A couple friends of mine have Honda's, and while they are nice machines they have had issues with the electric shift transmissions. One friend has an older model and the other has a 2015 model. They are really clunky going into gear, the older model sounds really bad but has been this way since he bought it new and Honda says its fine. The fellow with the newer model says if your battery goes dead you cannot shift at all, not even get it into neutral to push it. Honda has a warning label on it to that effect. He is also not a fan of the way the machine shifts but he bought the extended warranty just to be safe. I have owned a couple machines with CVT belt drives and have had no issues and the brakes will last longer due to the natural braking from the cvt tranny, I rarely need to apply brakes unless I need a quick stop, slow rolling stops happen without touching the brake at all. My Kawasaki that was 16 yrs old when I sold it still had original pads and shoes after 2300 miles and they still looked great. I replaced the belt at 1500 miles but the old one looked good enough to save as a spare. Most cvt machines have higher tow ratings than mechanical shifting machines so for me it is a no-brainer...I would stay away from mechanical shifts and stick with cvt powered machines.