> the lithium battery allows officers to power the accessories without having the engine run as much, which reduces fuel consumption further and improves wear and maintenance costs.
IMHO, all gas-powered SUVs should be hybrids, especially since the EPA mandates stopping the engine while stationary. A hybrid would significantly reduce the pedal-to-wheels latency and keep the A/C running at stoplights.
My dad's Subaru has saved a total of 7 minutes of runtime thanks to this misfeature over the past year, in exchange for many extra cycles on the starter. What an absolutely silly idea.
Your starter is not more reliable — it’s actually two starters in one: a traditional starter, and then one which handles the special scenario of “auto-start-stop.” I don’t have any reason to believe this is necessarily less reliable, but the starter itself is significantly more complex and expensive. In a fully gasoline vehicle, I think this technology is situational at best. In a hybrid it makes a lot of sense since the engine will normally be stopping much more frequently.
I guess in a city where you're more stop and go it would add up quickly. We've saved a ton of running time on our Highlander, and I'm content with the feature. Yet when we drive long distances, it's virtually useless. I don't know. Maybe for some people it really is a mis-feature, but I like it.
We had to take it in to the dealer for servicing because the car battery died and wouldn't hold a charge.
Turns out it was a known problem covered under manufacturer warranty, that the battery was specced too small for Outbacks equipped with idle stop and couldn't handle drawing so much power so often.
Incidentally, the properly specced battery and associated parts that would need to be replaced would have cost around $400 if it wasn't covered under warranty.
It resets itself back on (by law) every time you restart the vehicle. A couple days ago mine failed to restart itself, instead shifting into neutral (!) and rolling partially into the intersection I had intended to pull out into. It wouldn't shift into park because it wasn't "on" (?) but also wouldn't turn "on" (!?) as traffic started to barrel down on me. I'm honestly not sure what sequence of pushing the "on/acc/start/off" button, the "park" button, and "drive" button got it back running, but eventually I was able to go.
It was a somewhat stressful experience, but I guess I saved ~10-15 seconds of idling trying to leave work?
"It resets itself back on (by law) every time you restart the vehicle"
That's what internet searches and fuse pullers are for.
"but I guess I saved ~10-15 seconds of idling"
That's where the calculations get tricky. There's usually a time limit for which it's less efficient to stop the engine (about 4-7 seconds). So to calculate fuel savings, you actually should only count idle fuel rate times the number of seconds above that cutoff, then you also have to account for less efficient stops under that rate (maybe just subtract them from your seconds above so you get a net seconds beyond breakeven mark). I'm not sure any the systems track it that way, it's just how much overall time the car spent in the stopped mode.
I used to just turn my car on and off when I wanted it on and off. Now I have to do internet searches and figure out how to modify (break) some black box system to keep it from creating minor safety situations or inadvertently undervolting the stupid touch screen so my stereo no longer works (requiring a turn-it-off-and-back-on-again that I … you know, can no longer do).
Even 1h every few months. My car consumes about 1lt/hour idle, and at $2/lt for fuel, thats a saving of $2/few months. Or about $10/year.
Stop-start just doesn't seem worth it.
Hybrids where you can travel kilometres in stop-start traffic over the course of an hour every day without using the engine at all, now that seems super worthwhile!
It doesn't sound unreasonable to me. There are very few stop lights around here: the closest one is about 8 miles away and the next closest one is at the onramp to the interstate. It's quite easy to visit friends that are 20 miles away and not encounter a single light. Lots of stop signs though.
Instead of all SUVs being mandated this way, we should rather mandate all vehicles that perform similar functions (police, security, mail, fleet vehicles) be hybrid or electric. I think that would place those batteries in the most useful places - vehicles that have short trips, stop and start a lot, are used every weekday for most of the day, and log an average annual mileage over 50% higher than personal vehicles.
Um, let's not forget your basic city cop is crawling around the city and doing stop-and-go all day. The regenerative braking and all-electric modes will bypass huge amounts of "city driving" mpg losses.
City cops are the big reason we need PHEVs with 50 mile all-electric ranges. They would probably do 90% of their shift on all-electric, and the gas motor will recharge what they don't need.
In a parallel universe, Gore won the 2000 election, and got legislation through that forced PHEV technology to virtually all consumer segments within a decade. By now we would have electrified 70-80% of daily driving miles, cut emissions, and probably had cheaper cars in the process, and bankrupted the Saudis and Russians.
