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Aggressive Acceleration Using Adaptive Cruise Control

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2.6K views 15 replies 7 participants last post by  Griswald  
#1 ·
Is there some method to reduce how aggressively the Niro accelerates after a car slows in front of you and turns, while using adaptive cruise control? Once they've turned, it feels like the accelerator is on the floor.
 
#2 ·
The amount of acceleration depends on what the adaptive cruise control speed is set to. If there are no vehicles near the Niro, it will try to get to the designated speed pretty quickly. The best way to control acceleration is to hit cancel and control the acceleration until you are 5 or so mph from your desired speed then hit resume.
 
#4 ·
Yes. At least for 2nd generation Niros there are settings. See Owner's Manual 6-118:

I want the car to react quickly, but gently, so I have these settings:​
  • Distance: 3 (at 4, other cars cut in on me; at 2 the following distance is closer than I like)
  • Acceleration: Middle
  • Reaction speed: Middle.
Thanks, I'll check this out. I'm assuming my 2020 is a second generation.
 
#8 ·
Even on the 2nd Gen, the accel setting is not quite the fix you are looking for..

The problem is that there seems to be a couple of different cases in the adaptive cruise and the "general" case follows the settings: if you set slow accel, when starting from stop or after slowing for stop and go traffic, it will accelerate slowly, but there seems to be a different case where the car basically seems to floor it and brakes hard very late if detects a car in front.. I don't exactly know what conditions trigger this, but nothing in the advanced settings seems to alter the behaviour..

I would really like the adaptive cruise to have a stop distance setting, not just a follow distance because the behaviour of strong acceleration followed by hard, late braking is not only unsettling to the passenger, but has a huge potential of resulting in an accident (yes, you are supposed to monitor the ADAS systems all the time, but the point of the ADAS is also supposed to make the drive experience smoother and less stressful for the driver, and not to have to actually increase the stress because the system feels unsafe..
 
#10 ·
I have logged ~6000 miles of interstate driving with adaptive cruise control on my 2023 Niro HEV. I cannot think of even one time when I felt it behaved inappropriately. Specifically, never "strong acceleration followed by hard, late braking." The only times it slowed quickly were when someone cut in front of me.

I would never think of using it in stop and go traffic, or in any place other than limited access highways. Even on interstates there are situations where its use is inappropriate, such as traffic jams, construction detours, or the steep, curving climb to cross the Appalachians in either direction between Black Mountain and Old Fort on I-85 east of Asheville, NC.

Adaptive cruise control + active lane assistance have greatly reduced stress and tiredness on long trips.
 
#11 ·
Don't know what is different in your 23 vs my 24 PHEV, but the Kia adaptive cruise has always seemed not quite as good as even the last generation of Toyota adaptive cruise (on which I've driven tens of thousands of km on sometime dodgy roads and it has been rock solid and never wanted to accelerate or decelerate excessively except for emergency braking or mis-steer with the lane assist), although I am starting to trust the Kia system more, but it does seem to have more quirks and it doesn't seem to be able to recognize road markings as consistently as Toyota, so the lane assist tends to come on and off frequently (it does work fantastically when in Highway Drive Assist mode though; it's just the normal non-highway mode that is sometimes more stress-inducing than reducing).. I think one thing that would make me feel a bit more comfortable is a "release bing" sound like Toyota can do whenever the ADAS turns off and wants you to take over. The Kia has no audio setting and just stops working whenever..

In any case, on the Kia, 95% of the time it works well, but again, there are times, generally when I manually slow for traffic and then reactivate the cruise with a clear lane ahead, or as the OP noted that a car cuts across your lane and then out, again leaving the front clear, that it seems to think it needs to accelerate hard (and maybe this is not really just an artifact of how quickly the electric motor can modulate the vehicle speed, sort of like the hydraulic cylinders on flight simulators and Disney rides can simulate the feel of motion and G-forces) and if it catches up to traffic before it reaches the set speed limit, it doesn't seem to want to slow until you're right up to the car in front, and then it aggressively brakes late. Now it always stops on the few occasions that I have nervously hovered my foot over the brake and let it do its thing just to see where it would stop, but it stops a lot closer to the lead vehicle than I would ever normally be comfortable with (about 2 feet). In "normal" operation, when this anomalous acceleration is not triggered, the car works as expected, gradually slowing and stopping a reasonable distance from the car in front and you never feel the sense of hard acceleration or braking.. I've tried all the settings to try to fix this and all the settings do is to change the behaviour in "normal" operation, but they don't seem to affect this anomalous condition...

Again, don't know what the difference is between your 23 and my 24 is, or whether road conditions and driving style of myself or others in my area contribute to the behaviour of the ADAS, or whether the feeling is just due to the way the electric motors work, but I can attest that there are situations when it does feel like it is accelerating very hard (again, more so than the settings say to do: I've currently got my settings to fastest reaction time, but slowest acceleration) and nothing really explains why on these occasions,it wants to stop so close to the leading vehicle...
 
#12 ·
Found those settings mentioned by SDeemer above. Kept them where they were. I've been quite satisfied with the adaptive cruise control, but I only use it on the interstate and not in traffic. I actually seldom use the active lane assistance cause I don't like feeling the slight tugs on the wheel when I am steering. When I've let the car take over it will go for about two minutes before telling me to get hands on the wheel. Overall the system seems to perform as well as a CRV, the only other one I can compare it to.

Geoff
 
#13 ·
But why is it so bad?

My Ford Fusion Hybrid had a setting called Eco Cruise Control. It accelerated gently, just like it was trying to be economic. It also had regular cruise control.

My Kia slams the pedal to the metal even to the extent of way overshooting the set speed.

Kias cruise control is just plain awful.