Hill start assist is kinda cool

Studebaker may have been the originator, but Toyota had it in cars long before '95. I recall it in the '70 Crown.

[old threads are the best threads]

 

I just learned about this today, I had no idea. And not to be a jerk, but it would be a lot cooler if it held till you hit the gas to take off.

 

Yeah, I could imagine people thinking there is something wrong with your car. But two seconds? Great for stop signs, bad for stop lights. My friend's Lexus has a red light feature, holds the brakes for you till you hit the gas, its a nice feature.

 

Holding would be good, I cannot really think of a problem with it; why you'd ever want the car to not resist going backward while it's in drive. As it is I continue to never use the hill hold feature, though. On a car with an automatic transmission it just seems to me a pointless function.

 

I agree. It has built-in creep, like most automatics (although the implementation is completely different). Even on a steep hill, just keep foot on brake until time to move. The electric motor has plenty of torque to keep the car from slipping backwards.

 

Like Tideland, I'm also surprised that a Coloradan would say this. While mine doesn't roll backwards on shallow slopes, it roll back on less shallow ones, much less steep than what I experienced in CO.

 

I've never had any trouble with it. There is enough creep to allow a fast switch from the brake to the gas without much back roll.

On the other hand, I cut my driving teeth on manual transmissions, where technique and speed were essential to prevent rolling back.

Tom

 

Back in the early '60's when I took my first driving test, MA had regulations that If you took your test on a automatic transmission vehicle, you were restricted to driving only that type of equipped car. However, if you took the test using a manual, (standard) transmission, you had unrestricted privileges, including motorcycles.

Our local DMV made you parallel park on a hill, shut off the engine and restart. In order to pass, you couldn't roll back more than 2'.

Now that automatics make up close to 90% of all U.S. vehicles, driver proficiency has deteriorated and we end up with namby-pamby devices like "hill-holding" and automatic parallel parking devices.

 

I also find the minor rollback a complete nonissue after decades of driving mostly manual transmissions. But after experiencing what seemed to be a truely seemless no-rollback automatic Subaru a few years ago, I don't want to overstate the lesser system in the Prius to the several readers who do have concerns.

That Subaru was a sponsor-supplied event support car, so I didn't have time to read the owner's manual. But on the available slopes, the hill-holder brake was set with ordinary brake pressure, not the extra pressure of the Prius version. And it did not have a two second timeout, I sat much longer at a traffic light without it releasing.

Subaru also had a hill-holder clutch in a car we test drove back in the 80s, but both of us were sufficiently seasoned manual drivers that it held no incremental value. By the time we actually bought a Subaru a decade later, the feature had vanished along with the smaller engines for which it was designed.

 

I disagree. If you are on a hill and let go of the brake, you are going to roll.

 

I've never felt the need for hill-start assist in a Prius? I dont really see any need for it in any automatic car as you can simply hold the brake with your felt foot and accelerate up the hill with your right foot? I also find the Prius holds itself pretty well. The ONLY time i've had a hair raising situation in an 'automatic' on a hill was in a Fiat 500 with the 'dualogic' single clutch robotised manual transmission (a manual with a computer controlled clutch, unlike the torque converter auto on the US 500), THIS rolls back like a manual as the computer engages first gear (it's almost mechanically identical to a MT), but it's nothing a good mash of the throttle and use of the handbrake cant fix.

 

I meant it won't roll back once you move from brake to accelerator. The creep alone won't prevent rollback on a hill. But that's true for any automatic transmission car. The hill-hold is more useful on a standard transmission car.

 

That would be a problem for a one legged person.

 

We had a turbocharged Subaru with the hill-holder clutch. My wife loved that feature. I didn't need it, but I have to admit it was nice.

Tom

 

I was stopped on a steep hill at a light and there was a guy behind me that was practically on top of my bumper. I used the hill hold and it worked great. If it's there, why not use it.