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Downshifting while using cruise control

Mickey

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I have a 2017 4 cylinder Hyundai Santa Fe Sport with a 6 speed auto tranny but looking at bigger 3 row SUVs like the Telluride and Palisade that have 6 cylinder engines. When driving on a highway at about 70-75 mph with cruise control (CC) turned on the Santa Fe will downshift and sometimes the tach shoot up for a brief period to around 5K when going up a not too steep a hill. It is like the CC has to immediately floor the accelerator to pick up the 1 mph that has been lost due to the hill. My question is will a Telluride that has an 8 speed tranny do the same thing or is the power/torgue in the much bigger 6 cylinder engine handle the hills while set on CC?
 
BUMP No one has a comment?
 
I’m no expert but from my experience, the Telluride is more like to downshift while in cruise mode and facing a significant grade...the reason being the gear ratios are closer together. I personally don’t like the sudden increase in RPM and downshifting so when facing a sizable road grade, I just kick the cruise off and feather the accelerator until cresting the hill and use the resume function to continue moving along.
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It's much better, and even when it does have to shift, it's not very noticable and very smmoth.
 
I’m no expert but from my experience, the Telluride is more like to downshift while in cruise mode and facing a significant grade...the reason being the gear ratios are closer together. I personally don’t like the sudden increase in RPM and downshifting so when facing a sizable road grade, I just kick the cruise off and feather the accelerator until cresting the hill and use the resume function to continue moving along.

So....if "facing a significant grade" it SHOULD downshift as all automatic trannys have done for quite some time now ...is thaand is necessary to keep up the speed..... is that not good? This is particularly important on an interstate hill situation and traffic is moving at 65 to 70....uphill comes along and you NEED to keep moving! ....slowing down in that situation would not be a good thing. These wonderful new 6,8,10 speed electronically controlled trannys should be able to handle any and all of that. Just my opinion........
 
I have a 2017 4 cylinder Hyundai Santa Fe Sport with a 6 speed auto tranny but looking at bigger 3 row SUVs like the Telluride and Palisade that have 6 cylinder engines. When driving on a highway at about 70-75 mph with cruise control (CC) turned on the Santa Fe will downshift and sometimes the tach shoot up for a brief period to around 5K when going up a not too steep a hill. It is like the CC has to immediately floor the accelerator to pick up the 1 mph that has been lost due to the hill. My question is will a Telluride that has an 8 speed tranny do the same thing or is the power/torgue in the much bigger 6 cylinder engine handle the hills while set on CC?

I just got back from an 800+ mile round trip today and can say that it I've seen it downshift to "catch-up" while I was on HDA/Cruise control. And I've also felt it smooth it out, if the difference is just 1 mph like what you're describing. I hope you're not expecting a complicated algorithm or some type of AI for your cruise control feature.

So....if "facing a significant grade" it SHOULD downshift as all automatic trannys have done for quite some time now ...is thaand is necessary to keep up the speed..... is that not good? This is particularly important on an interstate hill situation and traffic is moving at 65 to 70....uphill comes along and you NEED to keep moving! ....slowing down in that situation would not be a good thing. These wonderful new 6,8,10 speed electronically controlled trannys should be able to handle any and all of that. Just my opinion........

Exactly! I want my speed to go as quickly to what I've set.

By the way...HDA is awesome!
 
OK! Thanks for all the replies. It appears from them that it is quite normal for the tranny to downshift on a significant hill because of the gearing on the 8 speed tranny. It may not be as noticable as it is on my current 4 cyl 6 speed car.
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