How Does The Hill Start Assist Function On Your Nissan New Car Work?

By Author: Andrew Rogers
Total Articles: 8
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The Nissan new car that you choose may have a hill start system to help you when you’ve parked on a slope. This is a feature seen on many Nissan new vehicles, but some drivers may not understand what it is and how it works. In this article, we will explore this in more detail and hopefully, this will you to get the most out of your car.

What is a Hill Start System?

When you need to stop on an uphill slope, it can be embarrassing or even dangerous if you roll backward into traffic behind your car. In the past, most cars were not fitted with electric parking brakes and automatic transmissions. If you need to stop on a slope it was difficult, the driver's two feet would have to dance across three pedals, and the manual gearbox would need to be engaged. If this weren’t bad enough, the manual parking brake would be situated in between the two front seats making it hard to control the car and engage the parking brake at the same time.

Hill starting, in particular, was a real challenge, the clutch has to be fed to the biting point, the revs increased, the parking brake released, the indicator flipped on and ...
... then the driver had to ease out of a space into traffic smoothly. This would often result in a stall or bunny hop out into traffic. This feat of dexterity was extremely difficult, and it probably resulted in a lot of road traffic accidents. Thankfully, technology has more on quite a bit, and now we have cars that are far easier to use on an incline.

How Does it Work?

Many cars have a hill start assist or hill holding system to help the driver stay safe. This isn’t new; in fact, we’ve had mechanical hill holding systems since the 1930s. However, the latest versions use the onboard computers to decide when to apply the brakes by reading the road angles and pedal positions. The car will know when the driver wants to move off by monitoring the acceleration demands. This is an extremely smart system to stop at lights on a hill or pull out from a parking spot on an incline.

The most advanced modern hill start assist systems will activate for two or three seconds at the most after the car has come to rest. If the driver wants to stop or park up for any longer than that it’s a better idea to cover the brake pedal. Certain cars now have a dedicated parking brake that’s activated by pressing a button, and this is also an excellent method for longer stops. Whichever method is employed, the hill start assist system in concert with an electric parking brake should prevent rollbacks.

If you’re interested in a Nissan new car, get in touch with Perth City Nissan, and we will be delighted to arrange a no obligation test drive for you.