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Hill Assist Control dropped for 2013

25K views 39 replies 25 participants last post by  Square Dude 
#1 ·
Most of the 4.3 RAV4's came with the Hill Assist Control feature. If stopped at a traffic light on a hill, you could push the brake pedal hard until a beep was heard, then the brakes would stay on for 3 seconds while moving your foot from the brake pedal to the accelerator. This would prevent the vehicle from rolling backward. Toyota must have deemed it too confusing or too expensive, so they dropped it for 2013. Here is the new procedure from the 2013 owner's manual:

The new Hill Start Assist:

Starting off on a steep uphill

1. Make sure that the parking brake is set and shift the shift lever to D.
2. Gently depress the accelerator pedal.
3. Release the parking brake.

Brilliant! :wall
 
#3 ·
Most of the 4.3 RAV4's came with the Hill Assist Control feature. If stopped at a traffic light on a hill, you could push the brake pedal hard until a beep was heard, then the brakes would stay on for 3 seconds while moving your foot from the brake pedal to the accelerator. This would prevent the vehicle from rolling backward.
Found out my Accord has the feature yesterday and did it automatically. I pulled up into a steep driveway to turn around. Stopped and took my foot off the brake. The car didn't move and didn't go into its normal Auto Stop either. Giving a little gas pulled it up some more but it held there again until I shifted into Neutral. Pretty neat.

Guess it must have been our LED brake lights that held our 4.3s on a hill. :shrug:
 
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#9 ·
It's because the Mazda is a lighter vehicle and maybe also the rpm's where a little higher at idle than the Rav4.

Sent from my HTC One X+
 
#7 · (Edited)
Most of the 4.3 RAV4's came with the Hill Assist Control feature. If stopped at a traffic light on a hill, you could push the brake pedal hard until a beep was heard, then the brakes would stay on for 3 seconds while moving your foot from the brake pedal to the accelerator.
That's why it beeps.. :confused: I though it beeps because lack of brake pressure or what it is, like in old Land Cruiser when I pressed pedal many times the brake warning light came on.

But to my mind hill assist control is most useful with manual gearbox. Otherwise if you don't want use the parking brake it is quite a play with all three pedals. So I must check if 06 manual has this hac(checked, does not have).

Anyway like in other thread I said, Euro versions will come with hac and some with dac. To add these functions the Ecu must have control of brake pressure.
If Usspec cruise control has control of brakes when deaccelerating, it may be possible to add these functions.
 

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#8 ·
When I drove a manual, on a steep hill, I would use the e-brake process. As for the Rav4 rolling back on a hill when the Mazda6 didn't, could be due to the fact the Rav4 is much heavier. My Mazda6 was a manual so I don't know how well the autobox held the car on a hill though.

I think Subaru's hill start assist is automatically activated with a ball inside the brake line or something that when you exceed a certain % incline, the ball will roll back and block the brake line holding the brake pressure for you until you gas it.

Don't know why the 4.3's had such a complicated system that requires you to press the brake harder to activate it.

However, I guess it's to not give you any surprises, cause on my Kia, the hill start activates automatically, but I would never know until I release the brake whether the hill gradient was high enough to activate the system, so maybe that's why the Rav4 Hill start assist is user activated.
 
#10 ·
I learned to drive an old VW bus in San Francisco. You master the clutch and gas or roll into the people behind you. Some hills are so steep that I saw nothing but sky.

About the HAC - My lady found it difficult to press the brake hard enough to set it on.
 
#13 ·
oooh yeeeeeeah I know what you are talking about. Same here I have never done the ebrake or even knew about it. Driving since I was 17 and my first car being a stick shift. I learned to master the clutch and gas. I been on those steep hills you talk about in SF with 4 people inside my 2002 Celica GT manual. just last weekend I was in SF visiting family I have not yet been to one of those really steep hills on my Rav4 but there is this one steep hill and a light I have to drive through and with my Rav 4 SPORT MODE it was a breeeeeze :rolleyes:. Now the real test will be that one hill you talk about.gulp!:? When you mentioned you saw nothing but the sky I laughed....there is no better way to describe it. you are sitting in a position where you feel like you are sitting in a Rocket about to be launched to space.
 
#14 ·
Why would you even need hill assist in a car with automatic transmission? How long does it take to move your foot from the brake pedal to push the accelerator? How much backward will the car move during this time? 4-6 inches? Worst case, use your left foot on the brake, while accelerating with your right foot, then release the brake. It's not rocket science.

Manual transmission is another story. But I have been driving manual transmission vehicles for 35 years and never felt the need for hill assist. It's a nice-to-have, but not really needed. And completely superfluous with automatics.

If somebody doesn't know how to start an automatic on a hill, he or she should not be even allowed to drive. A person who can't master even such a simple thing clearly does not have enough ability to be driving at all. He / she is a serious hazard to other road users.
 
