Patent ID: 8396635

Claim:
A control apparatus for a multi-speed automatic transmission which is capable of selecting a manual shift mode that allows a speed step to be shifted up or down manually by an operation of a driver of a vehicle, the control apparatus comprising: an electronic control unit having a manual downshift permission portion, a correction portion, and a speed-value-increasing correction amount computation portion; the manual downshift permission portion that permits a downshift to be manually performed, on a condition that while the manual shift mode is selected, one of vehicle speed, engine rotation speed, and turbine rotation speed of the multi-speed automatic transmission is less than or equal to a downshift permission criterion value that is set according to a speed step achieved by the downshift; the correction portion that corrects the downshift permission criterion value by a speed-value-increasing correction amount that is computed according to a situation of travel of the vehicle; and the speed-value-increasing correction amount computation portion that upon the downshift over more than one number of steps the speed-value-increasing correction amount computation portion computes the speed-value-increasing correction amount separately for each of number of steps over which downshifts occur