pleasure and idle time (even when I'm in gear and in heavy traffic).

Sometimes a commute is inevitable. We'd all like to live near our workplace, and ideally, work and home and a good school are all within ten minutes of each other.

Let's say you luck out and can live in such a situation. But then your job changes, and now you're working on the far side of town. Or the local real estate market makes a jump, and you can't afford the rent (or property taxes, if you're the owner), so you have to move someplace cheaper -- which is usually farther away from your job and, maybe, in a different school district. Or your luck goes bad, someone in your family falls ill and gets hospitalized, and you have to move someplace cheap so you can afford to pay the six-figure medical bills.

Those are the simplest reasons why people get stuck with huge commutes. Around here, a lot of office professional types are hopping from one company to another as contracts change; or service industry people, making low wages, can't afford to live near the high-rent areas where they serve. So a LOT of people spend between thirty and ninety minutes driving. I'm lucky enough to spend just 20 minutes on side roads, and I'm not looking forward to the days when I might have to drive three times as far.

 

[raynist]

I would say that most, if not all cities over the 1 million population mark in the US/CAN are pretty much insanely expensive for housing. Certainly all that are 2 million and up in the metro area.

Pittsburgh has 2.4ish million in the metro and has extremely inexpensive housing.

 

[Dicecube]

All valid points but I don't get why people worry about cvt longevity over their own lifespan as referenced on the first page.

 

[Empyrean]

Again, slightly off topic. I drove manual transmissions for 40 years. I was having the same thoughts as OP.
- I live in the city, and often get caught in traffic. The CVT would work better for stop and go traffic.
- I was concerned about CVT reliability. I did read that this is Honda's 3rd or 4th iteration of the CVT, and they hold up much better. I also read that the EX-T has the slightly larger Accord CVT. I like that.
- The CVT does offer decent accelleration compared to older standard automatic transmissions with 4 cylinder engines.
- The dealers stock very few of the MT cars. I was standing in front of a CVT version that I liked. (Impatient).

The result: I took a chance, and bought a car with the CVT, hoping that I would like it.

My review after 100 miles of ownership:
- The CVT is a solid automatic transmission, and I believe it will work just fine for me.
- I believe I would like the car better with the manual transmission. If I still feel strongly this way in a couple of years, I will consider taking the financial hit, and selling my car to get one of the last 2019s with the manual transmissions.

PS: I'm a strong believer in buying a good car, maintaining it properly, and keeping if for at least 10 years to minimize the total annual cost of owning and operating the car. (I'm cheap, or more correctly, frugal.) Cheap = not buying beer for your buddies at the pub when it is your turn to buy. Frugal = not being wasteful with your money. Fixing your own house and cars when possible, and keeping old cars going longer is very frugal.

JP

Where did you see that the EX-T has the larger Accord CVT? Was it the sedan and coups or hatchback?

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