View Single Post
Old 01-06-2018, 04:45 PM   #81 (permalink)
Ecky
Master EcoModder
 
Ecky's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 5,023

ND Miata - '15 Mazda MX-5 Special Package
90 day: 39.99 mpg (US)
Thanks: 2,874
Thanked 2,518 Times in 1,558 Posts
I'm sorry to say, that video is total bullcrap.

Quote:
Starting your car feels like crack smoking zombies are attacking, under the hood.
Seriously? It's just the damned starter motor.

Quote:
This is just a ploy to game the fuel economy test. And, the official numbers are almost always better than you can achieve out there on the road.
Members on this site regularly achieve 20-100% higher than EPA rated fuel economy numbers. Maybe this is true in Australia, but EPA numbers tend to be pessimistic, if anything.

He then goes on to admit that wear and tear is only ever high when you start the engine cold... and most auto-stop systems are not enabled until the engine warms up.

Quote:
The (additional) wear rate then, is essentially zero.
Quote:
You really don't use any additional fuel on a hot start with a modern engine either.
Quote:
You need a rich fuel air mixture for a cold start, but that doesn't apply restarting in traffic.
Going back to the original quote,

Quote:
As an apprentice, 30 years ago, we were taught that starting up an engine comprised about 80% of the total wear and tear on that engine. Also, that idling for 10 minutes used about the same amount of full as starting the engine.
The narrator debunks this in modern vehicles, but this wasn't even true in the carburetor era.

Considering most modern 8 cylinders idle at ~0.40-0.60 (?) gallons per hour, that would imply that starting the engine takes about a tenth of a gallon of gas, or ~12.8 ounces. This is absolutely not true.

In my car, auto-stop is disabled when outside air temps drop below 40 degrees. When auto-stop is disabled, my city mileage tanks, so I use a resistor to fool the outside air temperature sensor.

In my previous car, I would average about 28mpg driving around town normally, and might see 35mpg if I was very conservative with it. Once I started practicing cutting my engine off when coasting toward a light, I started seeing numbers like this:




51mpg, in a car rated for 25mpg city.

So ultimately, his argument is that, "There's no extra wear on the engine, it doesn't use any more fuel, but it's unrefined to hear your engine not running and I don't like it."

  Reply With Quote
The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to Ecky For This Useful Post:
elhigh (01-07-2018), Frank Lee (01-07-2018), freebeard (01-06-2018), jakobnev (01-07-2018), MetroMPG (12-27-2018), Xist (01-06-2018)