Toyota style cruise control annoying

I love the cruise control stick...my brothers subaru had the same style stick and I find it way nicer than my old car, which had the cruise control buttons on the front of the wheel. I really find the motion of the cruise stick much more intuitive and easy to find while driving than hitting different buttons on the steering wheel.

For the comment somebody had about cruise control not controlling speed on a big downhill...unless im mistaken, cruise control, on any car, doesnt engage brakes to slow your car...so if you are heading down a steep hill and, with no power to the engine, your car speeds up, your cruise control isnt going to slow the car down...it will just wait for it to coast back to the set speed before adding power again.

And I also find it odd that people dont like the forgetting of the speed under 25 thing...I only ever use cruise control when im on a long trip on the highway...when are you using it? I cant imagine continually engaging cruise control on a local highway (the kind with stoplights) every time I get back up to speed from a red light, but thats just me.

All this just shows what one man loves another despises...

 

Our 2004 Avalon XLS has it like this although in that car it isnt a long stalk like the Prius but covers one of the openings in the wheel.

Our 2007 Camry CE has the Prius style CC

My 2005 Tundra had it

My 08 Prius has it...i'm used to it by now

 

You apparently didn't read my post. (Emphasis added for clarification.) It's the EV mode I sometimes want to engage or disengage in a turn: I'm driving down the street, let off the gas, go into a turn, and engage the EV mode because I'm going to be driving slowly and then coming to a stop or turning into a parking lot but the car is not in Stage 4 operation. So I use the EV mode. But if I'm in a turn, the c/c stalk is not in its usual position right by my finger. (The Coastal Tech EV switch uses the c/c cancel on the stalk to engage or disengage EV mode. But it has to be held back for three seconds.)

 

This was me, my 98 dodge caravan would reduce speed going down hills, so did my 91 cadillac. The whole point of a cc control system is to go a constant speed and correct for over and undershooting

I found this on wiki:
"Speed control with a centrifugal governor was used in automobiles as early as the 1910s, notably by Peerless. Peerless advertised that their system would "maintain speed whether up hill or down". The technology was invented by James Watt and Matthew Boulton in 1788 to control steam engines. The governor adjusts the throttle position as the speed of the engine changes with different loads. Modern cruise control (also known as a speedostat) was invented in 1945 by the blind inventor and mechanical engineer Ralph Teetor. His idea was born out of the frustration of riding in a car driven by his lawyer, who kept speeding up and slowing down as he talked. The first car with Teetor's system was the Chrysler Imperial in 1958. This system calculated ground speed based on driveshaft rotations and used a solenoid to vary throttle position as needed."

 

I think I am seeing two issues here regarding the CC forgetting the speed setting.
1) when the car is turned off and 2) when stopping, such as a light.

I have no problem with it forgetting with #1. But, #2 is a real annoiance. Where I drive there are some rather long stretches of 50 mph limit with an occasional light. I used to set the CC to 50 and go. After stopping for a light I just hit resume and I am on my way again.

No I have to watch the speedometer and reset it after every stop. Not a big deal but definitely annoying.

Bob

 

Works for me. Anything different will be annoying. It's been Toyota's design since 1992 or earlier. Just a matter of getting used to in my opinion. We have it on our Lexus SC430 and RX400h, and previous Toyotas/Lexuses.

Honda's design has no clear advantage in terms of better meeting everyday practical driving needs. I don't need to remember my last CC setting after the car has been turned off-- driving situations are dynamic-- traffic flow changes so many times that a memory setting 15 minutes ago may be hardly applicable this time. You set the CC for what is right at the moment. It's not hard to set it either. What's a little nudge at the stalk to set the CC.

I also don't need to see a light if the cruise is engaged-- my right foot knows that already. I like the 1mph +/- incremental setting. It allows you to drive without sudden speed changes and helps increase your forward anticipation.

