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G m says all automatics will have this on them starting 2018. Where the engine stops running at traffic lights traffic jams, running in park etc. when will it trickle down to the A8 corvettes?
bad news! i have one in a 2014 mercedes and it is a pia in stop and start traffic. At least mb put an off switch on it; but it always starts on and you have to remember to turn it off, usually after the first annoying shutdown. the a/c shuts off in the heat, the lights stay on at night and it is just more strain on the starter and battery. a lag in starting up when you take your foot off the brake to move. i can park a car without the autoshutoff, put a battery minder on it and the minder will start blinking (trickle charge) immediately. After the mercedes has run on auto stop in city traffic it will keep the battery minder on in full charge mode overnight! Worth it to me to pay for the gas and v happy auto stop is not on the c7!
Last edited by SilverGhost; May 16, 2018 at 02:30 AM.
Totally agree with SilverGhost. It’s super annoying for the 1/10 of an MPG it might provide.
My wife’s car has it, and I hate the slight lag & little jerk it has when it’s active — which is every. single. stop sign. and light, no matter how short. Always shut it off 1st thing when I drive her car.
I have it in my 17 F-150. I hated it at first. Now I have figured out how to keep it from activating every stop. It does also have a disable button but it has to be done each time you restart it. Almost never use the button unless in very heavy traffic
Depends how it's implemented. Wife's 2018 BMW X5 SUV works so well I hardly know it! The instant your foot is off the brake it is started. Don't hear the starter motor. In fact many systems are now stopping the engine when it has just fired a cylinder and cylinder pressure is mostly what is used to turn the engine for the start!
BMW goes a step further. They only engage the alternator when coasting or braking so it has a simple braking energy recovery. A large AGM battery is used to power the water pump, AC fans (not AC,) radio etc when stopped. On a hot day it will start the engine if the set temp is not maintained.
Idling is a significant waste of energy. Pic below is a typical use of energy in gasoline! Internal combustion engine is very inefficient. Far prefer some of these added "features" than an electric car! To meet the corporate fleet mpg goals something has to be done!
On average 17% of the energy in gasoline is wasted idling. Only 13% gets to the rear wheels! Of that, about 1/3 is wasted braking!
I can't imagine that starters have been made extra-robust to take the increased # of starts esp. for urban driving. That means the possibility of increased replacements. Maybe.
I can't imagine that starters have been made extra-robust to take the increased # of starts esp. for urban driving. That means the possibility of increased replacements. Maybe.
They are. My Altima hybrid had passed 140K with all those engine start/stops and never touched the starter...
Keep in mind that a host of features are used in stop/start tech, like someone posted above. By stopping the engine in a precise location the engine can use the pressure in the cylinder to "push" start the engine...I would be concerned about how all this will work as the car ages...as if German cars were not problematic enough as they age...
I can't imagine that starters have been made extra-robust to take the increased # of starts esp. for urban driving. That means the possibility of increased replacements. Maybe.
Everything I've read is that the starters have been upgraded in vehicles w/ start/stop systems. On my Jaguar F-Type, it also had an extra battery dedicated to powering the car during stop cycles.
My 2016 CTS4 Turbo has this feature and it sucks. Lucky for me that is rarely shuts off because of the temps here and the fact that the air is on all the time. The first time it shut off and restarted at a stop sign I thought the car behind me rear ended me. Interestingly, I have rented more than a few Impala's and it works flawlessly in them...go figure. I will add that the my CTS has the tame version of the Corvette's A8, the 8L45.
Last edited by jimmie jam; May 16, 2018 at 09:09 AM.
I can't imagine that starters have been made extra-robust to take the increased # of starts esp. for urban driving. That means the possibility of increased replacements. Maybe.
Imagine!
The starter in the 502 cid BB Chevy in my Street Rod is small and uses a gears to spin it at higher rpm for more power! Lots of ways to "make it more robust." But as I mentioned previously, like the C7 selects the timing of going to 4 cylinder mode, companies are shutting the engine off right after it had ignition on a cylinder. Then that high cylinder pressure is used when it starts so the starter motor does not have much to do! It also starts instantly! Can't even tell in the wife's SUV. Like some WWII airplane engines that fired a 4 gauge shotgun blank into a cylinder to turn the engine!
This type of system would not work well with the LT1/4 considering how many cranks it takes to start the engine.
Staring a hot engine is not like starting when cold. Wife's twin turbo BMW restarts instantly. Never hear a starter motor. It starts as soon as your foot is off the brake pedal.
Agree, as a matter of fact, I've been "playing games" with these systems in both my own and rental cars. I try to beat the restart by racing my foot off the brake and onto the throttle, and my win-loss record is 0-XXX.
Left my 2018 stingray for a gas guage fix yesterday. They gave me a 2018 Silverado as a loaner. I new nothing about this start stop bs, I noticed at the first light I stopped at the oil pressure went to 0, I pulled over and called the service mgr and ask the question wth was going on, I’m returning this truck before it dies on me. Well he laughed and explained it all to me. I talked to my bro, who has a 2017 gmc, it does not have this marvelous tech. He had not heard of it either, he googled some info on it, and sent me the info, it stated that gm was using it on new 18 autos. It did not mention the camaros or vetts. My thoughts were when will it be? That was why I posted a thread on it, I have an m7, I wasn’t impressed with the system, my thoughts were battery and starter life among other things and how will the driver that has this wonderful system feel when it goes **** up on them, in traffic or where ever?
Unlike other manufacturers, GM has chosen NOT to include a auto start disable switch... The GM engineers seem to think that if you need to bypass it, then they did not design it well enough, so they are forcing everyone to do the testing for them.
Also, our 2017 Malibu is a turbo charged, DI engine, and it still has the auto start system, so being a DI engine does not eliminate it. There is no disable, but the manual mode on the transmission works differently than on previous cars. If you put it in manual mode (L), then you can select how many gears you want available, so that if you select all 6 speeds, it will shift itself through all the gears just as it would in Drive, but it does not stop the engine. On my Camaro, if it is in manual mode, the car will not shift unless you manually shift it with the paddle shifters.
Last edited by TEXHAWK0; May 16, 2018 at 10:37 AM.
Staring a hot engine is not like starting when cold. Wife's twin turbo BMW restarts instantly. Never hear a starter motor. It starts as soon as your foot is off the brake pedal.
I'll have to try this tonight. Even when hot I recall my engine taking a little longer than any other car I've driven to start.
My Ford C-Max has this feature. Starting from a light it is seamless as the electric motors start right up. My son's Pacifica has it and I really dislike the lag at start up. When I drive it I just hit the bypass button before I shift to reverse or drive.
Designer Imagines A Corvette That Looks More Like a Corvette Than the Corvette
Slideshow: A Jaguar designer's personal project imagines what a modern front-engined Corvette might look like if Chevrolet revisited the golden age of the Stingray.
Stop start eco assist
