Subaru Corporation

Akihisa Osada

Harunobu Horiguchi

Yuki Sugimoto

Ryoichi Mizutani

Yohei Kawashima

A vehicle control apparatus includes a steering device, a steering controller, a steering input member, a front-rear driving force distribution unit, and a behavior controller. The steering device steers front wheels of a vehicle. The steering controller controls and causes the steering device to perform steering automatically. The steering input member receives a steering operation inputted by a driver. The front-rear driving force distribution unit changes a front-rear driving force distribution ratio. The behavior controller predicts, if a steering operation is performed via the steering input member during the automatic steering, a behavior of the vehicle to be exhibited after steering corresponding to the steering operation, and causes, if an oversteer behavior is predicted to occur, the front-rear driving force distribution unit to change the driving force distribution ratio to a front-wheel biased distribution ratio as compared with a case where the oversteer behavior is not predicted to occur.

Controlling driving force distribution ratio in response to prediction of oversteer

A braking control device includes a target vehicle speed setting unit, a braking power control unit, and a low friction coefficient region recognition unit. The low friction coefficient region recognition unit recognizes a low friction coefficient region of a road surface between a current position of an own vehicle and a target position. The braking power control unit estimates a maximum deceleration rate assuming braking to be started after passage through the low friction coefficient region to cause deceleration to a target vehicle speed at the target position. On the condition that the maximum deceleration rate is smaller than a predetermined upper limit on a deceleration rate, the braking power control unit causes a start of generation of braking power after the passage through the low friction coefficient region.

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Tokyo, Japan

Akihisa Osada