Don't flame me, this is a sincere question.

At least where I drive, it is quite useless.
The reason being that at the traffic lights where it makes sense (lasting longer than say, 15 secs wait), the vehicles leave several feet between one and the other as they stop.
A few seconds later, they start inching its way forward, one at the time. When all the slack has been taken, there may be at least one, but most often two car lengths between myself and the car ahead.

You know what that means.... the car behind starts honking and displaying other rude manners, meaning that I've to restart my engine for the remainder of the wait.

Is this behavior prevalent where you drive? And I don't mean the honking, but the cars inching ahead during a red light.

 

Rude people are everywhere. Seems to me that as long as the light hasn't changed, there's nothing wrong with staying put. I could see it if, perhaps you were stuck halfway through a lane change, and needed the car in front to pull up a little, you might want to tap your horn. As far as inching forward during a red light, I don't really see the point unless you're concerned that the sensor didn't get tripped -- that happens frequently in So. Cal.

Where people honk at me is when I actually obey a 'no right turn on red' sign. Hey, a ticket is a ticket, and I've gotten a ticket for that before. So.... honk away, bud!

Hope this helps,

Don

 

autostop is not useless. are u kidding me?

Yes the cars inch forward here too. Here's what you do: stop very very close behind the vehicle in front of you when you come to a red light. If the car doesn't inch forward that far, the cars behind you won't have a reason to start honking.

However if the car in front of you inches forward quite a bit, take your foot off the brake and follow it, then stop. shift to N, pull the handbrake, and turn off the engine. when the light turns green, start the engine again, shift to D and release the handbrake.

If you want to avoid that 3 second startup pause, watch the traffic light running perpendicular to your direction - when it turns yellow that is a sign for you to start up again. if there are protected left turns, then start up when the cars are halfway through their turn. observe how the intersection order works and then you'll get an idea of when to "prep" for going again.

since the hch uses the electric motor to spin up the engine, it doesn't waste any gas so you don't have to worry about that.

 

Just ignore the people who are honking. I do. Once I am in autostop and halted. Unless I can get up to 10 mph, I am *not* moving.

 

In general terms I would suggest the more your engine stops the better with an electric starter.

A stopped engine for whatever time period burns no fuel.

I know the feeling of crawling traffic and can relate to the original poster and now that I drive a hybrid you truly wonder quite often how much better of the environment "could" be if everyone drove a hybrid!!!

Cheers.

 

Yes, but constantly stopping and starting in a short period of time will drain your battery and burn more fuel for the first few seconds the engine is on. Then, your car will be more likely to do a forced regen down the road, eventually lowering your FE. There's no free lunch - the best scenario is to have an autostop last as long as possible. My rule is: I don't perform a low speed forced autostop (basically what Myles described for when you can't get back up to speed to get another autostop) unless I know I'll be waiting for at least 7 seconds or so. Otherwise, the extra fuel burnt during the initial seconds of ignition and the extra bit of SoC lost by the IMA restarting the engine won't be worth the stop in the first place.

 

That is one advantage the Prius has over the HCH; the latter car just does not do very well in traffic. Just suck it up and allow the car to idle, or turn the car off with the keys if you wish.

 

i don't know about the 7 second rule, but i generally don't bother to inch up with traffic. let them honk. i was just giving fernando an alternative.

 

Well stated Robbie,

I was thinking about the same "concept" when I was practicing (playing) with the EV glide wondering whether I should try and glide as much as possible or if I should only try and glide when the battery life is 5 bars or higher.

Meybe there is no perfect answer and I have to allow the car to dictate a bit and rely on the IMA "brain".

I find myself getting the vehicle to about 9 or 10 kms past the speed limit and either coasting to the next light or trying to glide. Meybe I should focus a bit on the amount of power in my battery. Would you say gliding is much more beneficial for FE than maximizing the autostop opportunites.... or would you only glide with a certain amount of battery life.

My first tank of gas I always seems to have a large battery life and now I am always sitting around 4 bars.

Thoughts?

 

A few of us calculated out the amount of fuel burned by restarting a warm engine- it works out to the equivalent amount burned in 7-8 seconds at warm idle.

However, several restarts in a short interval without some regen in between WILL drop your battery very quickly- after a few (esp in the cold), AS will not function and the engine will force regen. And THAT is frustrating.