Originally Posted by
markjenn
In addition to the weight, I'd bet this thing has quite a bit of friction and parasitic losses. These may be tolerable on a powered vehicle, but when you're dealing with the 1/4 hp or so of a human being, it may be intolerable. And judging by the (excellent) animation, it appears that overall gear range might be fairly narrow, much narrowere than even the current internal gear hub systems.
Neat idea, more power to them, but better inventions for this particular application have come and gone before.
- Mark
+1
All CVT's use friction. Standard transmissions use gears so the only way they would ever slip is to break off the teeth. That bicycle CVT has balls riding in cones so there is very little friction surface for power transfer. I bet someone with the performance level of Lance could make that thing slip.