The Prius transmission is utterly brilliant, and while some people categorize it as a CVT I think that’s incorrect. It’s way better than other CVTs.
(Too bad the cabin interior was apparently designed by Torquemada tripping on acid.)
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It is one of the loudest cars wrt road noise I’ve driven and the braking was completely under powered. Felt unsafe. 2008 or so model.
(and @WearySky) it’s true, I was being hyperbolic when I wrote “none,” but it didn’t come across in print ┐(´∀｀)┌
heh–I got a million of 'em!
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A CVT is normally a transmission in which a belt runs between two sets of conical pulleys which can be set to different separations to change the effective gear ratio. It is mechanical and the actual transmission itself changes to suit conditions.
The Prius transmission has a gasoline engine, a constant direction electric motor, and a motor that can run in both directions, all linked by a planetary gear. Very complicated algorithms then allow a variety of combinations (in one the gasoline engine drives the reversible motor as a generator which then drives the forward engine, acting as a torque multiplier.)
There is no constantly variable gear ratio; the gears are fixed. What is variable is the algorithm.
There are other hybrid designs which use an actual CVT. Calling the Prius a CVT is simply to adopt confusing terminology, because it works on a totally different principle.
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Actually, it is very different.
I need to do without the services provided by the company until my campaign is successful, so I incur costs whenever I “vote” against powerful people.
When I don’t like how things are done in the state-run healthcare system, I still get to see my doctor.
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Aye, I posted before I looked properly… 
Measles at present is no longer endemic to the US, nearly every new case is imported from other counties where it is more prevalent or common, and then potentially spread in our population depending on the level of protection.
So that is a good argument for needing breaks, but why aren’t we questioning why we have so many shitty drivers as opposed to questioning how good our breaks work when we need to slam on them?
Probably a poor analogy, but I’m trying to work with the op.
Some thoughts: First, I just don’t understand the controversy. When I was growing up in New England, along about March, when the snow had melted, we would all get into the car and drive to the woods. We would gather brakes. We would put them in the car. Then when we got back home, of course we would take the brakes out of the car. My mom would peel them and cook them for supper. What is the fuss involving a mechanic with brakes?
Ohhh…THOSE brakes…and this is actually about vaccinations? Well, arguments about the right of individuals to not be vaccinated actually is settled unless someone runs it up the courts to the Supreme Court again. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court ruled that the state could tell you that you must be vaccinated. This was in1905 and it was about smallpox vaccinations. Still in effect for other diseases, though.
My comment here is that I see politicians that I suspect know that this is settled law out there trumpeting to their voters that this is a “family choice.” Someone already noted in another article comment, that if that is their argument, then abortion also should be a “family choice” for them. Ha! As if. Anyway it’s pretty amazingly slimy of them considering their own children are vaccinated. Another situation where what they are really saying is, “I’ve got mine, too bad about you.”
Leila
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Wikipedia says “A continuously variable transmission (CVT), (also known as single-speed transmission, gearless transmission, one-speed automatic, variable pulley transmission, or in case of motorcycles, a twist-and-go) is a transmission that can change seamlessly through an infinite number of effective gear ratios between maximum and minimum values”. I have seen a 19th century drill press that had one, at the Hagely Museum.
The Prius PSD meets this definition, and has often been called a “geared CVT”.
But like I said, I agree with you. I prefer to call it a Prius tranny most of the time, and use the official name “PSD” (for “power split device”) when talking to mechanics. Because it’s functionally better than what we usually call a CVT; it is a significant improvement in transmission design because it gives you CVT capabilities with lower losses and permitting multiple, additive power inputs operating at differing speeds.
Wait, don’t you drive a VW camper van? And you’re complaining about road noise and lack of braking? Really?
The Prius is in some ways a 21st century VW. Like all the VWs I have owned and loved (63 Karmann, 67 Karmann, 69 Beetle, multiyeared frankenbeetle named “the death machine”, & 1971 Super Beetle) and also the ones I’ve only driven (such as the Westphalia camper, Thing and fastback) it is designed primarily as dependable, gas-efficient transportation. It is not a luxury car like a Tesla, and it’s not supposed to have a silent luxury car cab. It’s one of the few things about the Prius cab design I myself won’t criticize, because I actually like to hear the road.
Anyway, I drove a 2002 Prius for 150K miles… until I hit a deer head-on at 65mph on the highway. The collision killed the deer and totalled the car, but I drove home without a scratch, leaking inverter fluid the whole way. I’m driving a 2012 Plugin Prius now, and I was rear-ended under a train overpass a couple of months ago but I drove away from that too. Either of those accidents would have been life-threatening in a VW. So I’m confused by why you think it should be safer.
