Possibly a silly question about the hand brake.

[nickpike]

Hi all, my drive is tarmacked and in good condition, but is on quite a steep slope down to my garage. I tend to put the car in the garage on the level rather than leave it on the slope, just in case the car rolled away and caused a lot of damage.

However, for cleaning, etc, I should like to leave the car on the slope

1) Am I putting a lot of strain on the transmission lock, by obviously leaving the gears in 'P'? Can this lock break/ spring out?
2) There is no handbrake lever so no indication of the brake being on. If I pull the electric handbrake on, does it stay on when I switch the engine off, and has it set the hand brake correctly for the load caused by the drive slope?

With the lack of handbrake, there is no indication and so I'm nervous about leaving it on the slope.
What is a safe procedure for leaving it on the sloping drive way?
cheers
Nick

 

[k9kids]

Stop on the slope, put the car in Park and put the emergency brake on before lifting your foot from the brake pedal.

When you put the emergency brake on there should be a red brake symbol that appears on the dash panel. On my 2015 it is hidden by the steering wheel. I have to lean forward from my seating position to see it.

 

[balfor]

Not a silly question as the parking brake is a bit complicated on this car.

First, IF auto hold is engaged when the shifter is put in park and the engine shutoff, the parking brake will engage automatically. So, you have a somewhat automatic parking brake.

However, if auto hold is not enabled, then parking brake operation is manual. You need to pull back on the parking brake lever to engage the brake after putting the shifter in park.

I prefer the Lexus implementation of electronic parking brakes, my old GS had a dedicated Auto button for the parking brake and once enabled you never had to mess with it again.

 

[nickpike]

Many thanks guys.
Out of interest, if I was applying a conventional manual parking brake, I would pull on the lever an amount to provide braking force to hold the car, and not necessarily pull the lever up fully to maximum braking force. There is no point over straining the system.
On my G2, does the parking brake apply an amount of braking force according to the slope it is on, or does it just apply the maximum braking force every time? If the former and the system detected movement of the car, would the system apply some more braking force to stop the car?
I'm just wondering if the car holding is guaranteed.

 

[k9kids]

After several minutes of using auto hold with the car in drive, the system will override it and apply the parking brake.

Guess it figures you fell asleep.

 

[Alwaysforward]

Press foot on brake to activate auto hold, slide shift lever to neutral, turn on automatic brake then place it into park. This will leave no strain on tranny.