Posted on 05/26/2025 6:45:29 AM PDT by dennisw
I detest this feature. Please do away with it.
I see this all the time on Subaru forums. The common thread is that the people with premature battery failure don't disable their auto stop/start. I put an Autostop Eliminator in my Forester and have never had a battery issue.
DO IT !
As irritating as the years cars were required to have seat belts fastened to start the cars.
I had a car sales man tell me of his first encounter with the stop, start feature on these modern autos as his co-workers purposely did not tell him about it. It almost caused a Road Rage incident from those behind him honking for him to go!
Another democrat scheme and dream down the drain.
Someone remotely disabling your vehicle is a deal breaker for me. Even the cop departments disable the ONSTAR option (which is a little bit of hassle).
Please do.
I have issues with that nonsense from a safety standpoint and from the standpoint of engine life.
Just do it!
Next do washing machines.
As a retired mech. eng. I can assure you that crap like automatic shutdown wasn’t originated by an engineer. It’s called government coercion/regulation. Or perhaps Borg Warner and Exide if either is still in business.
In Jeeps, that feature requires second battery, which is hidden somewhere in the engine.
When it died, it cost me up to $400 to replace it!
Even if it saved me few bucks on gas, it surely was NOT worth $400!
I had heard about that second battery but couldn’t remember the brand. The person telling me about it told me the same replacement price but also that particular battery had not been readily available at the time.
In other good news, EPA will remove CO2 emission restrictions on all power plants. Climate scientists are saddened (just kidding, they are going nuts:)
“Starting is the biggest surge on your battery.”
Let’s work with just that fact aside from all the other issues this feature causes. Every time your engine is started the charging system regulator puts an extra load on the Alternator until the battery is back up to charge then it relieves the load.
This mechanical load on the engine to bring the battery back up to full charge pulls around 7 HP which causes more fuel consumption. So the more often you start an engine the more fuel you are going to use to keep the battery at full charge.
So it is NOT saving any fuel, it is a trade off and might even be using MORE fuel than if it did not quit and need to be restarted again.
Additional issues:
1. Premature Starter wear.
2. Premature ring gear wear.
3. Premature engine bearing wear because it takes around five seconds for an engine to distribute oil throughout the engine and bring it up to proper pressure. In the mean time you are putting a load on those bearings with no oil pressure while accelerating under load. And while those bearings are hot and tolerances are extremely tight.
Even worse, right after an engine shuts off heat soak causes those bearings to get even hotter and tolerances even tighter because there is no longer any oil flow to help cool them. Oil flow cools the mechanical parts of the engine too...
I despise this feature in my newer vehicle. We turn it off immediately every time we drive it.
Hard on starter and dangerous if won’t start when crossing traffic. Should actually be outlawed as dangerous.
You’d care if it failed to start afterwards! Which happened to my wife 2 times with ours. So stupid. You had to hit the button to shut down like normal, then restart the vehicle to get it going again. We typically turn it off, but sometimes you forget.
we just purchased a car with this feature. We wish that we could at least have an option to turn it off permanently.
I was driving a rental in UK with that feature. Every 2 miles or less, there’s a roundabout where split seconds matter. That stupid feature can easily get you killed.
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