If you've experienced the car's aggressive attempts to shift in order to squeeze out the last ounce of fuel economy, you might find that much less pedal effort is required for the car to downshift. Helps to be a bit more assertive with the throttle when you actually intend to quickly accelerate, instead of helping the car to learn you're completely willing to sedately dodder along with it shifting down to ~1300rpms or so at every opportunity. (I hate that aspect of the car, but with a 'nimble' throttle it's easy enough to jump down a gear for more-brisk acceleration when preferred.
I find the exact same behaviour on mine.
I think after a combination of becoming a more conservative and attentive driver, along with an aging drivetrain, I've become much more aware of the factory tuned shift points. You don't really have much choice but to follow it, unless you want to deal with the finicky torque convert lock/unlock strategy that's so glaringly apparent over in the manual mode. My 2015 doesn't have a sport mode.
Despite the precision tuned chassis and steering, and a drivetrain that's tuned to confidently and assertively hustle it's way into (or through...) traffic when demanded, at the end of the day, it's still an economy car. However, the shift points are too conservative, and it's largely to meet emissions/fuel economy regulations. My biggest gripe is that the automatic transmission refused to downshift until bottoming out at the bare minimum allowable rpm for the gear you're currently in. It's kind of ridiculous.
I use manual mode to hold gears for longer before Inevitably abiding by the drivetrains persistent shift strategy and shoving the transmission into the lowest gear allowable for the speed im going.
Note: the shift points are largely dependent on transmission fluid temp (viscosity.) if the drivetrain is warm and you're driving in hot weather, the transmission has no issue letting you hold that gear.
Yes the transmission is stubborn, but it's also smart. If you're in manual mode holding gears higher than what it prefers for some logical reason, such as a combination of warm weather, higher engine load and rolling hills, shift back over into drive and you might notice that the transmission will follow your lead and continue with this slightly more lenient shift points. Temporarily.
Otherwise, you just need to forcefully shove the throttle and basically disregard the drivetrains tuning or use manual mode to avoid it.
In the end, I'm done with automatics and their somewhat ridiculous shift points and complex torque convert lockup strategies. My next car will be a manual.
