Rogue is Solid Going Uphill/Steep Grade?

[kerrton]

When travelling on the highway and you encounter a steep, long hill do you have to apply significant extra gas pedal/throttle pressure to compensate, thereby increasing rpms, or does the Rogue handle things nicely and lose very little speed, if any, while maintaining constant throttle without the need to increase rpms? I've heard conflicting reports about this, so I'd like to set the records straight!

Thanks a lot, your help is much appreciated!!

[philipa_240sx]

A bit of both actually:

When going up slight incline while holding the accelerator at a constant postion, the CVT will sense the additional load, 'gear down' and engine rpms will increase. Speed will remain fairly constant for slight inclines.

On steep hills you will start to slow down and have to compensate with more throttle... just like a regular transmission.

IMHO Nissan and JATCO (the CVT mfg) deliberately made the CVT behave somewhat like a conventional transmission... purely for consumer perception.

[kerrton]

Thanks Philipa,

That was what I was expecting, I was just trying to get an idea of how significant this is with the Rogue. While all vehicles experience this phenomenon, there is a big range in how significant this is. In under-powered vehicles the slightest incline causes the speed to reduce, the engine to rpms to decline, and requires additional throttle and a downshift of the transmissions. In "good" vehicles this effect is much less noticable and isn't noticable unless you hit a really steep incline, like with my wife's Mazda 3. It'll take on almost any hill without any hesitation at all, and you never have to gear down or worry about losing speed. I was wondering if the Rogue is similar, in the opinion of people who own this vehicle and have been driving it for some time.

Thanks.

[philipa_240sx]

The QR25DE motor does have one attribute... it has alot of torque for a 4cyl. More in fact than the 2.3l mill in the Mazda 3 (about +14hp and 25 more lb-ft at much lower rpm). Mind you the Rogue is heavier than the Mazda 3 by some 300 to 500lbs (depending on trim).

Performance wise, the Rogue does 0-60 in about 8.8sec for an AWD model (Edmunds) and 8.2 for a FWD (Motortrend). These numbers don't tell everything. The torque comes on early... it does not feel sluggish at all.

If there is one downside to the QR's power and the CVT's slick operation, you lose all sensation of speed and acceleration and you find yourself driving much faster than posted speed limits! This is very apparent during highway diving where your speed can easily creep by 10-15mph without you realizing it. I use my cruise control alot!

[kerrton]

Great, that is what I wanted to hear! The specs for the engine that I looked at support what you are saying, but I just wanted to hear some real-world accounts to reflect this too. My Rogue should be here in the next couple of days, can't wait to take it up some big hills!!

Thanks again for the info.

[jsellberg]

i concur with philipa, and i've gone up some pretty steep hills in my rogue (88 to tahoe, & mission "hill" in fremont)

[Ticmxman]

As philipa stated so well, "If there is one downside to the QR's power and the CVT's slick operation, you lose all sensation of speed and acceleration and you find yourself driving much faster than posted speed limits! This is very apparent during highway diving where your speed can easily creep by 10-15mph without you realizing it. I use my cruise control alot!"

I believe this lack of sensation of speed has contributed to a few less than stellar reviews of the Rogue. The Rogue has plenty of power it is just much smoother that a typical automatic equiped vehicle. I love the low speed torque/pep of the Rogue, it is never slugish like my old 2006 RAV4 was.