Saw first non-hybrid (Malibu) with engine stop/start. Why do people hate stop/start?

[savefuel]

For hypermilers the automatic shutdown of the ICE's occurs way too late.
A semi-automatic feature where the driver decides to shutdown but the engine starts upon putting in the gear or drive (with auto transmission) would be better and increase mpg. Manufacturers don't build in this logic because official consumption tests must be performed w/o drivers action!
When hypermiling new vehicles (equipped with S/S) for car manufacturers
I'm always ahead of S/S. S/S operation additionally depends on a variety of very conservative conditions.

[Phantom]

Has anyone added start stop to a vehicle? I would love to have this on my Golf manual.

[Fingie]

My dad has a '12 Mercedes c220 diesel auto with start/stop. it works nicely, shuts off often and if you let go of the brake it starts. It has no lurching.

The flipside is that in finland we don't idle really long at the lights compared to cities in Germany, or US.

In my car, I shut the engine off manually, starters are not expensive for my car but a second battery could help with the auxiliaries

[dremd]

Strange thought: what bugs me about the prius is when the engine starts, not the stop. This is especially true now that I daily ab EV, the noise and vibration is super annoying.

[Sovereign]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Maybe she just couldn't articulate why it bothers her?

I think I could guess: an engine that stops running unexpectedly? That's a BAD THING (TM) -- I can see that putting fear into a person who doesn't understand the feature or is generally nervous about their safety.

In a lifetime of driving conventional vehicles, an engine that stops running unexpectedly indicates the beginning of a stressful, possibly dangerous and probably expensive situation. It may be hard to overcome that.

Another source of unease: you want to scoot across the intersection but the engine is currently off? That's another BAD THING (TM).

I was on a date once and my (hybrid) engine shut off. She turned to me.

"Did your car just die?"

So there's that.

The A/C issue is legitimate, but the whole point of such systems is that they can kick back in fast. Of course, if just ONE person dies in an accident because of it everyone will freak out... Even though people die in accidents for myriad other reasons all the time.

[plym49]

Originally Posted by Phantom

Has anyone added start stop to a vehicle? I would love to have this on my Golf manual.

I have and it helped me increase my local mileage by almost 20% due to overly aggressive stop sign and traffic light placement.

I added a push button to the floor-mounted shift lever. The PB picks up a standard Bosch relay that is wired through its NC contacts, in series with the power feed to the ignition coil.

Pressing the pushbutton thus picks up the relay, which in turn removes power to the ignition coil leaving all other vehicle circuits energized.

To use, move to neutral and kill the motor. I usually kill the motor way in advance to coast the vehicle along to the stop sign / traffic light. At the last possible moment, when there is still a tiny bit of roll, I shift into second and use that last bit of vehicle motion to restart the engine - its a gentle popping of the clutch.

With practice this becomes an incredibly smooth move with no shock to the driveline. It saves wear and tear on the conventional starter.

The only time I use the conventional starter to restart the engine is if the wait is going to be very long.

The nice thing is that you can stop / start when driving as well. Any time the vehicle can coast, the motor can be shut down, and with a manual transmission restarts occur without drama.

I guess this combination in my use case is responsible for the very good results I achieved.

Adding a circuit like this is really a no-brainer since it affects nothing of the vehicles normal configuration or operation and if the relay fails, the motor still runs because it employs the NC (normally closed) contacts.

[Daox]

Originally Posted by Phantom

Has anyone added start stop to a vehicle? I would love to have this on my Golf manual.

I started designing a system for it based on the arduino platform a while back for my 1997 Paseo. I never finished it though. I had added a sensor to the shifter to sense when it was in neutral versus in gear. Then, like plym49, I was going to use a relay to fire the starter. From there its just a matter of programming the logic to however you want it to act.

[BillyBob251]

My parents have a non-hybrid Malibu, a 2015 I think, with stop start like that. The AC doesn't actually turn off, just lowers how much it is blowing. (You do have to have the AC selector so that the green light is on instead of the orange one.) Here in Utah in the summer it usually doesn't get uncomfortable before the light changes again. We have been having 90s degrees F weather mainly.

My mom doesn't actually believe the car is turning off, but oh well... As some have already noted, it starts up again really fast, as soon as you let off the brake at a light.

Car also has a skirt on the front. On a recent trip going mainly 70 or 75 MPH up and down a lot of hills IIRC it was getting about 37 - 40 MPG per the built-in average MPG readout.

Me personally I love the stop start feature and am happy to finally see it on an American car.

I work at a car auction and one time a coworker was delivering a purchased vehicle to a dealership... one of these stop start Malibus. He was in a traffic jam on the freeway and when it did the auto stop the first time, he thought he was in a dead car in a traffic jam... and heaved a sigh of relief once it started back up! XD

[SlideWRX]

We recently picked up a Jeep Cherokee with the Stop/start feature. I've worked on the systems a little bit, so I knew what to expect and helped my wife acclimate to it. We are by no means hypermilers. Observations:

1. She got used to it pretty quickly. She even started to pay attention to creeping at a light, which would turn the engine back on. now she tries to hold her place and let the engine stay off longer. Like I said, in no way a hypermiler, but now she is paying attention and trying a little bit to get better mileage.

2. The A/C does degrade a bit when the engine is off, but the engine will turn on to keep things cool. It will still allow 20-30 seconds of engine off time in 90 degree heat.

3. Ours has a trigger speed of ~5mph, so we have to drive over 5 mph for it to re-stop. That way in stop-n-go traffic it doesn't drive the normal customer crazy. yes it may drive an ecomodder crazy. you're not normal

4. For whatever reason, it stopped working for a couple days. I know it requires a certain battery voltage/charge before it will start working, so who knows, maybe something drained the battery a little extra that day. Anyway, we were annoyed! This is a feature on my new car dang it, it better work! It did start stopping again.

5. Throttle response is pretty good, and even if you are worried about response (like turning left in traffic) you can always lift of the brake a little bit and it starts up, ready to go.

[Frank Lee]

On a related note I recently saw advertised a device that disables Displacement On Demand because, you know, if you have eight cylinders then By Gawd they ALL better be firing at ALL TIMES.

I didn't realize cutting some cylinders when the computer decided they weren't needed and then seamlessly (?) restoring their operation when they were was an issue.

But then, I didn't and still don't realize the necessity and awesomeness of remotely starting my engine and letting it run while the vehicle is stationary and unoccupied either.