[geeks] electric cars

[velociraptor]

On 10/23/06, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
> Some things I wonder about:
>
> The Prius has a continuously variable transmission, and I wonder how
> reliable they are and how much they cost to fix relative to standard
> automatics.

>From what I know of CVT and mechanics (my ex is a hobbiest drag racer
and has wrenched for ~30 yrs), if it is like the Subaru CVT that was
in the Justy, they are much easier to fix than typical automatics and
pretty reliable.  The Justy's CVT was a belt system, iirc.

Most mechanics will opt to send all non-CVT automatic transmission
work out to specialists for anything other than very basic repairs.
Or, completely swap the transmission if it's too big of a repair to be
cost effective.

The ex is one of the few mechanics I've ever known that could do the
math for engines as well as the hands-on[0].  He wouldn't work on
automatic transmissions after going through training on them as he
considered transmissions to be too much of a time-sync and too fiddly
to be profitable, not to mention the investment in specialized tools
necessary to really do the work the "right way"[1].

=Nadine=
[0] I tried to talk him into a B.S., but he "hates college boys" so he
never went beyond vocational training and Black's Racing School.
[1] If your spouses think your geek spending is over budget, find a
hobbiest mechanic and get him/her to tell your spouse the value of
their 6' tall rolling tool chest and it's contents. :-D  At that time,
the ex's SnapOn tool chest probably had close to $10K of tools in it,
and that was early 80's $$.