Patent ID: 8521394

Claim:
A vehicle running control apparatus for carrying out an acceleration/deceleration running pattern alternately repeating acceleration running for accelerating a vehicle running with at least a thermal engine as a drive source until reaching a target upper limit vehicle speed by utilizing drive force of the drive source after reaching a target lower limit vehicle speed, and inertia running for blocking transmission of the drive force of the thermal engine to drive wheels after reaching the target upper limit vehicle speed and allowing the vehicle to run through inertia until reaching the target lower limit vehicle speed, the apparatus comprising: an actual acceleration/deceleration running pattern generating unit that generates an actual acceleration/deceleration running pattern including actual running states of the inertia running and the acceleration running based on a current running situation of the vehicle; a corrected acceleration/deceleration running pattern generating unit that generates a corrected acceleration/deceleration running pattern obtained by elongating an actual acceleration/deceleration period of the actual acceleration/deceleration running pattern, when the actual acceleration/deceleration period from start of the inertia running to end of the acceleration running in the actual acceleration/deceleration running pattern is shorter than a reference acceleration/deceleration period set in advance; and an acceleration/deceleration running pattern setting unit that sets the actual acceleration/deceleration running pattern as a set acceleration/deceleration running pattern when the corrected acceleration/deceleration running pattern is not generated, and that sets the corrected acceleration/deceleration running pattern as the set acceleration/deceleration running pattern when the corrected acceleration/deceleration running pattern is generated.