I’ve posted this symptom in some other threads whose titles don’t really apply and come up empty. So in the hope of shaking some feedback loose I thought I’d start a new, more appropriately named, thread.

This vehicle has needed brakes every 20,000 miles since I bought it. It's not yet clear to me how much an earlier throttle position sensor (TPS) problem may have contributed but putting that aside:

For some reason engine speed is artificially maintained when cruising. This is the weirdest thing - I'm cruising along, on either a flat or downhill, and slip the transmission into neutral. Now, I’d expect to see the tachometer drop but it does not. It just hangs there until my road speed drops below 30 to 35 mph. The dealer told me this was normal and I confirmed my son’s 98 Grand Cherokee LTD behaves similarly. Go ahead and try it! It’s like there is some algorithm running that artificially holds engine speed up. Does anyone know what this is all about and if something can be tweaked to minimize it? My sense is that this effect may be contributing to the excessive brake wearing.