Why YSK: People seem to, on average, think that a car takes a lot of fuel to start up. In reality, it takes on the order of a few millilitres of fuel to start an engine. That means if your car isn’t equipped with an automatic start/stop system to stop your engine instead of idling, it saves fuel to turn off your engine and start it back up when you need it.
Caveat: air conditioning and radio might not work with the engine turned off.
Scenarios where this might be useful include waiting for trains to pass at rail crossings, waiting for food at drive-throughs, dropping off or picking people up on the side of the road when they need to load stuff, etc. May not be a good idea to use this while waiting at a red light because starting the engine does take time which would annoy drivers behind you when the light turns green.
Some cars are equipped with systems that will automatically stop the engine when you are idling for a while (e.g. waiting for a red light). If yours is, then manually turning off your engine will probably result in reduced fuel savings compared to just relying on the car to do it for you.
It’s the battery prematurely dying that’s also an issue. Especially if the battery needs coding to the car. Could be a £300+ job. That’s a lot of fuel that’d need to be saved to be close to worth it.
It’s all about emission testing anyway. Keel start stop off.
It’s amazing how much batteries have increased in price since Covid.
I bought a car battery for my GF while I was out and she was upset at how much money I spent until she went online and saw that $200 for a car battery was totally normal.
If memory serves me right, it wasn’t long ago that many were well below $100.
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Stop start cars have more expensive agm batteries typically
I saw Matt needed a lithium battery for his M5. £750. Yes it’s a big and technology rich battery but wow.
Last I saw my M240 battery was about £200. Bet it’s £350 now.
Assuming it’s the battery shortage due to electric vehicles.
Wait, CODING? Are you serious? I can understand this with EVs, but for a standard 12 volt battery? This sounds more like a thing they do to keep you from doing your own work and allowing shops to charge more flag time for what should be a 10 minute job. Replacing a dead battery is one of the simplest jobs you can do. The hardest part of a battery swap should be finding your 10mm socket.
Yeh, you have to tell the car a new battery is installed to alter the V for start/stop mainly.