There also were various patents around inside-out rotaries and other compact higher-output engines about 10 years ago that would have made perfect recharger/range extenders for a PHEV.
All our fire trucks are fitted with isolation switches. We either leave the engine idling, or we stop the engine then physically disconnect the batteries. The reason is that all the radios and gear drain the battery so quickly without the engine running. Having a hybrid style setup that cut the engine in or out as required when stopped on scene would be awesome.
I'm not sure exactly what the rule says. I've heard stories of people buying a modern SUV, and needing to push a button on every trip, to disable the start/stop feature. I've also heard of people making a little motorized arm that pushes the button automatically.
My understanding is that if the automaker uses it during the EPA fuel economy test, it must be enabled every time the car starts. If not, the automaker can choose to have it remember your preferences.
My pickup engine stops when I come to a stop, usually, but after some time will start up again if power is needed to continue to run the AC and electronics.
Warming up the truck in the winter isn’t an issue, it starts and runs like normal.
Heat generally continues to work for quite a while, because there's quite a lot of thermal mass involved. As for the AC, some vehicles have reserve pressure canister that can keep it going for a little bit before they have to cycle back on.
I'm only assuming that both of my brand new cars are EPA compliant (they may not be) but they'll just turn back on if it's been long enough to get too cold or warm.
I hate this anti-feature. It makes the vehicle really sluggish, adding seconds to every takeoff. It's completely nerve wracking making an unprotected left when you have to wait for the engine to start before the vehicle even starts moving.
It also strikes me as a sub-optimal greedy optimization. If every car has this feature, then overall takeoff time in a long line of cars at a light should be expected to increase, and I would imagine the accordion gets worse and congestion gets worse. I wonder if anybody has studied this tradeoff.
Edit: it may be that people who drive a car with this feature overcome the delay by taking pre-emptive action (I have only driven a car like this as a rental), but it would still be interesting to see a study.
>>It makes the vehicle really sluggish, adding seconds to every takeoff.
This is completely 100% solved by modern hybrids and PHEVS where the electric motor is directly on the axle or on the transmssion - the car starts moving instantly when you press the accelerator with zero delay. I strongly encourage trying a model like that for yourself - it literally makes this entire system finally work as it should.
My Toyota turns the engine back on as soon as you start releasing the break. By the time I'm pushing down the gas pedal, it is ready to go. It still is annoying when I want A/C to cool things down, but overall I don't find it cause much of start latency issue.
is this why I've noticed an uptick in drivers that seem to take a last minute left turn in front of me? I wind up braking as hard as possible to avoid an accident.
That's such a weird hill to die on. It's literally not a problem for any competent driver, not to mention that in modern cars this is completely solved by the addition of electric motors on the drivetrain so there is literally no delay whatsoever.
Calling it the "dumbest most annoying" feature when touchscreens in cars exist is just weird.
Technically not forced by the EPA, strictly speaking optional with the caveat that if you claim a MPG rating for a car, (I believe) it must be enabled every vehicle start.
I've tried to puzzle out what that verse means for years and had a few theories, and just finally got it and I wasn't interpreting "forces" right at all.
So if I understand this correctly, Ford is shutting down civilian versions of these hybrid cars because so many cops want them. This is really confusing to me, as the American brands have been calling electric/hybrid vehicles a failure for the last quarter. How does this add up?
For one, despite the headlines to the contrary EV sales have been growing. It's just that EV inventory has been growing as well as production scales up. We have flipped from COVID scarcity to a world where dealers and automakers need to put the legwork in to sell EVs like they do other vehicles.
For another, I think the TCO benefits of EVs will be noticed first by organizations that make these kinds of purchasing decisions based on spreadsheet budgeting. Doing the math on a more expensive EV vs fuel savings over a long term purchase is a bit harder for a consumer. The more expensive vehicle might make it hard to get financing, or cost you more interest. If you don't put a ton of miles on your vehicle, the savings may not add up as quickly.
For a fleet vehicle purchaser and operator, the miles, fuel costs, and potential savings are all fairly easy to calculate. A police department can run the math on gas and oil changes and figure out pretty quickly whether a bit more spent for an EV or PHEV will pay itself back.
This is absolutely correct. Anytime you get an accountant involved they calculate total operating costs and use those numbers. Another thing about fleet operators especially government ones is they get vendor financing at very low rates. So capital cost just becomes another monthly number.
Most people don't do that when they chose to buy a car but they absolutely should. Because the capital cost of ownership is only something like 30% of the total cost or owning a vehicle. And the other costs vary wildly between models.
