What about his description makes it sound like hill assist?? Hill assist keeps the brakes applied when you let off the brake pedal and start to accelerate. As the driveline takes up slack and the wheels start moving the brakes come off. If he was trying to give it gas to get up the ramps it wasn't hill assist working against him.

Now, getting the traction control confused and THAT causing problems I can believe.

Rob

 

Maybe I shouldn't have assumed everyone does, but I drive up ramps with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. If you let off the gas and are just on the brake the system should prevent you from moving backwards while still in drive. It is my understanding that for the assist to let off, enough gas must be applied to generate enough forward movement so as to not allow any rollback. Depending on how much gas was applied, and I sure wouldn't be mashing the pedal at that point, perhaps it was not enough to release the assist and start moving forward. That's why I would guess it was the hill assist. Traction control should not really kick in unless a wheel was slipping, which could be the case if one of the ramps started to slide forward and the system realized one wheel was not moving and the others were moving.