 

The Honda CC doesn't remember your speed after turning your car off -- it just remembers that you had cruise control turned on and turns it back on after you start the ignition again. Not worth paying a large sum of money for but it is nice when the car assumes you left CC on and that you would want it on every time you drive unless you turn it off.

 

Well what I mean is this...
If you are going down a hill SO steep that, with the engine in idle (aka lowest throttle setting) your car still accelerates, the only way to slow your car would be to engage the brake (or shift down to a lower gear and use the engine as a brake). The cruise control wont do either of these...in this situation, the car will speed up. I havent done the calculation, but the incline needed for this is probably about a 5% grade (think of driving in the mountains, on steep downhills there is often a 'runaway truck' or 'runaway car' ramp or lane....this is for cars and trucks that melt their brakes by braking too much...the hill is so steep the car will accelerate down it with the engine in idle!)

From that same wiki article you quoted:
"Some drivers use it to avoid unconsciously violating speed limits. A driver who otherwise tends to unconsciously increase speed over the course of a highway journey may avoid a speeding ticket. Such drivers should note, however, that a cruise control may go over its setting on a downhill which is steep enough to accelerate with an idling engine."

so yeah...it also worth noting that the degree of incline needed to make a car reach this tipping point is different for every car. So the aerodynamic prius with its efficient (and therefore low friction) drivetrain probably needs less of an incline to reach this point than another vehicle...so the prius may get into this accelerating without engine power situation on a downhill while another car can maintain speed on that same downhill using just engine and vehicle friction.

Hope that made sense....

 

CC is very user-friendly. I like the 1 mph increments as when accelerating in rush hour traffic - makes for a light touch that keeps efficiency high. A little strange when going up hill, but very useful in my daily commute where I have long stretches and want to maintain speed and optimize fuel economy.

 

touche. it did make sense and I did find after i posted that previous cars did use the engine brake method to try to slow up the car. Your point about the prius being very aerodynamic thus negating this effect some has a lot of merit and I think is the "problem" here.

Its probably too much to ask but if i were designing a cruise control I would use engine braking until it no longer became effective and would then allow the cc to engage the real brake. anyone see any problem with this?

 

There's definitely no problem with it. Really expensive cars with radar-augmented cruise control use the real brakes to regulate speed. These are the systems that will hold your desired speed unless you get close to a car in front of you, at which point it decelerates the vehicle.

 

wow thats really cool i googled it and found its called adaptive cruise control

Howstuffworks "How Cruise Control Systems Work"

adjusts your cc speed to safe following distances and then speeds back up when theres no car in front of you.

 

This video includes a live test of the adaptive cruise control feature (somewhere during the 7.5 minutes).

 

1:50 in

 

I actually LIKE where it is on the Prius and other Toyotas. I agree the forgetting the speed below 25 mph is quite annoying. As for turned on every time the car is started, that's the way it's been on most of my previous cars. As for the cruise light, my Nissans have 2 lights: cruise (armed) and set (speed has been set and car is maintaining speed).

The 25 mph is NOT a Fed mandate. It's a Toyota thing. My 04 350Z nor my former 02 Maxima have it. I'm pretty sure my mom's 07 NAH doesn't have it either.

I do not know, GM controls, esp. their cruise controls w/the left-right toggle switch crammed into the turn signal stalk are lame IMHO. Their windshield wiper controls really vary a lot depending on the car. On some, they partially copy the Japanese: stalk on the right, but low and high are up instead of down.

 

I don't find it a problem at all.

 

I think it's a more recent feature. I'm pretty sure my 91 Toyota Camry didn't have it but my 02 Nissan Maxima and all other cars I had afterwards do have it.

 

I've had at least 18 cars since 1960, from Studebaker to Chevy to Plymouth to Cortina to Mercedes to Dodge to Honda to a bunch of Fords, and I've never had a cruise control that resumed speed from a dead stop. Wouldn't it be dangerous to allow the car to resume from dead stop to running up to possibly highway speed? I certainly don't see the reestablishment of cruise control as a big nuisance.