Also known as: e:hev, ehev, i-mmd, honda e-cvt, honda two-motor hybrid
Honda's hybrid transaxle — in the Accord, Civic, CR-V, HR-V, Fit, City and Insight.
It is called an e-CVT and it is not Toyota's e-CVT, which is the distinction this page exists for. There is no planetary power split. Honda's arrangement is two motors and a single lock-up clutch: at low and moderate speed the engine drives a generator and the traction motor drives the wheels — the car is electric and the engine is a generator — and above about motorway speed the clutch closes and connects the engine to the wheels through one fixed ratio.
That produces a symptom that is normal and alarms people: engine speed that does not track road speed at all, rising and holding under acceleration. It is not a slipping transmission, and there is no ratio being searched for; the engine is simply running where it is efficient.
Like Toyota's, it contains no belt, no pulleys and no clutch pack, so the CVT failure literature does not apply. Unlike Toyota's, it has one clutch, and that clutch is the one mechanical wear item — a shudder or a shunt only at the speed where the engine engages is worth distinguishing from anything at lower speed.
What fails is electrical and thermal: the motors, the power control unit, and the coolant loop that serves them. The hybrid coolant service is real maintenance.
Cars fitted with this gearbox
10 generations. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
Sign in or create an account to add what you found about e:HEV (e-CVT).