US EV sales are up almost 60% year over year! It's the opposite of a downturn. US legacy auto is really hurting on EV sales though, because of lack of product, higher prices even more unattractive because of high interest rates, low production, plus price reductions by Tesla and other more nimble companies are making the legacy auto lose out.
Losers: Ford, GM, Toyota
Winners: Tesla, Kia, Rivian. Many euro brands doing pretty well in this transition, way better than Detroit.
Near future killer car: Volvo EX30, a ~$35k smaller suv type car, also available with awd etc. This is the car that big auto should make. The Tesla Y is in this class too. [1]. I wish I was an auto analyst, it seems more fun than being a software engineer at times.
Guess when you think internal combustion (ICE) cars will reach their max annual sales? It's a trick question because it happened in 2019! Since then the growth has been in EVs. Tesla is almost at 2 million cars a year now, world wide.
That "ev sales are going down" is an amazing bit of incorrect propaganda. How about up ~60% year over year [2]
What's happening is legacy auto is doing terrible and losing market share, either not making enough vehicles (gm & ford, toyota), dealers marking them up too much over list price (gm, ford, toyota), etc. GM was moving everything to a new battery pack technology (ultium) but they have unclear problems and they can't make the battery packs at scale; gm has enormous demand for the huge hummer and they made fewer in the first half of the year than last year. Toyota can't make a decent ev (it's on purpose). Japanese brands haven't done a good job overall on making attractive EVs and they are losing major market share in China, because China loves EVs. European EV sales are also growing.
That $30k Volvo is actually a Geely and just re-branded as a Volvo. Because the Chinese company Geely owns Volvo.
And Geely may be a great Chinese car manufacturer for Chinese customers, but not for US customers.
In the U.S., the latest reliability survey shows that Tesla trails all the other U.S. vehicle manufacturers with over 100 customer reported flaws per 1k vehicles sold. However, in China, they have the same flaw rate, but this now puts them way ahead of any other manufacturer in China -- I think the average there is like 300 flaws per thousand.
So, Geely is not the direction I would go.
The new Polestar vehicles, maybe. Depends on who did all the design and engineering -- was it Volvo or Geely?
Ford's hybrid options have almost always been among the worst in the market.
The article points out it's a terrible hybrid that barely gets 2mpg better mileage on the EPA cycle.
It's not cost effective for your average consumer, and there are much better hybrids available, so consumers aren't buying them.
However, police spend so much time idling and have so much electrical gear, they see a much, much bigger gas savings that aren't reflected by the EPA cycle. They also put lots of miles on the vehicles, so even if it was only 2mpg, that'd still justify the extra capex...but they also get all the benefits of powering all their gear.
Keep in mind that cop cars go through regular lead acid batteries like candy.
Powering all the accessories a police vehicle needs is a real problem.
If they've left it even slightly hackable the aftermarket will make them the star of the show.
Tangentially, this class of vehicle is best suited for replacement by EVs; you want to direct unit flow to the highest utilization use cases to destroy fossil fuel demand and consumption.
> Gasoline superusers: Only 10% of US drivers burn almost a third of the gas
For what it’s worth that will always be true and is just an observation of the Pareto principle. For example, once you get rid of that 10% you’ll still likely have roughly the same ratio remain true even though in absolute terms there’s been a reduction.
Indeed, but you don't want to be putting EVs in the garage for folks who drive a few thousand miles a year (although those sales do help spinning up the manufacturing flywheel). You want to target the highest petroleum consumers and work your way down the long tail, at least until we reach a point where petroleum demand drops below a floor where the supply chain begins to collapse.
You're not wrong about EVs and hybrids being ideal for fleets like police, but acting like the market is flush with choices for police departments is absurd.
Not to mention, Teslas are an idiotic choice for a group of users who tend to need bodywork pretty often, given how a lot of minor collisions total Teslas, or the body shops are booked out months or longer.
There has been a lot of interest in the Edison hybrid diesel line for this feature in custom work trucks.
Being able to run pumps/electronics without having the main engine running allows for a huge amount of fuel savings. In addition it drops the amount of noise and pollution generated, especially in sensitive areas.
>>which offers up to an EPA-estimated 24 mpg combined fuel economy
I just don't understand why these vehicles aren't diesels, I get that Americans have strong aversion to diesel but modern big SUVs diesels can 50mpg all day long without even trying. Surely the fuel savings are worth it alone. Why isn't there demand from the market for it?
