Patent ID: 7340335

Claim:
A control apparatus for a vehicular drive system which has a drive power source and an automatic transmission operatively connected to said drive power source, and in which a drive force is transmitted from said drive power source to a drive wheel of a vehicle through said automatic transmission, said control apparatus including uphill-drive-force control means for controlling the drive power source and/or the automatic transmission to increase a drive force of the vehicle during an uphill-road running of the vehicle at a given required vehicle output as compared with a drive force during a level-road running of the vehicle, at substantially the same required vehicle output, for obtaining substantially the same value of acceleration of the vehicle during the uphill-road running as that during the level-road running, said control apparatus comprising: delay control means for delaying initiation of a drive force control by said uphill-drive-force control means for said uphill-road running of the vehicle, until a predetermined first time period has passed after a moment of initiation of said uphill-road running; reference acceleration calculating means for calculating a reference acceleration of the vehicle on the basis of an actually generated drive force of the vehicle; actual acceleration detecting means for detecting an actual acceleration of the vehicle; acceleration difference calculating means for calculating an acceleration difference between said reference acceleration calculated by said reference acceleration calculating means and said actual acceleration detected by said actual acceleration detecting means; and acceleration difference determining means for determining whether said acceleration difference calculated by said acceleration difference calculating means is larger than an uphill-roadway determining threshold above which a roadway on which the vehicle is running is an uphill roadway a gradient of which requires the drive force control by said uphill-drive-force control means, and wherein said delay control means includes first period measuring means for measuring a time period during which said acceleration difference determining means determines that said acceleration difference is held larger than said uphill-roadway determining threshold, and first period determining means for determining whether said time period measured by said first period measuring means has exceeded said predetermined first time period during which the initiation of the drive force control by said uphill-drive-force control means is delayed, said delay control means delaying the initiation of the drive force control by said uphill-drive-force control means until said first period determining means has determined that said time period measured by said first period measuring means had exceeded said predetermined first time period.