March 3, 2008

Some new BMWs feature a fuel saving function that turns off the engine if you put your car in neutral when at a standstill and then release the clutch. It restarts again as soon as you depress the clutch. I hope they sell the cars with a remote webcam of the drivers face when sat at traffic lights. Having not read the instruction manual they would pull up to the lights in their new Beemer only for the bloody car to conk out as soon as he took it out of gear. Straight back to the dealer, who having monitored the driver from the showroom knows he’s coming back.

The webcam part of that scenario is in my imagination but the fuel saving feature is with us today. it was first rolled out by VW in the late 80s but drivers didn’t like it, they found it unnerving. However, nearly twenty years on, we have different priorities and are more comfortable with machines doing things for us automatically.

The rise in fuel costs means that reduced consumption is much higher up the agenda. The improved efficiency of electronically controlled fuel injection systems has meant that restarting a car is much less costly. BMW says it has calculated that leaving the engine idling for two seconds uses about the same amount of fuel as stopping and starting the engine. So if you are going to be sat for two seconds or more you will save fuel and money with the engine shutting off.

The auto Start – Stop system considers a number of other factors. It measures the temperature of the engine before it shuts off and will not shut off if the engine is cold or the battery is low.

This means that drivers of regular cars could potentially make decent savings if driving in traffic. I'm not suggesting that everyone should shut their engines down when they hit a red light, god no! Can you imagine how bad traffic would get then? But if we were a bit more sensible when we hit traffic jams or tail backs perhaps shutting your engine off each stop until you're near the front of the queue. Although if you're not sure how likely the car is to restart i'd keep it running!

That restarting is so frugal should be promoted to people who sit with their cars idling outside schools or shops. Hopefully it would encourage them to shut their engines down and make the air more pleasant for all of us to breathe.

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