So when I come to a stop - say at a gate at a steep incline - the Jeep backs up a lot - until I apply the brakes, Our 2016 car does not do that. Any ideas appreciated .

 

Sooooo you want it to hold itself on the incline? Just a tad confused on what you're asking.

 

^^ me too.. curious to see what the OP is really getting at.
I've heard of some newer cars maybe having a feature like that..Not sure which ones. Or why you'd expect the car to hold itself like that instead of using the brake pedal. Maybe it was designed by the same people that don't know how to parallel park so they had to program the car to do it for them.

Just one of the many reasons why I like older less "modern" vehicles. hence the XJ....

 

New vehicles are so full of electronics it could be a lot of things. I have a new jeep grand cherokee and dodge ram pickup that have the brake hold feature. But you put your foot on the brake on an incline, and it will hold the brakes on for a few seconds to allow you to go from brake to gas pedal without the rig starting to roll. Kind of hard to get used to, and to be honest, there are times my foot moves way faster than the brake delay, so its not a perfect solution, but o.k. In the case of your cherokee, its about how the torque converter is set up. Once the RPM gets low enough it falls below the stall speed of the torque converter and the converter quits putting out I guess what I would call thrust. At that point, the jeep has nothing pushing it forward, so it will roll back unless you put on the brakes. It is operating as it should. With the newer electronics, they can set things up a lot tighter in the transmission, or they can provide features that would assist on the hill differently than the brake assist option.

 

Our community has a front gate with doors which are opened manually by the guard. Coming in to the community there is a slope perhaps 30 degrees or so. I have been coming up to that gate for the last 4 years. I come to a complete stop and sometimes have to wait a minute or two for the gate to open.

I've been driving this Cherokee for the last 16 years. I would have sworn that until recently the Jeep was not so eager to roll backwards.

Our other car is a 2016 Subaru Forester. When I pull up to the gate - it does not move backwards an inch. I assumed something was 'slipping' in our Jeep.