The problem with CVTs is that people aren't used to them. People are used to gauge their acceleration from the rising crescendo from the engine as it climbs up the revs with an upshift here and then. But a CVT's engine climbs up quickly then stays up as the car accelerates, this means that a lot of noise is produced while people don't have the impression they're going any faster even if they're accelerating pretty fast. So we end up with people saying that the Lancer CVT is slow when it's probably the fastest compact with a base engine and automatic available right now (in a Motortrend comparo, it beat the Elantra by 1 second to 60 mph and the Civic by 0,5 seconds, the Sentra CVT was just a tad slower).
This can be partially corrected through programming of the transmission so as to make the engine climb slower, so you have the impression that you have one long first gear when accelerating from 0 to highway speeds. That's what Nissans do BTW, just check acceleration videos on youtube. This gives a better impression of power from the car... even if it should actually slow it down a bit.
I don't know how the Subaru CVT is programmed though.
One nitpick with the article is the part where the author claims that Subaru's past relatively poor fuel economy may have been due to the 4-speed automatic used precedently. I think that claim is wrong and can be proved wrong by looking at the relative performance of the manual versions which weren't significantly more fuel-efficient than the old 4-speed automatic. Even for 2010, the CVT does a lot better than the previous 4-speed, but the new manual does worse than the previous manual version.