Oh, but wait… you specifically mentioned braking - a car with serious regen, like the Prius, does not feel like a pure friction-brake car at the pedal. One of the goals of driving a regen car is to avoid braking whenever possible. You may simply be unused to that and misinterpreting the feel of the three-stage brake. I never have any trouble panic-stopping the car - that’s how I got rear-ended! Mild-to-medium braking is entirely electromagnetic in nature and that’s probably what you didn’t like the feel of.
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The Wikipedia article, parsed, says “A CVT…also known as a variable pulley transmission”. The things in brackets are alternative terms meaning the same thing. On this occasion, I agree with Wikipedia. I have seen some truly terrible stuff in the automotive section, I think because there are a lot of amateur mechanics who fancy themselves as members of the SAE. However…I agree with you.
Although this is off topic there is a certain relevance. Human beings are very good at subtly (and not so subtly) adapting the meaning of terminology to suit their agenda. They are also very poor at risk assessment, because our evolution as a species has adapted us to assess very short term risk, but with the development of modern society these have been increasingly dealt with and we now need to assess long term risk.
Anti-vaxxers show this effect. They are faced with the extremely small short term risk of ill effects due to vaccination, which are comparable with those of being killed in a car accident on the way to the doctor. In their minds, this short term risk outweighs the long term risk of contracting measles (disclaimer: as a child I suffered brain damage and liver damage from measles before the vaccine was available.) In order to justify their beliefs they adopt phraseology to make them look rational, just as evangelicals justify their anti-Biblical views by judicious renaming (“Prosperity gospel”).
Others, who want the right to do stupid things that put others at risk, like carry live guns in purses or drive dangerously, try to reclassify these behaviors as “freedom”. Although this article is a joke, there are real people out there driving cars with defective brakes because they cannot be bothered or cannot afford to get them fixed.
Wikipedia is a terrible example of this, where PR departments constantly try to recast things in a light favorable to their clients, without being noticed. Killing people gets redefined as “security”, buying influence as “philanthropy”.
The long and the short of it is that while arguing about the meaning of words may be nitpicking, it is important if they are not to be eroded by the lazy, the criminal and the stupid.
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Sharing more thoughts.
I think it would be interesting if Mr. Doctrow took up this subject again, without parody. I wasn’t really confused when I wrote about gathering brakes, (fiddleheads,) but a lot of people self-reported being “taken in” because Mr. Doctrow is usually writing about keeping the Internet free, or a genocide not being reported in the media, something very serious, reported in a serious way. I was amazed when I realized that Mr. Doctrow was writing a goof piece. Now, when he writes something, he’s going to have to preface it with, “HEY!!! I’m SERIOUS about this, OK? NOT like that LAST TIME!!!” Maybe for the rest of his life. It could be hard to ever trust him again, alas.
Well, here’s a comment on the actual subject: The Supreme Court’s 1905 ruling that the state could compel vaccinations in Jacobson v. Massachusetts was put into effect by making it mandatory for enrolling in public schools (and also for enlisting in the military, where they will vaccinate you for as many as 36 different nasty things, depending on where you are to be deployed, but I digress.) Nowadays, with the option of opening a charter school, it would be possible for a group of anti-vaxers to open a school just for themselves, no immunization required.
Of course, I’m thinking no one of them even considers doing that because, “What! Put my kid in with a whole bunch of germ-y snot-nosed kids who haven’t been vaccinated? Whaddya think, that I’m crazy?”
They read that stuff about herd immunity, too, y’know, and they APPRECIATE IT. :)!
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When I was a child in the sixties* we were lined up in the elementary school gym on the first day of public school and forcibly vaccinated with a big pneumatic gun. Some kids had to be held kicking and screaming by the teachers, but most of us did not. It was a rite of passage.
You can tell my generation by the marks. Those things hurt like hell!
* 
“Dreams could be held through TV, with Disney and Cronkite and Martin Luther King, and I believed I believed I believed…” 
Wow, Medieval, your post with those pictures brings back more memories. I think most of our shots were done in Ol’ Doc Hudson’s office (if you were sick, he came to your house-how 'bout that!) but I do remember getting free polio shots at the local school. You had to get several “boosters”, and they started giving those out put into into sugar cubes. That was quite an improvement!
I’ve been looking at anti-vaxers material, and I’m wondering if it would help if the vaccinations came in sugar cubes instead of a shot. You know, some people just can’t stand to even think about getting a shot. I’m thinking of that song sung by Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins” where she sings, “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the monkey pus go down, the monkey pus go down, the monkey pus go down…”
Well, that’s all the help I have to offer right now.
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Didn’t they do that with Polio vaccines?
I remember trying to watch them inject me with the BCG at school, and the nurse wouldn’t let me look. I do remember the Heaf test hurting more than the subsequent shot.
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I remember seeing what happens when one of those pneumatic, multi-injector thingies is not held perfectly still during the injection.
It makes a nice laceration.
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