I live in an area with medium hills…
In: 5
This is heavily dependent on your habits as a driver and what the driving conditions in that area allow. In hilly terrain that goes up and down its best to accelerate lightly on the downhill letting gravity assist and coast/slow down a bit on the uphill so you aren’t fighting gravity to maintain speed.
If you practice that as a driver then cruise control is likely to give you worse mileage. Cruise control is trying to maintain a static speed. So it will throttle down on the down hill and lose the advantage of the gravity assist to maintain a static speed and accelerate on the uphill to fight against gravity.
If you are consciously practicing that though, cruise control is likely going to do a better job of maintaining speed and fuel efficiency. Many drivers wait until they’ve slowed down significantly and then heavily accelerate back up to their desired speed, whether on uphill or downhill. Its very inefficient and cruise control works better than that.
With hills I tend to do about 3-5 mpg better in my car than the cruise control does.
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