“Start/Stop” is the name Ford attaches to the system that kills the engine when the vehicle comes to a stop. I don’t know what other manufacturers call it.
Be that as it may I’m pretty sure there must be a point of diminishing return w/regard to its usage. On the positive side it could increase MPG and decrease emissions. On the other hand there’s increased wear and tear on the car’s starter/ignition system.
W/regard to reducing fuel consumption, how long does an engine have to be off in order to really save fuel? I realize there are several variables.
It’s called Automatic Start Stop. It has an acronym. I was annoyed with it at first but I’ve gotten used to it. Not gonna be driving in stop and go traffic much though. I can see how it can drive people crazy sometimes.
I don’t believe it makes much difference to the starter and ignition system. The engines start up instantly. It can’t be as bad as the old days when you had to let it crank for a while to get the engine started. A whole day of starts and stops may not add up to the amount of cranking needed to start a car on a cold morning back in the good ol’ days. There may be an option to turn it off but I heard about some cars where it only turns off until the next time you start the engine.
Substantially all modern cars have it. It’s a very easy way for the car manufacturers to more easily meet the EPA CAFE standards. If you want to keep driving 1990s cars (or EVs) you’ll be able to avoid it. Otherwise probably not.
As mentioned in the other thread I cited, most cars have a button to turn the feature switched off. Mine is always off. I’d rather there was a way to disable it or not have it installed in the first place. But absent that option, switching it off and leaving it off is 99.9% as effective, if only 50% as emotionally satisfying.
Now if only I could teach the carwash people not to bump the button while wiping down the interior.
I’ve had the feature on my cars for the last 15 odd years. It’s really not a big deal. The latest generation starts instantaneously before I’ve got the brake all they way up.
We have a hybrid and an EV. In the hybrid the engine turns on and off whenever it deems it necessary, I don’t notice it at all. Obviously the EV is simpler.
Same (Nissan Qashqai), with the wrinkle that the feature isn’t activated if the car is in gear.
In other words: you stop at the red light, you move the stick to neutral, you let up on the clutch: the engine shuts off. Or, you stop at the red light, you leave the stick in first with the clutch depressed, and the engine stays on. So you have immediate and ongoing control over the feature.
I like it. Took a little getting used to, but I like driving a stick and having a direct connection to what the car is doing, so this was a fairly minor adjustment. When I know the light is long (or the stop is otherwise protracted, like waiting in the queue at the petrol station), I use the feature. If the stop will be short, I leave it in gear. No big deal.
I can see how the experience of this would be a little different in an automatic (like nearly all Americans drive), where you can zone out and you don’t really think about what the car is doing and it’s distracting when the car does something on its own that you aren’t expecting. But for me, in a stick shift? Makes sense and isn’t a problem.
Edit to add: Since this is FQ, I should note that the dash computer includes a readout showing an estimate of fuel and carbon savings. From stop to stop, it’s pretty minor. But over the course of a year, it does add up. And it hasn’t seemed to impact the car’s mechanical reliability at all.
I had it on a rental too. This was before it was common. Hated it, thought something was wrong with the car. I kept manually starting it until I realized it was deliberate.
At stop lights, a lot of the time you/everyone is creeping up,how does that work with this system?
It works the same as it does any time you want the car to move. When you release the brake or depress the throttle a smidgen, the car starts, you move forward a few inches, you brake to a stop, then a few seconds later the engine shuts off.
So if there’s lots of creeping, the shut-off timer doesn’t trigger and the engine stays running. For sure creeping destroys most of the savings that could be had if everyone stopped and stayed stopped.
I don’t see much creeping around here. Most everyone crowds right up on the car ahead when stopping, so there isn’t a bunch of empty space to later squeeze out of the queue by folks creeping before the light changes or before the pack’s actual forward motion gets back to them.
For myself, I suppose I could get used to ASS. But in a convertible car with a somewhat loud and rumbly engine, each time it auto-off’s my heart leaps into my throat that the car has just had an expen$ive malfunction. Modern car engines don’t ever just quit mysteriously, but restart just fine like 1960s cars did. If a modern car engine quits something awful has happened.
I suppose having flown airplanes for a long time where paying continuous subconscious attention to the sounds and vibrations is a big part of the game has something to do with it. Any unexpected change in vibration is bad news, and perhaps catastrophic news.
I’m reminded of the old joke about the lighthouse / foghorn keeper who’s sleeping soundly on a foggy night with the deafening foghorn blasting outside every 30 seconds. The horn malfunctions and doesn’t sound the next blast. At which point he sits bolt upright in bed shouting “What was THAT!!?!?!”
Or, if you have adaptive cruise control activated, your car is patiently watching and waiting for the car ahead to start moving. But it isn’t going to just drive on into the intersection by itself until you approve that action by tapping the throttle pedal or the “resume cruise” button. At which point it’ll follow that car through the intersection on its own.
As I reported in that other thread, when my new ‘24 Subaru Outback was only about 7 months old the battery had to be replaced. Fortunately that was under warranty. When I examined the Subaru forums and Facebook groups, several other owners also had failed batteries. These were caused by ASS’s strain on Subaru’s inadequate system.
Many Subaru owners disable ASS. As do I. It cannot be configured to Off, so I disable it every time I start my car. It is a simple button push from the Home Screen.
I belong to a FB group related to my car - a Ford Mondeo (Fusion in the US)
One of the most common requests in the group is "How do I disable SS?. As said above, switching it off is cancelled when you turn the ignition off. To permanently disable it, it is necessary to connect a computer with the right software and change the settings.
For my part, as my car is a “gas guzzler”, I am quite happy for it to turn off when I am stopped. Most of those who are complaining drive diesels anyway, so fuel savings are minimal.
(Please disregard the political subtext of the latter post. It is not my intention to drag the current administration’s position into this discussion.)
The article seems a bit dated, but is still valid FWIW. It seems the push for ASS got going in Europe. So the feature is all but universal in European cars from the 2010s on. And has spread in fits and starts to cars made by other nations’ manufacturers.
I’m guilty of over-generalizing from European-made (and Asian-made) cars.
