EPA boss wants to kill the automatic start-stop function in automobiles

MSN ^ | 5 26 | Story by Michael Ramsey

[dennisw]

(NewsNation) — The EPA administrator has promised to end a contentious feature in many automobiles: the automatic start-stop feature that temporarily shuts down engines at red light stops.

Lee Zeldin says the start-stop function, which automakers began installing to reduce emissions in return for federal incentives, annoys most motorists, who consider it “the single worst feature in their motor vehicle.”

“They want it eliminated,” Zeldin told Blake Burman on “The Hill” Thursday.

Democrats say EPA illegally canceled hundreds of grants aimed at boosting ‘environmental justice’ To that end, he said the EPA will seek to revoke its approval of credits that were granted in exchange for the technology’s installation.

The Obama administration originally incentivized start-stop more than a decade ago to improve fuel efficiency. By 2022, an estimated 65% of vehicles in the United States had the feature.

Zeldin suggested the function wouldn’t be so annoying if owners had the option of disabling it wholesale rather than having to do so during each individual trip.

“If it saves a little bit in gas, what is it doing to my starter? What is it doing to my engine? Is it safe?” he said.

The former Republican congressman from New York talked exclusively with NewsNation Thursday after appearing before lawmakers this week to discuss budget and grant cuts his agency is seeking to make. The EPA’s fiscal 2026 budget would be cut by more than half as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize government.

[libertylover]

I CANNOT IMAGINE THE PREMATURE BATTERY REPLACEMENT THIS CAUSES.

My car has a MASSIVE battery even though it's only a 4-cylinder engine. The starter is beefed up too. I've only had the 2019 Jeep for a few months and haven't replaced either of them yet.

I don't mind the feature, but my wife HATES it.

Does it save gas? I think it depends on where you live and how long the stoplights are.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

ASS is actually a very complicated thing. A lot of components had to be modified.

Single worst idea ever. Square tires would be the second.

[kosciusko51]

“The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

Mr. Scott, Star Trek III

[libertylover]

How can this damned thing know that you’re at a “red light stop”? How can it know that you aren’t stopped in an intersection trying to make a left turn but waiting for the way to be clear?

It doesn't, so if I'm stopped trying to turn left I turn the feature off.

[rlmorel]

To say I despise this as the worst "feature" ever foisted upon drivers is an understatement.

It is even worse: The repeated cycles kill the batteries, then...when your battery approaches death one day and will be unable to restart the engine, your "feature" STOPS your engine for you in the middle of several lanes of traffic at the busiest rush hour time and location, then...your engine will not start.

Thinking your car may have stalled, you put your car into PARK, and attempt to restart, but...since your battery is dead, it will not even start. Worse yet, you have just shot yourself in the foot, because now you have put it into PARK, and if the engine cannot start, you cannot shift it into neutral and even push your car to the side of the road to allow others to pass. This happened to me as described below, if you are interested in reading it.

---

I have a Subaru Forester, and love the way it feels and drives, but it has all that crap, especially the thing that shuts off the engine when you stop at a light.

Makes me grit my teeth.

Anyway, last summer, I stopped at a red light during rush hour at an extremely busy intersection. When the light changed, I pressed on the accelerator, but...nothing happened. Puzzled, I put the car into park, tried to restart the engine...nothing. And this is a crazy intersection, so...I got out, waved all the cars around me, put up the hood and put my flashers on.

Then, when all the traffic drained, I figured I would push the thing off the side of the road...but...couldn't get it out of park! Then, cars came up behind me, and when the light changed...they all just sat there. I had to point at them, point at my raised hood, and wave them around. I know people are on autopilot going into work sometimes, but I thought "What the hell is the matter with these people?"

I tried using AAA, and they made me use the app on my smartphone to put the request for assistance in, so...I dutifully put the request in through the AAA application, and...everything looked good. So, as I am waiting for a tow, I am standing off to the side. Again, this is a three lane road. Two lanes approaching the light, one lane going the other direction. I was in the middle lane to take a left.

