I have always been told that frequent starting and stopping of the car’s engine is bad for it. However, one of the selling points of the hybrid cars, such as the Prius and Civic Hybrid, is that the engine shuts off when it is not needed. It then starts back up when it is needed again. Does this frequent startting and stopping of the engine cause damage or have the companies found a way to reduce the damage?
I’ve got to assume that they have, since both Toyota and Honda offer the same basic and powertrain warranties on their hybrid models as they do on their regular models. If the frequent starting and stopping of the engines were going to cause problems, those problems would almost certainly show up in the first few years, and doing the warranty repairs would clobber the dealers.
the engines are designed to do that, so its not a big deal… i think theyre itty bitty 3 cylinders too… not so sure about that however.
The Hondas have a three cylinder, the Toyotas have a four cylinder.
A lot of engineering work was put into both to make it easy and non-damaging to start and stop those gasoline engines repeatedly.
and isn’t it a different kind of starting?
not sure where i heard that, or exactly what i’m saying…
The explanations I’ve heard (admittedly from non-authoritative sources) are:
[ul]
[li]Frequent starts are mostly bad for the starter motors which usually aren’t designed to be used all the time. Hybrid cars have more durable starter motors so it’s OK.[/li][li]It’s cold starts that are bad for the engine. Frequent stop/start cycles are OK as long as the engine doesn’t have time to cool down befor the restart.[/li][/ul]
By the way, many of the city buses in Japan are “no idle” buses that stop their engines at stop lights and bus stops. It’s only done on newer buses clearly marked as “No Idle” so there must be something different. Presumably they have bigger starter motors, bigger batteries and perhaps engines optimized for frequent restarts.
The reason starting a car is so hard on it has more to do with the mechanics of oil flow than anything else. What makes starting so hard on most cars is that there’s very little oil in the cylinder walls when the engine’s sat for more than a few hours. In the case of hybrid cars, it doesn’t really matter as the engine’s only been off for about a minute or so.
It is true that, in most cars, a large proportion of engine wear happens when the engine starts. This is because the cylinders start firing before the oil has been pumped through the engine.
I don’t know about the Honda, but the Toyota Prius spins the engine up to 1000 RPM before it starts firing the spark plugs. This pumps the oil through the engine so that the frequent starts don’t cause a lot of engine wear.
I own a 2001 Prius and love it.
Also, years ago, cars used carburetors (which use more gas to start a car than today’s injectors). The gas would dilute the oil and wash it off the cylinders which made for much wear upon starting.
That lubrication problem, among the others mentioned above, is also fixed in the new cars.
On the Insight, the motor shuts off when you decelerate and come to a stop. (unless you have a high energy drain such as full AC running) Otherwise the gas engine is running.
Yep, The gas engine runs pretty much constantly unless at a dead stop. At least that is how my insight has acted the past three years.