I just got a car that shuts off when stopped. I hate it. Especially when you stop at a stop sign for a second too long and it shuts off then you hit the gas and it hesitates because it has to literally start the engine before moving.
I think its just a bad car. I have a volvo xc40 and it starts right away and takes off in less than a second. No hesitation. It’s a fuel car, not electric.
Every car I’ve ever driven with such a feature only shuts off when in neutral and you let go of the clutch. For short stops, I just stay in first gear and keep the clutch pressed.
I have been renting a lot of cars lately. The hybrids do the best job because hybrid. The gas cars can be hit or miss. A jeep renegade I rented did ok except that sometimes it would auto stop, sometimes it wouldn’t. You had to be stopped and the. Push the brake a little harder to engage.
I have a Volvo and if you stop at a pace other than very gentle, it will shut off the engine before you’ve stopped moving. That one is annoying.
Got a newer Volvo as a loaner and the baby hybrid system in them is FAR better. You can’t even really hear it start up. I believe it doesn’t have a traditional starter, you hear almost nothing when you start it for the first time. It just kind of goes from being off to running without any sound or vibration. Very weird but kinda cool.
Each system is a little different, some are not very good, others you don’t even notice.
I have that hybrid volvo and it’s amazing, I never even think about it. It just works. If someone wants to test drive, it’s an automatic xc40 with b4 engine.
The starter in the mHEVs is about as powerful as the entire engine of the original Fiat 500. It entirely skips the *r-r-r-*revup of a normal engine start.
My guess is because it has to check again if your car’s state meets all the requirements for it to engage. It takes a combination of factors for the car to allow start-stop to engage (engine temp, battery health, A/C, etc.), and if you just turned it on again after it was disabled, it need to get to a certain speed to be able to recalculate.
At this point my muscle memory simply toggles it off as soon as the engine is on, occasionally I even manage to predict when I have to stop for more than 5 seconds and turn it on in time.
There’s a button in mine that’s like an @ with a capital A. Have to push it every time I start the car, but it stays running until I manually shut off the car.
I bought a car in December that does this. Literally all you have to do is let off the brake wait half a second to 1 second and it starts right back up not a big deal. Just maybe you know have a slight bit of patience in your driving.
That feature never affected my driving at all and never bothered me at all. In fact I don’t think I ever remembered that it was a thing after the first week or two.
Depends very much on the car. My car has auto off and starts up the engine as soon as the car in front of me starts moving (it detects that with the parking and radar sensors).
Or if I just move the foot off the braking pedal the engine will be fully running as soon as my foot reaches the gas pedal.
It’s at 2017 Mercedes, at the time they already spent some effort into that tech, for example I have an electrical water pump that keeps up the circulation even during auto off and the starter is different so it can start the car even while starting to move.
The only moment I turn it off (ok switch to sport mode which turns autostop off) is when I want to race someone at the light in order to change lanes in front of them later.
I normal operation you don’t notice.
Ah and last year autostop did not work for a few months as my battery was old, the car noticed and refrained from stopping the engine until I got a new battery (It will also do if I need aircon or the motor is too cold or a number of other conditions)
I’m guessing they have a bunch of oil squirters engineered into the design but seems to me that constantly letting oil drain into the crank case while sitting then firing up again is going to cause a short life for these engines.
I’ve only riden in two vehicles that have this idiotic feature but they could both be disabled after the initial startup.
Oil isn’t the problem, my car will turn on again before too much oil drains out of the engine and oil pressure sinks too low. Cooling is, interstingly, so they switched to an electric water pump for cooling - it will stay running during auto off so you don’t get too hot temperatures in the turbo for example. (4cyl 2l engine has a turbo)
There’s quite a bit of tech going into auto off since it first appeared. (Heh, my first car in 1989 had an aftermarket start stop switch to stop the engine at the traffic light - i never used it except once or twice for fun - still one cylinder exploded one day on the Autobahn)
Modern oils and modern cylinder lining makes this a non-issue.
You’re more likely to have a modern car with bad rings as they chase fuel economy numbers. Honestly, a hybrid is a very solid choice anymore. Lifts the burden of the gas engine having to be hyper-efficient and eases the extreme tolerances required to get there.
Shame that there are very few fun hybrids, crazy expensive things don’t count.
Infiniti made an m35h that actually had more power than the gas version and it got better mileage. Granted, it is a porky sedan, but that thing would still haul its fat ass.
I just got a car that shuts off when stopped. I hate it. Especially when you stop at a stop sign for a second too long and it shuts off then you hit the gas and it hesitates because it has to literally start the engine before moving.
I think its just a bad car. I have a volvo xc40 and it starts right away and takes off in less than a second. No hesitation. It’s a fuel car, not electric.
Every car I’ve ever driven with such a feature only shuts off when in neutral and you let go of the clutch. For short stops, I just stay in first gear and keep the clutch pressed.
