Gdetrailer wrote:
ScottG wrote:
I thought vehicles that had start-stop capability always used a battery other than their standard starting battery - no?
No.
Basically the vehicle uses a higher capacity starting battery.
I know of a few folks who own these type of vehicles, after going through a couple of super expensive batteries and one also lost a starter, they disabled that "feature".. Some vehicles not easy to disable..
I personally would not not want a vehicle stopping the engine, if stopped and you NEED to make a hasty acceleration to get out of danger there WILL be a delay in the time that it takes for the engine to restart..
Can you get better "economy" by doing this, yes, SLIGHTLY, but at the cost of longevity of the battery, starter and even perhaps the engine it's self..
The BETTER solution to economy is to find ways of reducing stop n go driving. Cloverleafs, round-a-bouts, business bypasses instead of stop light/ stop sign intersections goes a long way in better fuel economy..
My daily commute of 1 hr each way it takes me 10 minutes on a good day to go through 5 stop lights and that is less than a half mile stretch..
people in europe have been doing manual start stop technology for decades. When I've been in europe, even in the late 80's I'd say 90% of the gas vehicles turned off the engine at red lights, then started up when the side yellow came on or the red flashed (indicating green soon). I asked friends that lived in europe about starters and batteries going bad. Look was "what are you talking about?" never did find one that replaced a started in under 100K miles, often never. And batteries were lasting 5-10 years.
