I hate to say it, but I'm concerned about the long-term reliability of the CVT too, and the inability to repair this costly part. I'm sure it will have good reliability while under 5-year warranty, but its the 8-12 year range that concerns me.
With conventional transmissions, they will wear over time, as they get towards that 8-12+ year range (of course depends on mileage, maintenance etc.), the wear on the gears and hydaulics can lead to decreased performance. An older tranny won't shift as smooth as a brand new one in many cases, rougher shifts, reduced performance when cold, sluggish shifts etc.. BUT, the tranny still performs its function reliably becuase it is designed to continue to function even when worn - basically it has wide tolerances. You can drive a rough shifting tranny for 100,000 miles with no issues, AND if it does fail, you can rebuild it. It's a common skill set to rebuild a tranny, many auto shops can do this for you - it's not cheap, but it's still affordable, say $2000 for a full rebuild on a 6-8 spd, maybe as high as $3000 on the newer more complex 8 speeds.
A Nissan CVT is completely different. It has very tight tolerances, and when the CVT starts to wear through normal use, at higher mileage later in its life, say after 8 years for typical drivers, it will not run well at all, and in many cased will just quit and go in to limp mode leaving you basically stranded. A small amount of wear is not well tolerated by the CVT which relies on very precise geometries and meshing of parts. To make matters worse, you can't repair a CVT, all you can do is order a brand new one from the factory and install it, to the tune of at least $5000 and possibly more with this "next-generation heavy duty CVT". The only thing that might save you is if you can locate a used one at a wreckers lot, but again you might have problem finding someone to install for you. Only Nissan techs are certified to work on this specialized transmission, and most dealers probably won't agree to intall a used tranny because they can't gaurantee the work, and if something goes wrong there's no way to know if it was a bad part or their mistake - not an argument and liability that they would want to touch.
Until Nissan can make the CVT so that it is serviceable, or drastically reduce the cost of a replacement unit so its close to the cost of a rebuild, they will have continuued issues attracting and retaining lifelong customers. I'm sorry to say it.
By the way, I own a 2008, 5-year old Rogue with CVT. It's done the job well, but I don't plan to keep it beyond 7-8 year range, partially because of my concerns above. There are many documented high-mileage CVT's, over 300,000 km, but I'm not sure what the odds are that we hope to achieve this, especially with much harder city-driving cycles that I spend most of time in. Good luck to everyone.