Two new gear boxes, an in Europe unloved Continuously Variable Transmission and an in USA unloved manually operated one. If both facts could be corrected a little, it would be nice. Because CVT transmissions can do at least a little better than any other one, whether automatic or not. They operate the engine as long as possible in the best of its operating ranges.

What's different about Toyota's new CVT transmission? At the very bottom, i.e. when starting, only a clutch-operated gear transmission is preconnected, via which torque is transmitted until about 25 to 40 km/h. As a result, the drive does not act as like chewing gum when driving off. In addition, a little better efficiency of the gear is used compared to the belt drive.

By this the area in which the variable belt drive operates, is shifted upwards, can be used to keep the engine in the most favorable operating range up to higher speeds than previously. Since it is no longer used for starting, it can respond more quickly by less weight. In addition, the angle of the tread of the belt drive was lowered from 11° to 9°, which also strengthened the reactivity.

The software has changed significantly, too. You now can with careful treatment of the accelerator pedal, let it operate in the pure CVT variant. But if you push it down, it is transformed into a ten-speed conventional automatic transmission, which makes the engine rotate over the power mountain in each gear. It promises switching times that are very close to highly performing dual-clutch transmissions. It is a CVT for different characters.

Somewhat less spectacular is the new manual one with six gears. Toyota emphasizes here first the enormous weight reduction from 47 to 40 kg and the shortening from 395 to 372 mm. The lightweight is partly due to the in some places existing housing thickness of 1.7 mm. And where are the special advantages to increase the share from 5 to more than 20 percent in the USA? First to be mentioned is the synchronized reverse gear, so never crunch teeth again when inserting.

And the second highlight of this transmission you can only marvel, if you have not just grown up with manual transmissions. In this new feature, the engine control is informed that, for example, it has just been switched from the second to the third gear. It then lowers the engine speed accordingly, before you release the clutch again. Analogous to that fits the pretty pinpoint increase of rpm when gear down. It should not come to jerks, wheter you are trained on manual transmissions or not. 07/18