Thanks for the replies! Some good ideas. A little more background on my situation. yes, 3 stops mininum: school, school, gas station for a pop.

My car is in the garage, but I do tend to let it warm up for 3 mins or so, but on 0, subzero days after a day at the office, the car will be sitting an open parking ramp for 9 hrs and will need at least 5 mins to warm up.

Yesterday I drove without warming it up, as the booklet says, and it really sounded like the car was working hard, and the auto-stop never came on. But I find if I let it warm up for a little bit, my auto-stop comes on much quicker! (So which is a better method?)

I'll pay more attention to me it seems I rarely get the ECO light on when accelerating, but I do see the "battery assist" being used. Should I be able to get both the ECO light and battery assist going at the same time at speeds under 55 miles per hour?

Can I assume whenever the battery assist is being shown, that even without my ECO light I should be getting pretty good mpg cause of the electric engine taking on part of the work?

Another question, is the electric engine ALWAYS helping, or only when we see the dial swing to "assist"?

I have found that once the hybrid system is warmed up, my auto-stop will be activated even if I have the heater going, but I guess I haven't had to use the defrost yet, so maybe it's only defrost related that it won't turn on? (And ususal the heater dial is on setting 3 or 4 while driving....it's darn cold in this state right now!)

Anway, I'm still excited about this, and everyone I know is probably annoyed by how often I talk about now having a hybrid car.

Oh and it's mostly suburbia driving (a stretch of it being up to 55 miles per hour) and about 10 mins on the interstate (unless it's rush hr than it's a lot more) Just got done driving it and had my heater dial on setting 3 (if 1 is off), and got the auto-stop to work 3x while downtown. I have exactly 3 stop signs, and 17possible stop signals from my house to my ultimate destination of work.