The answers are no, yes and yes.
The CVT isn't actually new. It's been around a while, Subaru used them in the late 80's, with disastrous results. Obviously, technology has changed, so they're coming back around. Reliability is one major concern, but one of the other reasons they haven't fully caught on is user experience. CVT means "continuously variable transmission". The best way to think of it is like a bicycle. A 10 speed bike has that set of gears/sprockets near the back wheel. You change gears and it changes how fast you can go. A regular transmission is similar in theory. A CVT, without getting technical, uses pulleys instead of actual gears. Picture a cone/funnel shape, wrap a rubber band around it and slide it up and down the cone and you'll get the idea. In a regular transmission car, just like a bicycle, you start off in gear 1. At some point, your legs on the bike are peddling like mad, so you change gears so you go faster. Same for a regular transmission car. With the CVT, it has endless "gears" (they're not really gears) that it can go through (sliding up and down that cone). So it can...and does...hold the engine at a certain speed to maximize either acceleration or economy. The problem with that is that it can make the car sound like it's "droaning" or "whining". In your regular car, you hear the engine rev, then drop as it changes gears. In a CVT, it'll rev up and stay there as long as you continue to accelerate. It's a unique experience and can be tiresome on the ears. Manufacturers are getting better at it, but it's still quite a different experience. They'll deliver the same power, as that comes from the engine, but it's a very different experience. I don't care for it myself.
Nissan has gone full in on the CVT. It's in a ton of their smaller and midsize products. Another weak point of the CVT is reliability. They've proven to wear out faster than a conventional transmission. I'm sure 10 years from now, they'll figure out how to make them as reliable as other ones. But Nissan has really been struggling with it. Honda is also using CVTs in some of their cars/SUVs, with more success. A few others are using CVTs too.
Unless it's a personal taste/fashion thing, which is perfectly cool, I'd also again suggest at looking at things other than a small SUV...they don't really do any one thing particularly well.
