The first part, yeah, if you’re on a shallow incline it doesn’t hill hold. But you also should never hill hold with the clutch anyway, so keep that foot on the brake until its time to go. Worst case, you left foot brake to get it to preload and then immediately let off the brake. But I never really needed to do that.

The second part could be an early warning sign of the second clutch motor failure. I remember it only started going a gear too low not too long before it went completely, if I had it on auto shift. I ran it in manual mode almost all the time, though.