Hi Sdhybrid:

___Although there are plenty of caveat’s of a Shift to neutral - Forced Autostop while moving w/ an Automatic transmission, there are none to a Forced Autostop when actually stopped in an AH. In fact, this technique is a god send to lessen a hybrid and non-hybrids alike poor FE in an all inner city - stop and go environment. Forced-Autostops when actually stopped should be as natural to you as the AH’s normal Autostop when the logic has been made up given the description of your own inner city commute. The MDX with just 3 miles on her (I filled her up this morning) is sitting in the drive at 28.0 mpg and I had plenty of stop signs, lights, and traffic to run through before I arrived home. Maybe not a deep inner city environment but it sure is not an all highway drive by any stretch of the imagination. Forced Autostop was worth maybe 5 - 6 mpg of that 28 mpg as displayed on her FCD and will hopefully help you with your efforts to achieve even higher FE in your AH in an all city environment.

___Although I have posted this in the past, this thread appears to be as sound a place as any to repost …

Japanese Government to Promote Manual “Idling Stop”

Kyodo News reports that the Japanese government is planning to take its “idling stop” campaign from buses and taxis and other commercial vehicles to the general car-owning population in an effort to save fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The proposed idling-stop campaign is the low-tech version of a hybrid stop-start system: manually turning off the engine when the vehicle is stopped for more than a very short time in traffic or at an intersection.

Although vehicles equipped with automatic idling stop devices are on the increase (such as the hot-selling Toyota Vitz—earlier post), and the Japanese government extends subsidies to commercial firms which use such vehicles, there is no such incentive for private cars.

Automatic idling-stop (or stop-start) systems save a significant amount of fuel, especially in cities.

The Energy Conservation Center of Japan, affiliated with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, carried out a three-week test in the summer of 2002 using two cars of the same make and model—one with an automatic idling cut-off and the other without it.

On open roads between cities there was not much difference between the two vehicles in fuel-saving because stops were few, but even so, the vehicle with the idling-prevention device used 3.4% less gasoline that the other car. In cities, however, fuel consumption dropped 13.4%.

A center official said that since the saving on fuel was large, “Operators of buses running on regular routes in cities, those of home-delivery trucks, and taxi companies have begun to actively introduce the practice.”

However, impatient drivers do not like to turn off their engines at traffic light stops because they want to get off to a fast start when the lights change.

With improved efficiency in starters and batteries, turning off the engine for a short time poses almost no problem, but even so many drivers find it a heavy psychological burden to deliberately turn off the engine by using the key.

The idea of drivers shutting of their vehicles to spare the air is not new. The state of Oregon, for example, advises drivers to turn off their engines after more than 10 seconds of idling on Clean Air Action Days.

This sounds like it might be the first broad-based national initiative to undertake the practice—at least recently.

___With that, an IMA start is about as smooth a start as any I have ever experienced. If the Autostop logic has not been made up in your AH, shut her down manually. Wishing for an alternative autostop logic and such is kind of like spitting into the wind. It is not worthy of your time and the outcome is less then to be desired for the most part

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net