It’s undeniable. Cars with automatic transmissions are steadily gaining popularity in India. And why not? Traffic conditions are bad and our roads aren’t getting any wider. Navigating the urban stop-and-go traffic is invariably a painful experience. Cars with automatic transmissions provide some much needed relief in these situations. They make driving a much more comfortable experience.
They were once considered a luxury. Understandable, since early automatics weren’t very efficient or economical. Buying one at those times in India could be considered a momentary lapse of reason. Today, thanks to advances in technology, the automatics available in the market are a far cry from what was available earlier. There are also a number of different types of automatic transmissions available in India today. There’s the traditional torque converter, the Automated Manual Transmission (AMT), the Dual-Clutch Transmission (DCT) and the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). Of these, the most popular and widely available in the market today are AMTs and CVTs. On the surface, both offer similar benefits - relatively inexpensive to buy, easy to drive and easy to live with. How then do you decide? And which one of these two is actually better? Short answer - CVT. Why? For that you’ll have to understand how it works. We’ll try not to get too technical with this.
How it works
An AMT is essentially a manual transmission with an automatic clutch and gear shifting mechanism.
It shifts gears like a regular manual car without inputs from the driver. Just like a regular manual car, the AMT also has a fixed set of gears. Every time the AMT system changes gears you can feel a sharp jerk. This jerk that occupants of the car feel as the engine revs fall dramatically when a gear is changed by the AMT system is also called shift shock.
In comparison, the CVT system has been designed to provide a smooth driving experience with linear power delivery. It works with a virtually infinite set of gear ratios and continuously changes the ratio as necessary. This is a seamless system that completely eliminates shift shock. In a CVT system, there are no traditional gears with fixed ratios to change. Think of it as a system with one gear and infinite ratios.
A company that has been at the forefront of CVT development since it was first introduced is Nissan. Over the next few pages, we’ll take a closer look at how Nissan’s CVT is not just a step up from regular AMTs, but other CVT systems as well.