I have an automatic and it shuts off when I just brake until it stops. Then I just release the brake and it starts. Very easy.
Same, but I’m the only person I know who still drives manual cars.
I have been renting a lot of cars lately. The hybrids do the best job because hybrid. The gas cars can be hit or miss. A jeep renegade I rented did ok except that sometimes it would auto stop, sometimes it wouldn’t. You had to be stopped and the. Push the brake a little harder to engage.
I have a Volvo and if you stop at a pace other than very gentle, it will shut off the engine before you’ve stopped moving. That one is annoying.
Got a newer Volvo as a loaner and the baby hybrid system in them is FAR better. You can’t even really hear it start up. I believe it doesn’t have a traditional starter, you hear almost nothing when you start it for the first time. It just kind of goes from being off to running without any sound or vibration. Very weird but kinda cool.
Each system is a little different, some are not very good, others you don’t even notice.
I have that hybrid volvo and it’s amazing, I never even think about it. It just works. If someone wants to test drive, it’s an automatic xc40 with b4 engine.
You must’ve gotten a good one.
The starter in the mHEVs is about as powerful as the entire engine of the original Fiat 500. It entirely skips the *r-r-r-*revup of a normal engine start.
I haven’t seen one where this can’t be disabled as a setting. Assume you’ve checked? If not imagine someone has found a hack for this.
Some cars, like mine, only allow you to temporarily disable the start-stop system, and it turns on every time you (fully) start the engine.
In my car specifically, if you manually turn the system back on, for whatever reason you have to reach a minimum speed of 10km/h before it works.
My guess is because it has to check again if your car’s state meets all the requirements for it to engage. It takes a combination of factors for the car to allow start-stop to engage (engine temp, battery health, A/C, etc.), and if you just turned it on again after it was disabled, it need to get to a certain speed to be able to recalculate.
It seems unnecessary, they could just have its user-set switch as one of those factors rather than forgetting everything upon disablng it.
You can get a module that disables it, bad news is it’s like $100, but if you’ve decently good with electronics you can diy one cheaper.
At this point my muscle memory simply toggles it off as soon as the engine is on, occasionally I even manage to predict when I have to stop for more than 5 seconds and turn it on in time.
There’s a button in mine that’s like an @ with a capital A. Have to push it every time I start the car, but it stays running until I manually shut off the car.
Lower right, under the radio tuning knob.
I bought a car in December that does this. Literally all you have to do is let off the brake wait half a second to 1 second and it starts right back up not a big deal. Just maybe you know have a slight bit of patience in your driving.
That feature never affected my driving at all and never bothered me at all. In fact I don’t think I ever remembered that it was a thing after the first week or two.
Depends very much on the car. My car has auto off and starts up the engine as soon as the car in front of me starts moving (it detects that with the parking and radar sensors).
Or if I just move the foot off the braking pedal the engine will be fully running as soon as my foot reaches the gas pedal.
It’s at 2017 Mercedes, at the time they already spent some effort into that tech, for example I have an electrical water pump that keeps up the circulation even during auto off and the starter is different so it can start the car even while starting to move.
The only moment I turn it off (ok switch to sport mode which turns autostop off) is when I want to race someone at the light in order to change lanes in front of them later.
I normal operation you don’t notice.
Ah and last year autostop did not work for a few months as my battery was old, the car noticed and refrained from stopping the engine until I got a new battery (It will also do if I need aircon or the motor is too cold or a number of other conditions)
I’m guessing they have a bunch of oil squirters engineered into the design but seems to me that constantly letting oil drain into the crank case while sitting then firing up again is going to cause a short life for these engines.
I’ve only riden in two vehicles that have this idiotic feature but they could both be disabled after the initial startup.
Oil isn’t the problem, my car will turn on again before too much oil drains out of the engine and oil pressure sinks too low. Cooling is, interstingly, so they switched to an electric water pump for cooling - it will stay running during auto off so you don’t get too hot temperatures in the turbo for example. (4cyl 2l engine has a turbo)
There’s quite a bit of tech going into auto off since it first appeared. (Heh, my first car in 1989 had an aftermarket start stop switch to stop the engine at the traffic light - i never used it except once or twice for fun - still one cylinder exploded one day on the Autobahn)
Modern oils and modern cylinder lining makes this a non-issue.
You’re more likely to have a modern car with bad rings as they chase fuel economy numbers. Honestly, a hybrid is a very solid choice anymore. Lifts the burden of the gas engine having to be hyper-efficient and eases the extreme tolerances required to get there.
Shame that there are very few fun hybrids, crazy expensive things don’t count.
Infiniti made an m35h that actually had more power than the gas version and it got better mileage. Granted, it is a porky sedan, but that thing would still haul its fat ass.
We’re defining fun very differently. My prius has ridiculous low end torque thanks to those electric motors.