I was not right at the light, I would have been the equivalent of two cars spaces back from the light in the center lane, with a full, clear lane going in the same direction I would have been going, but everyone takes a left, so people kept coming up behind me and just sitting there! So...I kept waving them around. v Finally, a town cop comes over and parks behind me. He asks me if I called for a tow yet, and I explain to him what is going on, and that I am waiting for AAA to send a truck. So he begins directing traffic, waving these people around my car where they have a free and open lane, and I can tell by his body language and facial expression that he is getting frustrated, because HE is behind my car with his lights on, and people are STILL stopping and waiting there.

The cop finally turns to me and says "What the hell is the matter with these people?"...exactly what I had been muttering to myself earlier!

So, the cop asks me when I think AAA is going to arrive, so I go in the app on my phone to see the status, and it says something like "Your request has been cancelled. Please reenter your request." So I said "Screw this." and began casting about for a phone number to call, and finally found one and when I called, got into the hold queue with the "There is a high volume of calls at this time. You are very important to us. Please hold..." and of course the damned stupid music.

I tell the cop they have me on hold, and now it has been almost 45 minutes and the cop says "Let me call a truck. If I call them, they will be here immediately. I can do that right now, but they take cash only. There is an ATM over there." So I said okay.

I had been there now nearly an hour, and the cop about 45 minutes or so, and the whole time, we got to talk as, standing next to me and irritatedly waving cars around his cruiser, we chatted. I really liked him. A middle aged bald guy like myself (Now I am not middle aged, I am a senior citizen!) I asked him what he liked best about his job, and he said "Things like this! Not stressful. Get to talk to people!" He said he had been on the force for 28 years. I actually enjoyed being there and chatting too, even though work was crazy for me at that time.

Finally, the truck showed up, and the guy tried to jump my car. No dice. He told me the battery was dead and needed replacing. He didn't do that, so he suggested I call AAA and have them send a battery guy over. Instead of having him tow me to my house which would have cost a small fortune, I had him tow me about 200 yards away to the parking lot of the bank with the ATM, which he did.

As he unloaded my car and we talked, I mentioned I couldn't get my car out of park, and he said "Ah. You gotta do this..." and showed me a little hole in front of my shifter that had a plastic cover. He pried off the cover, and said I had to stick something down there to get it out of park. When he asked if I had a pen I handed him one, and he pried off the cover and stuck the ink cartridge in the hole.

Then it slipped out of his fingers, and he couldn't get it out! Fortunately, I am one of those Swiss Army knife guys, and I thankfully had tweezers in the knife and we were able to retrieve it because it wasn't that far down! Whew. I had visions of that ink cartridge getting enmeshed in something and needing to have the console removed!

I had to wait about another hour and a half for the AAA guy to show up. In that time, I pulled a folding chair out of my car (I always keep two there) and set up my laptop with a hot spot and went to work, even though I could see the building I worked in about a quarter of a mile away.

Finally, the AAA guy showed up and managed to get the car started by leaving the battery charger hooked up for a longer period of time. While the car was running, he began to disconnect the battery, and I interrupted him with "Hey! The car is still running!" and he said patiently (but not unkindly) "That is how we do it these days. That way, you don't lose all your car settings." Wow. Made sense to me...never thought of that.

All's well that ends well. I had to buy a new little plastic cap for that hole in the console because the tow truck guy lost that (I looked all over inside and outside the vehicle) but it wasn't expensive, a couple of bucks.

But I developed a new found hatred for all that electronic crap on the car. If the engine hadn't shut off due to that idiotic gas-saving thing, I would have gotten to work, and been none the wiser until I came out to go home. But at that point, I wouldn't be in the middle of the road at rush hour, and I wouldn't have had to shell out for a 200 yard tow that cost me $90, which I would have to submit to AAA to get reimbursed for.

So, yeah. I hate all that electronic stuff.

