I would stand up and agree that the auto makers are doing undesirable things to eek out the minor MPG gains. The second generation Honda Fit used a new nonstandard tire size. When ours suffered an unrepairable tire puncture at the age of 2 weeks, the only tire source was the dealer, special order of course. When replacement time came I switched to a standard tire size which I assume is costing a tenth or two in reduced MPG. We've seen the change from real spare tires to the "silly spares", and now some new cars don't ship with any spare at all. The Fit also has a ridiculously small battery that looks like a motorcycle battery to me. Then I go and erase all of the weight savings by carrying 30 or 40 pounds of tools. I often stop the engine when waiting for a train, and occasionally at a red light that I know has a really long cycle time. Yet intuitively, the automatic stop-start seems like a dumb idea to me that will lead to accelerated failure of some things, the battery being one of them. Sometimes I get surprised that my intuition is wrong, and I suspect the elder who came up with the 5 minute charge replacement was going on intuition. Over the years, all but one of my cars has needed a new battery every 4 or 5 years, approximately. I just replaced the battery in the exception vehicle after 17 years. Makes me think there's a way to make them last longer if the manufacturers really wanted to.
