Ok.. the good news is that I'm hopefully picking up a shiny new Prius sometime next week The bad news is that on the drive home there's at least one potential point where I may need a hill start and I'm not sure how to do them in an automatic. I'm a UK driver so every car I've driven before has been a manual, and the standard method in a manual is to put the handbrake on, open the clutch until biting point, then handbrake off.. I have a friend who drives an auto who claimed that "an automatic transmission will not allow the car to roll backwards on a hill if it's in Drive", but I know that the Prius has a Hill Start Assist feature which seems to imply that its transmission _will_ allow it to roll backwards (if the car couldn't roll back anyway, what would be the point of adding a feature to keep the brakes on?) So what's the safest way for a new non-auto driver to hill start a Prius? Use the handfootbrake or.. well, what?
If you're on a steep enough hill that the car may roll back a bit, jsut press the brake all the way down till' the hill start feature activates (the light flases on the dash, release the brake and give it gas. Otherwise go off the brake onto the gas, simple...
If you can start on a hill with a manual transmission, you can do it with an automatic. The problem is with drivers making the opposite transition. If you get stumped, two-foot it -- left foot on the foot (service) brake, right on accelerator. This applies to any automatic, even those without hill start assists.
