VEHICLE CONTROL APPARATUS AND VEHICLE CONTROL METHOD

A vehicle control apparatus is mounted in a vehicle and includes: an object detecting unit that detects an object in a travelling direction of the vehicle; and a suppressing unit that suppresses driving force of the vehicle when the object detecting unit detects the object. The suppressing unit performs a first process to gradually increase the driving force when a command to move in the travelling direction is issued and the vehicle is stopped in a state in which the driving force of the vehicle is suppressed, and after the vehicle starts to move from the stopped state, performs a second process to gradually increase the driving force with an amount of increase per time in the driving force that is less than that in the first process.