irenesbob

I do not have it on my 2018 A4, nor have I had it on any car I‘ve owned or leased. I went to Daytona last weekend for the 24 hour IMSA race and rented a 2018 Camry that had Toyota’s version of adaptive cruise control. I hated it. Twice the thing almost killed me. Once on a rainy curve it saw the semi in the right lane slightly ahead of me as being in my lane and dramatically slowed the car from an indicted 74 down to under 40 like in seconds, and for no reason. The car swerved and nearly lost it on the wet road. Another time, a car was in the lane to the left of me and just suddenly darted across inches in front of me and off to the exit ramp. Nothing happened from the radar controlled cruise. If the goal was to keep all the cars in one lane going exactly as slow as the slowest car in that lane it worked rather well, and I got used to what that was and at times did not mind it. However, it drained all the driver-ness out of me and I felt like a jerk. An example is when I was going in medium traffic at 74 in a 70 zone and wondered why the car on my right was going faster, looked at the speedo and saw that the speed of my car had dropped slightly maybe to 70 to match the car a good 350+ feet ahead. I tried to floor the gas and drive around that car but the radar controls would not release the gas pedal and I had to literally floor it to the carpet, then the car lunged ahead, losing a bit of traction in the rain. Part of the reason I like using normal cruise is that I don’t have to keep looking at the speedo to maintain my speed and can devote full attention to the cars around me. When I got home and drove back from the airport in snow in my A4 it felt so much better just being able to use cruise as an assist, not a domineering master. Finally, the question: Is this how Audi’s Adaptive Cruise Control works? End of old fart’s rant!

lowjdml

Audi's ACC doesn't do this. I can easily override it and tailgate the car in front if I choose. You can also adjust the distance between you and the car in front. However, if you're both cruising at 74 and the car in front trickles down to 70, you'll maintain the spacing and trickle down to 70 too. Therefore, I pay close attention to my speed and coming up to slow traffic in front, I change lanes before my speed drops.
Where it really shines is in heavy traffic and traffic jams. You can go for miles without ever touching accelerator of brake.

superswiss

Well, ACC is designed to slow down to the speed of cars ahead if they are slower. That's the whole point and makes it less annoying and more comfortable for long distance driving if you don't have to constantly adapt to cars ahead not maintaining a constant speed. If they slow you down too much, just pass. As the above poster mentions, you can always override ACC with the throttle in the Audi. It never prevents you from manually accelerating to pass. Also there are 5 distance settings I believe. I usually keep it set at distance 1, which does a very good job at following. It also changes its behavior depending on the current Drive Select mode. In Comfort it's more relaxed and hangs back more. Auto is very good in daily traffic keeping pace with the cars ahead and Dynamic will make it more aggressive. So in other words it's configurable and never intrusive. I will never buy another car w/o adaptive cruise control, however a poor implementation like you describe would totally annoy me as well. Bonus with the latest systems is that in traffic they can take over steering as well and essentially relive you from having to drive the car in annoying stop & go traffic. Audi's auto steering reverts to basic lane keeping assist at higher speeds, though, as opposed to competitors like Mercedes, Tesla etc. that auto steer at regular highway speeds and make long distance driving less fatiguing.

idealdreams

My Audi A4 is my first car with adaptive cruise control, though I have driven Cadillacs which had the feature also, even the CT6 which has the hands-free "Super Cruise" feature.

I am VERY impressed with Audi's ACC. I use it every single time I'm in the car, even when driving my 5 minute work commute to and from work. It works very well and I have had no experiences with it where I felt that it put me in danger or made me question using it again.

On the flip side, actually, I noticed that it can detect a car ahead of you which even accidentally enters your lane and then can adjust accordingly, even if the car hurries up and gets back into their own lane.

