Ultimate Road Trip Vehicle?

[Hokiefyd]

The cruise in the Honda worked good. Set at 75, if I head downhill, it maintains the speed very well. Even at closed throttle, there's a lot of engine braking in both of our cars (part of the transmission programming I think). The grade has to be very steep (in my experience, 6% or more) to rely on brakes. And if you do use the brakes to maintain speed down a hill, the PCM will downshift the transmission on its own to help. It's very smart in that regard.

But anyway, heading back up a hill, the transmission will first unlock the TCC in 5th to gain more power. This works probably 50% of the time, and the transition is smooth enough where you don't know it's happened unless you see it on the tach. If it slows down to about 2 mph under the set speed, it will downshift to 4th. It will then regain speed and once it reaches the set speed again, it eases the throttle to maintain that set speed, but the transmission won't upshift back into 5th until it's REALLY confident that you're over the hill. I don't know what the algorithms are that are used here, but they're very well-written.

 

[BearZDefect]

Hokiefyd, that does sound more intelligent. Both your CRV and our Sonata have a grade (angle) sensor so the program knows when you're going up or down, and how steep the grade is.

Pity is the NF Sonata has potential to be a nice road trip vehicle - spacious, soft ride, relatively quiet, etc. But this awful cruise control means it's only good for as long as I am willing to work the throttle with my right foot, even in flatlants like Indiana the overpasses provoke 4th gear downshifts and counterintuitive slowdown-speedup I described above.

I know for sure that my 1997 i30 has no grade/angle sensor, yet with only the speed changes for feedback it keeps the speed within 1 mph. So, for example, I can use cruise control through Kentucky and Tennessee which are much hillier than Indiana with no nuisance, no downshifts, no surges.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Hondas do not use a physical sensor for grade. The programming has a number of shift and acceleration tables stored in the computer. If you're using 30% throttle and are only accelerating at, say, 1 mph/sec, then it knows you're on a hill. It also knows the grade of the hill based on that. Extra load in the vehicle (such as a trailer) is also naturally accounted for here. You'll use more throttle to achieve the same acceleration, so the physical addition of 1,000 pounds to the vehicle probably represents a grade change of, say, 2% (or some similar number).

Engine and transmission programming are two things that Honda has long had a good grasp on in my opinion, and it really seems to favor powertrain performance and response over efficiency. Neither of our two vehicles is ever in the wrong gear. I can't even lock the CR-V into 4th gear. I have D, 2, 1 and an OD Off button. Technically, 4th and 5th are both overdrive gears, and the OD Off button will lock it in 3rd. So I have no way to keep the transmission in 4th, but I never have a desire to. The programming reads my mind so well through my foot, it's never hunting between gears. I also very rarely use the OD Off button. You can truly put this car into D and just leave it. It does what you want, when you want.

This is beginning to change in Honda. My parents-in-law have a 2011 CR-V and the partial TCC lock in 3rd and 4th gears is much more aggressive than it is in our 2008 model, and it's honestly not quite as smooth of a drive because of that.

The transmission programming on my previous car was utterly poor. It would heavily favor upshifting, so as soon as you eased up on the throttle, no matter the engine load, it'd upshift. It would also want to lock the TCC by default on all forward gears beginning with 3rd. So sometimes it would upshift into 3rd with the TCC locked, and all of a sudden realize that the engine load is just a bit too high for that, so it'd stay in 3rd, but would immediately unlock the TCC. The sensation was like an upshift and then a quick downshift again. It was very distracting, and very poor programming in my opinion.

 

[Vikas]

Do you have OD off button? My 1999 Odyssey has no button and the 2012 Accord I drove has no button either. One has to physically move the shifter if you want go from D to Dn (where n could be 3 or 4 depending upon how many speeds the auto has). I always thought that Honda never provided the button to control the overdrive.

On the Acura I drove, I remember that putting in to Sport mode locked out the 6th speed but that still involved moving the lever.

 

[starvin_sgt]

The lowest cost ultimate road trip vehicle we went with was full sized vans. All of my boys are over 6 feet and even the aerostar and astro were just too tight for the legs and size 12 feet.
I could coax 17 mpg all day in small blocks with the factory bench seats then I built a platform for the back where luggage went underneath and a sleeping pad on top. We used to drive through the night out west and in southern utah there was no traffic so everyone was fast asleep but me.
Even 4 door full crew cab pick ups do not have that much room. Then you add the view from the front seat and out the windows and it makes the trip just so much more of a sightseeing adventure...lots of good times in those big ole vans...well accept when the sliding door fell off in the walmart parking lot 800 miles from home but such is life eh?

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
Do you have OD off button? My 1999 Odyssey has no button and the 2012 Accord I drove has no button either. One has to physically move the shifter if you want go from D to Dn (where n could be 3 or 4 depending upon how many speeds the auto has). I always thought that Honda never provided the button to control the overdrive.


The CR-V has an OD Off button, yes. It's a very compact shifter, so I guess Honda decided to provide the button instead of a number of detents. The same shifter is (or at least was) used in the Odyssey, Pilot, Element, and probably others from that same era. The shifter has P-R-N-D-2-1. 2 locks it into 2nd (no 1st) and 1 locks it into 1st.

Our Acura does not have an OD Off button. The shifter has P-R-N-D5-D4-3-2-1. Here again, 2 locks it into 2nd (no 1st) and 1 locks it into 1st. Like the Accord, the MDX has a full center console with newer space limitations for a shifter. The CR-V's shifter is on the bottom of the dash with no center console (like a minivan), so there were likely some space limitations the Honda engineers were working with.

 

[tribocessive]

volkswagen thing in concourse condition any color.

 

[4x4chevydude]

I have done alot of long trips in my Hyundai Sonata with 2-4 people and their stuff and I have been impressed. It is comfortable and roomy and room for everything and I have gotten 33-35 MPG on it...I recently bought a Buick Century and am looking forward to driving this long distance as it feels like a big spacious confortable car with alot of room....before that i had a k2500 OBS chevy that we cruised in...I lvoe that truck and other then the MPG that was an ultimate roadtrip crusier big bench seats very confy and fun to drive...