The First Geared CVT and It Will Blow Your Mind [video] | Hacker News Reader

The First Geared CVT and It Will Blow Your Mind [video]

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31 pointschii9 comments

One major roadblock I can see is that this is much more complex than Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive, which replaces all of those complex cams/elliptical gears with a pair of electric motors.

Not every manufacture is going to want to build a hybrid system into their cars, but an eCVT can be built with a single electric motor that acts as a speed controller for the planet gears. And this motor could be effectively controlled directly by a generator attached to the ICE, removing the need for a second battery to control it.

So I think this is going to stay a bike/scooter/motorcycle system and won't make the leap into automotive.

> One major roadblock I can see is that this is much more complex than Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive, which replaces all of those complex cams/elliptical gears with a pair of electric motors.

I could make that transmission in a machine shop. The synergy drive needs a multi billion dollar semiconductor industry.

The complexity reduced is maintenance from reduction in moving parts.

> The synergy drive needs a multi billion dollar semiconductor industry.

Your machine shop needs a multi billion dollar metallurgy industry as well. The difference is mostly the age of the industries, metal working has been around for much longer and the knowledge is nolonger confined to a small group.

This isn't about knowledge but ability. There are guides to build a lathe from scratch in your back yard using scrap metal. You can't do that with semi conductors.

Late to the reply, but someone can absolutely build an functional and usable eCVT with 50 era tech. And they could use manifold vacuum as a speed controller, like they do with old school automatics. People underestimate just how simple and clever HSD really is.

Or you could make it a "manual" eCVT where the speed control is managed by the driver using something like a potentiometer. This is how the linked CVT works in bike its applications (though, I'm sure it uses a controller built by the billion dollar semiconductor industry instead).

Interesting mechanical solution, The high complexity and current market dynamics makes me wonder if the refinement cycles to make it commercially viable are too far away and not worth the cost. Still I enjoy knowing there is an efficient CVT solution for IC only vehicles, something like 2 stroke scooters in developing countries could really benefit from a cheaper version of this, How would you fell about a bike with something like this? (if it was 1/4 or less, of the weight)

I think this is just a ratcheting cvt with more parts added to obfuscate the design, it seems to only go one way.

By the time this is perfected the market for generic combustion vehicles will be near 0.

Hopefully this improves CVT viability/reliability

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