I use the ACC coupled with predictive control and when I use my GPS to get directions, it will actually slow me down when it's time to exit and make left and right turns, which is great because sometimes I focus too much on the road ahead and miss my navigation cues, but when I feel the car start slowing down when I'm supposed to exit, it reminds me that I need to exit. It also will match the speed limit signs around me so I never have to worry about speeding on the highway.

Audi did a fantastic job with ACC, and coupled with lane keep assist, you barely have to keep any pressure on the wheel to drive. It makes long drives effortless. Having been in my fiancé's car recently for an hour drive, which does not have ANY fancy features (or even cruise control), it made it wonder how I got by before my Audi!

irenesbob

It sounds like the Audi system is much better - great! With the Toyota system I found myself either staying in the left lane or moving over to pass a slower car like 1500 ft before I needed to. This then was a problem for cars behind me in the left lane that were going much faster. I might mover over at 74 mph to pass a slower car ahead in the middle lane going 65, but then I'd be out there much too long blocking car wanting to go 80 mph in the left lane. I do not tailgate, but generally wait until I am only a few car lengths away to pull out and pass a car ahead so I do not wind up being a snail on the fast lane gradually catching up to and passing the car ahead of me in the middle lane. Good for Audi!

VM

Is the Toyota system radar-based like the Audi's, or camera-based like Subaru's EyeSight?

VM

If that works on the roads where you live, consider yourself lucky. I've had it sometimes pick up a sign that it shouldn't have... and next thing you know, your car is braking to 40km/h on a divided highway. Ooooops.

Also, in this province, there is a culture of rampant criminality when it comes to speed limits and... well, the more conservative drivers drive 10-15km/h over the limit and the really irresponsible ones... much faster. Sadly, there's no way of setting it so that it maintains your speed difference rather than the absolute speed (so, e.g., if you had it at 115km/h where the limit was 100km/h, and the limit drops to 70km/h, it would set itself at 85km/h rather than 70).

MDAudi

I want to echo the positive comments about Audi's ACC. It works great and I only have a minor quibble with how it works. The Driver Assistance Package (which includes ACC) is the reason we got our Audis, and we will never own any cars that do not have at least the same features as our current cars' DAP.

To be fair to Toyota, keep in mind that Audi's ACC and DAP have several configuration options. It sounds like you were new to the Toyota you were in, and there may be a way to configure Toyota's implementation of ACC that will work better with your style of driving. But I don't know, as I have not driven a Toyota in years, and never one with their version of ACC/DAP installed. Audi offers a few DAP settings that I found intolerable: the "Early" setting on Lane Assist, and the "Predictive Control (efficiency assist)" on the ACC. They both drove me crazy. So perhaps adjusting some settings would make the Toyota system usable?

The only "quibble" I have with ACC is if I am on a curve and the lane next to me has a car that is going slower than my lane of traffic, when the slower car in the other lane becomes directly in front of me (due to the curve), the ACC will slow down to match that car's speed. But as others have said, the Audi ACC is easily overridden with a little pressure on the accelerator so it ends up being no big deal. This is an understandable issue and not really a "bug" in the real sense, just the nature of the way the system detects cars and speed. The Owner's Manual warns you about this kind of issue (see below).

My wife hates standard cruise control and almost never uses it. But she loves the ACC, especially Audi's "Traffic Jam Assist" feature, which makes stop-and-go traffic a breeze. Overall, ACC is one of the most important safety features that I have seen in a long time, as it drastically reduces the fatigue of driving for long periods and/or in heavy traffic.

ribeye

I will never own another car without it. I also have the traffic assist which is great as well. I am not sure what went wrong with the one in the Toyota, but the one in the Audi works great. Like the others said, It is simple to override just by touching the gas or the break and you can adjust the distance you want to follow the car ahead of you in the MMI. One of the main reasons I got the Audi was you could hardly find this option in a BMW X3 and I did not want to order a car. The traffic assist works great if you are in bumper to bumper traffic. you never have to touch the gas or the break, but you should always be ready.

gguy