Cruise control/braking/and sudden drop in engine RPM

[Cypress_1973]

Just a quick question if anybody may have an answer too or noticed this themselves. I noticed for the first time today driving that when I have Cruise Control on and coming up to a stop when you step on the brakes, it disengages the cruise control (which it's supposed to) but what I noticed is the Engine RPM drops to 1000 RPM immediately, therefor having to use more brake to stop, but when your driving along and cruising without cruise control and you come to a stop, when you brake the engine RPM's do NOT drop to 1000 but reduce accordingly to the speed your slowing down too giving you engine brake assist so to say so you don't have to use the brakes as much. I tried the cruise control at different speeds and engine RPM's and never failed, as soon as I hit the brakes, RPM drops to 1000. Without cruise control and hit the brakes engine RPM reduces according to speed. Is this normal?? Never noticed that with any other vehicles I had with Cruise. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

[philipa_240sx]

Hmmm.... very curious.

The CVT computer takes into account both accelerator position and brake pedal application. It's possible that using cruise control causes it to behave completely differently. Whether Nissan intentionally programmed it this way, I do not know.

[mlpower]

I havent even tried my Cruise Control yet. I will try it out next highway trip and report back if needed.

[Roguemonster]

I believe this is an intended safety feature that's not necessarily tied to the braking, but to the disarming of the cruise control.

If you hit a good bump with the cruise on, it will disengage and do the same thing. I'm guessing the idea behind it is you could be distracted or worse and are not in control, therefore your Rogue is not going to let your cruise control continue to drive freely into that grove of trees or whatever's just off the road.

[Pescakl1]

I think Rogue Monster is right, this is probably a safety feature.

Think of it: when do you step on the brake without disengaging the cruise control first? When you don't have the time to do it, so in engineer term, for an urgent braking.In that situation, you don't want anything to step in the way of the best way to stop the car: the brakes. I believe they decided to remove everything including the engine braking feature, and they can do that because the CVT is software controlled, so they can program it like that.

Now, if a Nissan engineer comes to the forum, it would be nice to confirm that.

[philipa_240sx]

Try this:

Drive at a constant speed then quickly but gently apply the brakes. When I tried this, I noticed the same drop to 1000 RPM's. This could be a safety feature for the drive-by-wire throttle which returns to idle on sudden brake application. Possibly to avoid unintended acceleration???

[Cypress_1973]

It all sounds pretty justified being a safety issue. I wasn't really too concerned about it. Just the first time I've ever seen RPM drop like that.I'll give that a try Philipa and see if it does drop too just tapping the brakes quickly. Thanks for the info thus far guys. I'm actually going to the dealer soon to get summer tires back on and the TPMS update so I'll ask them if they know exactly why the RPM's drop like that.