BTW, I know this is long (If you even get this far) but I like to write these things down to remember...:)

[SaxxonWoods]

We have one car that has it. Very easy to stop and hold without a shutoff, no big deal.

[broken_clock]

I tell people in a normal car when your starter or battery dies you will be at home or in a parking lot. With this auto stop mess you could be stopped in an intersection. Just for that reason it has to go.

[KevinB]

Fortunately, I was able to hack my Audi’s ECU to permanently disable it.

[cyclotic]

In addition, car manufacturers must provide an override code so that those of us who have this nonsense device can eliminate it.

My brother in law was an engineer at Ford. He had something to do with implementing it. He tries hard to justify it but can’t.

I should ask him about an override now that he l no longer works there.

[butlerweave]

Wasn’t this Nancy’s idea in the first , something stupid it always comes from her

[okkev68]

I did the same on my F150. You can remove the trailer light plug or use Forscan to go in and program it. I also turned off the annoying seatbelt warning ding and door open with the truck running warning.

[hecticskeptic]

I’m sure that behind all the lobbying that resulted in this stupid feature is a ton of folks who wanted to benefit from the cottage industry ‘fixes’ that would need to spring up with all sorts of ways to defeat this said ‘feature’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HyqCSVJkrE

The same was true a few years ago with the insane idea of 8 cylinder vehicles dropping off 4 cylinders once up to speed. It didn’t take long for all kind of ‘defeat mechanisms’ to emerge...

[rigelkentaurus]

And, kill the planned car disabler requirement for 2026 models. The vague, intrusive, dangerous rule to make manufacturers somehow determine if the driver is impaired and then lock them out of their own car. This is claimed to be a safety feature but is incredibly dangerous and intrusive. This is not EPA this time, it is NHTSA this time and from the Nov 2021 Infrastructure Law which is another of those gifts that keeps giving.

[AnglePark]

My truck has any easy to reach switch to turn the feature off.

Same here on my Escape, but I wish it would keep the previous setting and not force me to turn it off every time I start the car. When I switch it off in my Cooper it remembers that setting, and keeps it that way.

There's also an aftermarket chip you can order that plugs into the diagnostic port. I think it's about $100, and I'm seriously tempted to order it for the Escape.

[TheDon]

I won’t purchase a vehicle with this “feature”.

[KarlInOhio]

All the ones I've seen have had a button to turn it off. The problem is that it turns back on when I shut off the engine. My cruise control retains it's setting, my air conditioner retains it's setting, my radio retains it's setting. For some reason (probably the EPA) it turns back on and that is purely software.

My other reason to hate it is that it almost psychicly does the wrong thing. If I stop at the traffic light where there's no traffic and I will be at a full stop for a second, it will shut down my engine. On the other hand when I go to a car wash where I stop for five minutes and then advance one car length, it will keep the engine running.

[AnAmericanMother]

Unintended consequences - I got pulled over for suspected DUI on the justification that I was “slow pulling away from the red light”. No, it was my stupid car!

[DugwayDuke]

Whether this feature saves gas is debatable. The gas mileage for all cars is determined by placing the car on a dynamometer and simulating ‘typical’ travel. This is why the sticker on cars says that “Your mileage may vary”. Indeed it will unless your travel mimics the simulated travel.

Incorporating this was a way for automakers to get closer to meeting EPA mileage emission requirements. Doing away with those requirements would eliminate this stupid idea.

BTW, my GM product does not have a simple, easy and convenient way to turn this off.

[cyclotic]

Where I live I need to make a U-turn at an intersection to get to my street. If I’m first at the red light and the truck shuts off, the action of starting the engine then braking for the immediate u-turn causes it to sort of stall. Just enough to get my attention.

[hecticskeptic]

BTW, I know this is long (If you even get this far).....
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Hahahaha... well, I read the whole story and as I got into it, I kept going because of how much the cascading effects reminded me of some of what I run into. It sometimes seems like whatever the bad thing is that I didn’t ask for, that is just the first domino and all the rest will get worse....