How Many New Batteries And Starters?

savatage1973

Addicted Member
I was stuck in traffic, and had my window down (which I rarely do), but I was caught up in light to light traffic with three different cars equipped with the auto shut-off and auto-start feature to conserve fuel when the car is not in motion. Over the course of about a half hour or so, these cars must have shut themselves off and then restarted probably a dozen times.

1--Does it really save that much fuel?
2--How much extra wear and tear is this putting on the battery, starter, and even things like A/C compressors and cooling systems?
 
The wear and tear is a good question. Doubt it bothers the AC or cooling system all that much but the starter, battery, and charge system certainly gets more of a workout. My mother's Equinox has that setup, and even watching the charge voltage while driving the thing it seems like the alternator turns on and off. I can watch battery voltage swing from about 12.7 to 14.0 without changing anything about driving conditions or what gizmos are in use. Also its quite frankly annoying when the engine shuts off as you come to a stop. It has a momentary hesitation as the engine restarts before it accelerates.
 
I think this is one of the dumbest things you can do to save fuel. Most engine wear occurs at startup before the oil starts circulating. Unless there's a reserve of pressurized oil that is stored to provide instant oil pressure on restart, it's going to seriously degrade engine life. Not to mention the thermal cycling that happens. Plus the already mentioned starter and battery wear. Going green!
 
Shop foreman at local Chevy dealer, and we see almost zero issues with starters on these auto stop vehicles. The batteries are pretty beefy and have very few issues there either.
Better get use to them, as almost all vehicles will have it soon. Even pick-ups. As far as mileage improvement goes, the jury is out and will probably never really know. Cant' see it being much though.
It is kinda ironic that we try to get every tsp. of fuel saved, but almost every vehicle has remote start.
 
We live in a brave new world where the makers of very expensive electric cars tout zero emissions, but ignore:
1 gallon gas tanks that take 8 hours to fill-up on a 100A residential service
have battery packs made up with thousands of flashlight batteries that will have to reclaimed
the global emissions from the stationary generation and delivery of electricity that is over 40% coal fired
gasoline has the highest BTU/gal yield of all practical fuels
and people buy them.
So gas cars that self-sacrifice longevity of the power train and ancillaries to save gas and/or reduce emissions make perfect sense to anyone that didn't pass thermodynamics nor understands the entire life cycle cost (production, service & retirement) and environmental impact of a product as complex as an automobile. It's a great idea if you just want to feel good about doing something. Clearly the engineers are not driving the bus.
 
IMO--just one more electronic gizmo to fail. Vehicles are becoming "disposable" items because of the life-span of complex modern electronics utilized in rather harsh conditions and the cost of repair/maintenance. I used to be a "drive it til it drops" kind of guy--partially out of necessity (I couldn't afford a new car every couple years), and partially because if anything went wrong, there was a good chance I could diagnose and repair it for a couple bucks and have it back on the road. Now I am a "drive it til the warranty runs out" kind of guy--because if something goes wrong, it is "dealer only" diagnostics and repair, and just brutally expensive.--basically start at $1K and watch it go up from there.,

Air bags save lives--no doubt about that, but they are also responsible for skyrocketing insurance costs and piles of relatively late model cars ending up in the salvage yards. Yes--this car has 10 airbags to protect the driver/passengers, but in the event of an accident that deploys the airbags, each one costs $1000-1500 to replace, so right there is $10-15K in "damages" before we even look at the scratch on the bumper.
 
I don't know...seems to me cars are lasting much longer than they used to.

They certainly have the potential to, and improvements in corrosion protection, better lubricants, fuels and tighter manufacturing tolerances certainly make that possible--as evidenced by the number of vehicles still on the road with 200-300K on them. It used to be that 100K wa, s kind of the "death-nail" in the automotive lifespan.

However, a lot of this is also related to the cost of new cars in relation to household income. Most people cannot/will not fork over $30K+ every couple years for a new car. So people are willing to "eat" the cost of a $1K or even $4K repair bill, rather than "throwing in the towel" and just buying a new car. So yes, there are probably a lot more 10-20 year-old cars on the road now than ever before, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they have been "trouble-free" for that entire life-span. It is not just a matter of the cars being "that much better", it is also a matter of "economics".
 
