Volvo XC40 Forums

Good Morning

How are you all finding hill start assist. I was on quite a steep hill and as I transferred my foot from the brake to the accelerator, the car began to roll back. The Renault Van I drive gives hill start assist on slopes, let alone hills.

Hey! I meant to ask that as well. For the record, i keep Auto-Hold off. Seems that with that one, obviously it works.

But with it turned off, i find the car rolls back quite fast, and incredibly annoying. I managed to make it stay a few times by pressing the break pedal harder, but i'm not sure that's actually how it works as on other cases it still rolled back. Very weird, i drove my Mazda 3 on that hill for 3 years when leaving work and never had issues

To follow up on this - i've just read the manual bit again. Clearly specifies it's unrelated to Auto-Hold

The function means that the pedal pressure in the brake system remains for several seconds while the driver's foot is moved from brake pedal to accelerator pedal.

The temporary braking effect releases after several seconds or when the driver starts to drive away.

Hill start assist is available even if the function for automatic braking when stationary (Auto hold) is deactivated.

Does it depend on how hard you had pressed the brake pedal? I'm guessing that if harder it puts more pressure in the system?

Surprised it is rolling back though as if in D the tickover should allow it to move off without rolling back. I tend to use Autohold anyway for hill starts.

Chris

Hi Dermottdog
Did you find a fix for the Hill assist issue?
Just picked up my 2021 T4 R Design, and the vehicle rolls back every now and then even on a slight incline.
Wife drives the vehicle and tends to get extremely anxious which is understandable.

There's no fix for it - i've checked it with Volvo and apparently the hillstart only engages when the engine stops. It's incredibly counterintuitive and i see no reason whu this would happen, but you'll learn to live with it.
It rolls back very little before power gets to the wheels

Thanks for the reply. Their reasoning Doesn't make sense though. It works most times. Wife parks at work on a very small incline. When taking off it rolls back. I switched off auto start/stop. So when she stops in traffic on an incline the hill assist engages most times and sometimes when she least expects it, it will roll. Seems Volvo is not owning up to this. Also surely if this is normal, all users should be experiencing the same, and if so, why so few complaints? Would have lived with it if I was the regular driver. With the wife driving I will never hear the end of this

I'm experiencing a slight roll back lately, but it seems to me that the car stops when the engine is on (so everything is OK) while when the auto start/stop is active and the engine shuts off, the car rolls slightly back when I lift the foot from the pedal and the engine starts. I'm not using auto brake.

Auto start/stop is disabled on mine but still does it.

I have a 2 month old XC40 B4 R design and have also found the hill assist to only work intermittently and this is not related to hill gradient or brake pedal pressure. My previous car, a Peugeot 2008, had hill assist which worked every time on all gradients. I now use the auto hold a lot more to compensate. A bit miffed really as living in a VERY hilly area this is something I found important to have.