#15 ·
You apparently haven't been to WV. A second or two is all you need for the vehicle to roll back and hit a dumb axx who has decided to ride up on your bumper while you are waiting for a light to turn green. Don't knock it until you try it. My Bmer has a automatic 2 second delay when starting on a hill. I am really disappointed with Toyota's decision to get rid of that feature. Out of habit, I am now constantly pushing on the break waiting to hear that beep. :mad:
 
#19 ·
First off @ Katekebo, driving down I-79 does not constitute "driving" in WV. I am of course just joking. But seriously, having one foot on the gas and one foot on the break doesn't erase the one to two seconds that it could take for the car to either jump forward or go backwards. And if you have pulled right up on someone or someone has pulled right up on you, a secondt is all you need for an accident to happen.

Now seriously, this feature isn't a deal breaker. I never had it before the 07 RAV and I never had problems. But once I found out about the feature and actually started using it as it was intended, it became a favorite feature of mine. Many cars now such as our Bmer and the Mercedes that we traded in for the new RAV had this feature built in automatically when you let up off the break, there was a 2 second pause before the car started rolling back, but just enough time to move the foot from the break over to the gas.

Reducing one's worries is always a good thing when you are on the road.
 
#26 ·
I've been driving almost 50 years and have owned seven cars in that time, all automatics. The last one before the RAV4 was a 2003 PT Cruiser. I've also driven an uncounted number of rentals over the years, also all automatics. My 2013 RAV4 XLE is the *first* one where this is an issue. If I had wanted a car with a manual transmission where you have to deal with this, I would have purchased one. Strike one against Toyota.
-End of rant-
 
#29 ·
I didn't know and still don't know about any hill assist bit with my 2011 RAV. Learned to drive in the San Francisco Bay Area with lots of hill stops 55+ years ago and have always had manual gearbox vehicles until I got this RAV. Using the handbrake as the hill holding device is "automatic" for me. :shrug:
 
#30 ·
My 10' Impreza had it (standard) and I hated it. First off it wore out the rear brakes in less than 50k, never had to replace brakes that soon in 35 years of driving. It would shut off too soon half the time. All it would take is someone going a little slower than expected and it would shut off before you could turn while on a hill. Being a standard if it came on before you shifted into gear the syncro wouldn't line up so you couldn't shift into 1st.

After 7 months with the Rav I haven't noticed a problem. We have plenty of hills here in Vermont. My guess is if you've owned a standard for a long period of time you just learn to move from the brake to the gas quickly. I would never use the feature (actually wouldn't even think about it). If needed I would use my left foot on the brake and start to press on the gas with my right. Once you feel the engine pulling then you release the brake. I'm not sure why that would be too hard for anyone with two working feet to do.
 
#31 ·
...After 7 months with the Rav I haven't noticed a problem. We have plenty of hills here in Vermont. My guess is if you've owned a standard for a long period of time you just learn to move from the brake to the gas quickly. I would never use the feature (actually wouldn't even think about it). If needed I would use my left foot on the brake and start to press on the gas with my right. Once you feel the engine pulling then you release the brake. I'm not sure why that would be too hard for anyone with two working feet to do.
Easy for some, not so easy for others of us. I've never owned a car with a manual transmission, and attempts to learn when I was younger did not go well. Although I will be the first to admit that if I had kept it up longer I could have eventually learned. I've always lived by the adage, "You're never too old to learn," but at 70 it certainly becomes more difficult to do so. It will be easier for me to use the parking brake. But my point still remains: I should not have to do that, and I consider this a design defect.
 
#32 ·
I find it hard to believe that after 50 years this is the first automatic car that you owned that drifted backwards on a hill after you took your foot off the brake. I can't remember a car I didn't have that didn't do this. You must have had the idle RPMs up too high. Maybe you didn't live in an area with steep enough hills before?
 
#34 ·
Believe what you wish, but that is indeed the case, and the idle was set correctly in all of them. Well, I had little control over that in the 2003 PT Cruiser, since the "computer" was in control of just about everything. And I live in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, so we do have steep hills. I'm wondering if the RAV4's automatic transmission is very different than the ones in the former cars, as in perhaps some kind of automatic clutch instead of a torque converter???

BTW, I checked with my brother this morning, who is on his second Camry (a 2012 I think), and also has a Tacoma. I suspect his current Camry has the same engine and transmission as the RAV4. He said none of them roll backwards on a hill. And he lives only a few miles from me.
 
#35 ·
Two peddles and two feet, we use both peddles why not both feet?

I suspect the idea of using the right foot for both the gas and brake peddles comes from the days when all cars had three peddles.

If one brakes with the left foot and accelerates with the right foot we would never have our foot on the "wrong" peddle and cause an accident. This of course assumes one only drives two peddle vehicles.
 
#36 ·
So which foot would go on the foot rest if both are in use?
 
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