A good, short article on it: https://autoweek.com/article/technology/what-auto-stop-start-autoweek-explains

The jury is still out on engine wear and how they will hold up in the long term.

The one car I drove with the auto stop/start was really annoying. It was about 90 degrees outside and we had the windows up and the A/C on. At every stop light the car would shut off and we'd sit until it got just on the edge of uncomfortably warm and then the car would start back up and blow warm air on us until the A/C got cold again. Cycling from warm to cold over and over again isn't comfortable.
 
Shop foreman at local Chevy dealer, and we see almost zero issues with starters on these auto stop vehicles. The batteries are pretty beefy and have very few issues there either.
Better get use to them, as almost all vehicles will have it soon. Even pick-ups. As far as mileage improvement goes, the jury is out and will probably never really know. Cant' see it being much though.
It is kinda ironic that we try to get every tsp. of fuel saved, but almost every vehicle has remote start.

Id think we would save more fuel if they were not stuck in traffic in the first place...
 
I hear them at red lights all the time--the driver decides to move up a few feet, and the starter kicks in. Seems kind of silly. But they do improve gas mileage, enough to boost their CAFE numbers. Any little fraction of an MPG they can save seems to be the big value in doing this.

BTW, since the oil has already circulated, restarting a hot engine within a minute is a lot different than first cranking up a cold engine. So, no real worries there.

On some vehicles, there are "unauthorized" ways to defeat auto start/stop. Just sayin'. ;)
 
I hear them at red lights all the time--the driver decides to move up a few feet, and the starter kicks in. Seems kind of silly.

Another annoying detail is when folks with this "feature" who end up back in line at a light waiting to make a right turn on red, only to sit there until the light changes to avoid a couple stop/starts.

I suppose we should give the engineers a bit of credit though. We know it was the PC Police who made them do it, but they were mostly able to sneak in beefier starting systems and a smart monitor that bypasses the auto stop if the battery drops below a certain level of charge.
 
A good, short article on it: https://autoweek.com/article/technology/what-auto-stop-start-autoweek-explains

The jury is still out on engine wear and how they will hold up in the long term.

The one car I drove with the auto stop/start was really annoying. It was about 90 degrees outside and we had the windows up and the A/C on. At every stop light the car would shut off and we'd sit until it got just on the edge of uncomfortably warm and then the car would start back up and blow warm air on us until the A/C got cold again. Cycling from warm to cold over and over again isn't comfortable.
If at a stop and in auto stop, on some if not most vehicles, you can let up on the brake pedal just a bit and the engine will restart. Can't let up too much or you will be purchasing a new bumper for the guy in front of you. I have it down pretty good, but then I am always road testing problems and experimenting.
 
I think this is one of the dumbest things you can do to save fuel. Most engine wear occurs at startup before the oil starts circulating. Unless there's a reserve of pressurized oil that is stored to provide instant oil pressure on restart, it's going to seriously degrade engine life. Not to mention the thermal cycling that happens. Plus the already mentioned starter and battery wear. Going green!

An engine that has been running and stops has oil everywhere. It doesn't really need oil pressure on restart unless it is under load. You are correct that most wear occurs on initial start-up. It's my belief that correct operating clearances are not achieved until after warm-up. Older cars that used carburetors would dump too much fuel and it was hell on cylinder walls and rings. Also, thermal changes are minimal at a stoplight.
All that aside I'm with you in that the negatives must outweigh the positives. Modern engines use very little fuel at idle. Sounds like feel-good measures to me.
 
Just something else to fix when it breaks....

What’s the point of buying such an expensive vehicle when the cost savings of better mileage go towards a repair bill ??

The only thing good about new vehicles is survivability in an accident.....

For the cost of an old Dodge mid sixties Dart and restoration it’s about five grand, then the car gets 30mpg so the fuel saving cost minimizes the cost of the car. The cost of service and repair are so low that it does not drive up the cost of owning the vehicle nearly as much.
 
Well, there are some who say we are nearing the end of the internal combustion engine anyway. Features like this are just the dying spasms. They are pretty inefficient, losing most of their energy through heat, and way too complex for their own good. By today's standards, gas engines are an ancient technology which in it's basic function hasn't changed in over a century.
Here is an interesting little article about the end of the gas engine.
 
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