Coasting to a hill?

[Sean T.]

What is the best plan for if you have a long area that you can coast, but then you need to climb a hill at the end?

My best guess is that you should coast most of the way but then start accelerating so that you can level out your speed and maintain momentum up the hill.

I think two other solutions might be coasting all the way to the hill, (continuously slowing down), then at the last minute, using the gas to climb the hill...

Or, using the gas lightly all the way up to the hill so that when you get there, you don't need to increase the throttle to make it up the hill...

Does anybody have any other ideas? Or any comments on what method is best?

[KJSatz]

Well it depends on the gearing of the car to an extent. I might try to avoid 1st and 2nd. So coastdown to the slowest speed you could climb the hill in 3rd slowly bleeding speed to the top once you've engaged. If just simply coasting to the hill leaves you with a speed you can use 4th instead, use 4th up the hill, but if it is too slow for that, coast up the hill until you are a good speed to start using 3rd (won't take long).

Of course a lot of this depends on the traffic (or lack thereof) and minimum speed laws.

Further you have an automatic transmission according to your sig...are you coasting in neutral or in D or what?

[Sean T.]

Neutral if there are no cars, but if there are cars in sight, I leave it in D.