You are correct, at least the older version (they upgraded to a wet clutch cvt). That's why I specified the SEL, which has a conventional automatic paired with a non-turbo engine. I'm with you - I owned a Kia Soul with a cvt, and it just never grew on me. I avoid CVTs like the plague, which is hard because they are everywhere these days.
I owned several Kia Souls (sister brand of Hyundai) for 50,000+ miles and never needed a repair of any kind. Yea, you hear a lot of horror stories about Hyundai, and I'm sure many are real. But if you've been on this forum for two plus years like me, you've read a lot of Ford Maverick horror stories too.
I would have considered it more if they had a hybrid I wanted the mpg more than anything which is why the maverick was my only option truck wise. But hybrid aside I can't stand the exterior looks of the Santa Cruz either.
Worth noting that the eCVT in the Maverick hybrid is significantly different than a traditional CVT and should be much more reliable.
I personally would never buy a traditional CVT until they get much better reliability scores. The was I see it reliability wise ecvt > traditional transmission > CVT
We bought my wife a new 2018 Tuscon, and in June of '23 the engine totally failed at 50K miles (I understand an issue with main bearing failure). Hyundai replaced the engine under warranty with no hassles as the dealer did all the maintenance from day one. However, just this past October we traded it for a 2025 Mazda CX-5 as the Tuscon was getting up there in miles and I simply lost confidence in the vehicle.
I almost bought the 2017 Tucson instead of my 2017 Escape but there were some issues with the automatic dual clutch where it would internally get stuck in neutral or something similar while merging on the highway so I went with the Escape instead.
are the 2024 maverick hybrids ecvt too?
All hybrids are ecvt both Ford and non Ford. There might be some really old ones that aren't but I'm not aware of any.
There's a good bunch of threads referencing 8F35 failure in in the same way as me in this site, with the transmission slipping more and more in certain gears, none of which had bad converters that we know of and most of which had shot solenoids and gear damage.
Worth noting that DCT (dual clutch transmission), which is what the Santa Cruz turbo has, is not at all related to a CVT (continuously variable transmission), which is also very different to the eCVT in mavericks and priuses for hard to explain mechanichal reasons, but which is way more reliable.
all maverick hybrids are eCVT. the only difference between the newest year and previous years is MY25 maverick hybrids just have a beefed-up eCVT to handle the AWD and 4k Tow.
Ford's F-150 hybrid has a traditional transmission rather than an eCVT, I believe.
