It's still not a perfect solution, but you can put the transmission into 2nd gear, and the engine won't auto-stop. I do this all the time when I come to a stop sign where there's no traffic, or when I'm coming to a stop before putting the transmission in Park.


There has to be a point where it takes more energy to restart the engine than is saved by the Auto-Stop. My guess is that this is somewhere around 10 seconds. (With non-hybrids, I used to hear that it was more like 30 seconds, but they start "more slowly" with the traditional starter).

The Civic hybrid (pre-2006 model, with manual transmission, and maybe other models) had an "ECON" button on the dash that disabled autostop. This would have been a good feature on the Accord. There's probably some wire somewhere that could be spliced into with a switch that would accomplish this on the Accord (i.e., diable autostop when the switch is activated).