If you start your car two or three times a day, prepare for a shock. Over the next decade, that figure is likely to rise by a factor of 10. Soon your car's engine will automatically shut down at traffic lights and stop signs. It will turn off during heavy rush-hour driving. It may even shut down when you pull your foot off the accelerator and coast, possibly at speeds of up to 75mph. Experts say the so-called start-stop wave is coming, and the auto industry is bracing for its arrival.
"It's going to start happening in 2012," says Doug Patton, senior vice president of engineering for Denso International America, an automotive supplier introducing a family of starters. "And it's going to ramp up fast. The start-stop change will affect a large percentage of the market over the next three years."
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In addition to a heavy-duty starter, start-stop systems require such components as enhanced engine control, battery management, DC/DC converters, and more robust crankshaft sensors.
(Source: Robert Bosch LLC)
US automakers have begun unveiling a new breed of start-stop-equipped vehicles. Ford, Chevy, Buick, Kia, and BMW will roll out the technology early in 2012. Their vehicles will join a handful of models from Fiat, Volvo, and Alfa Romeo that already have it. Moreover, start-stop has also taken hold in Europe, where the percentage of new vehicles carrying the technology has risen from about 5 percent in 2008 to more than 20 percent today.
The reason for this seemingly sudden phenomenon is obvious. When your engine is turned off, it doesn't burn gasoline. suppliers say brief shutdowns can boost fuel efficiency by 3 to 10 percent. That figure will rise even higher if automakers are willing to shut off the engine while the car is coasting.
Chances are that the technology will be adopted quickly, even if consumers don't demand it. New corporate average fuel economy (CAFÉ) regulations in the US call for cars and light-duty trucks to reach 54.5mpg by 2025, adding a sense of urgency to start-stop's uptake.
"Eventually, we'll see 100 percent of new vehicles offering start-stop," Patton says. "It will probably happen over the next 10 to 15 years."
Electric power steering should not require an additional battery since mostly drivers are not turning the car, and most coasting is done in a fairly straight line. Besides that, there is very little steering done when the car is stopped.
As for the air conditioning, shut it off while coasting! 50% on time should be plenty cool enough, those drivers who can't live without an icey blast 100% of the time are folks that I really don't care at all to accomodate. Really, I don't care. Of course, cars could have better insulation, for example, urethane foam like refrigerated trucks have. That would also make the ride quieter and not add over a pound to the car's weight. It might even make the car stronger.
Another option would be to allow those drivers who must hold 65 degrees to keep the engine running, and let the rest of us save the fuel costs. Then there would be no room to complain for them at all.
Power brakes might be a different story, because although I have seen hydraulic-assisted power brakes, those systems used the power steering pressure, which is gone with electric power steering. Of course, for many years power brakes were an option, they may still be, I am not sure. I do know that my first two cars did not have them, and neither did the race car that I drove for a few minutes once. So dispensing with them altigather is another option.
I think you've nailed it, William K, when you say that air conditioing and other accessories will be a challenge. For AC, automakers atalking about adding a temperature sensor that could look at ambient air and enable the vehicle to decide if the engine should be turned on again. Regarding steering: If it's electric steering, an extra battery would be needed for coasting.
I would love to have a vehicle made for this kind of driving. I can see two major requirements aside from a much different cranking drive, which would be a separate ignition and fuel control switch, and a free-wheeling clutch for efficient coasting. Of course, there is the challenge of the various hgh current draw accessories, air conditioning being the biggest, but power steering being another more important one. It would be trivial to do without AC for a minute or so at a traffic light, although I am certain that some disagree. Headlights would need to stay on while in motion but they could be dimmed while stopped.
What I have found in this "greater Detroit" area is that one can easily cut fuel consumption in half with agressive shutoff-and-coast driving, at least on surface streets. My anticipation is that it would be very hard to duplicate this with a computer program, since a major portion of the decision making is driven by driver observation of the surrounding traffic situation. But if there were available a switch with a "run/coast" function it would be easy for possibly half of the drivers to reach much lower levels of fuel consumption. Of course, some ten percent of the drivers would probably kill themselves, so the idea will probably never be accepted.
I agree with you, Rob. The so-called "microhybrid" doesn't really fall under the definition of the word "hybrid," since it's not being propelled by another power source. I don't know how the microhybrid label originated, but my guess is that the name stuck because it shuts off at traffic lights, like a real hybrid does.
GlennA: There are three categoroies. The microhybrid uses a beefed up starter to handle the 10X increase in starts. The mild hybrid (like Buick eAssist) uses an integrated starter-generator for start-stop and for other benefits (such as regenerative braking) but generally does not use it for electric propulsion. The full hybrid, like the Prius, uses its motor-generator for electric propulsion.
The figure about the accessories accounting for 90% of battery load at stop confirms my line about modern automobiles: "Today's cars are an electronics platform with an engine and transmission thrown in as an afterthought." Humorous though that may be, there's some truth in it. The start-stop technology about which Chuck writes is clearly positively impacting mileage and many commenters here have spoken of their experiences with the Aspen, Escape Hybrid, etc. The collateral effect that I wonder about is what kind of reliability will we see in these new drivetrains, both predicted (by the manufacturer) and actual, as these vehicles age during their service lives on the road. (I.e.,, will reliability and repairability -- these cars require really well trained technicians -- loom as a big unexpected owner expense as these cars age?
araasch; I was seriously considering the Ford Escape Hybrid. What I did buy was a 2009 Chrysler Aspen hybrid. The determining factor for me was the 5.7 liter Hemi. I can still tow a trailer. If I pay attention to my driving, and in excellent traffic conditions, I can average 25 mpg (per the computer - and the gas pump has agreed). My mileage does suffer in cold weather as the engine runs until it gets to operating temperature. So the engine runs at the first few red lights in cold weather. All of the accessories seem to be electric - the 'serpentine' belt seems to have only 2 pulleys - it is hard to see buried in the engine compartment. The stop-start is not quite seamless. Passengers do not notice it, but the driver can detect a tiny lag between pressing on the accelerator and the engine kicking in. In a traffic jam or stop-and-go driving I can get about 20 minutes of light acceleration sub-25 mph driving before the engine has to re-charge the battery, vs other cars with the engine constantly idling. That said, I would not have even considered a pure stop-start design.
Have I missed something? According to the article, the electric motor in a "start-stop hybrid" exists to restart the gasoline engine, not to propel the car.
The Prius, to use your example, is capable of driving for a short distance using only battery power. Not so with these vehicles.
Maybe these vehicles should be called "zero-RPM idle" to distinguish them from actual hybrids.
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