Start/Stop

[DrAdrian]

As I am currently doing few miles in 'lockdown', going out about 3 days a week on short journeys, I tend to turn off the 'start/stop' function as I am nervous that using all the electrical stuff (heated seats, radio, heater and so forth) with the engine off will drain the battery. Am I being too cautious?

[blastpipe]

Yes...the auto stop start will be monitoring electrical loads and battery ...it will not operate the stop/start if it believes loads are too high or battery too low. What stop/start symbol is showing on the main instrument binnacle?

Mine is similarly doing few miles at present and the stop/start symbol is showing that the system is not active anyway

[Shed Load]

There's two aspects to this.

Firstly, If you have the start/stop activated i.e. not turned off, and you use lots of electrical services, such as heated seats, heating, windscreen wipers etc then the start/stop will NOT work. It does this automatically.
There's too much other activity going on and the car knows this.

Second point - if you are only doing short intermittent runs then the batteries, there are two, won't charge fully and again the stop/start service is automatically stopped and won't activate. If you do some longer runs the battery will charge and the stop/start system will function again.

You can see if the stop/start system is currently active by looking at the dashboard symbol. If the symbol has a line diagonally through it it isn't activated.

So, yes you are being too cautious, the car is "clever" enough to look after itself.

[Chris John]

As I am currently doing few miles in 'lockdown', going out about 3 days a week on short journeys, I tend to turn off the 'start/stop' function as I am nervous that using all the electrical stuff (heated seats, radio, heater and so forth) with the engine off will drain the battery. Am I being too cautious?

Yes you are. The stop/start won’t activate with constant short journeys

[DrAdrian]

Thanks for kind views. The Start/Stop function activates after about half a mile and has always been active unless I switch it off, which, as I said, I do. We live near a level crossing which frequently has a 'doubler' i.e. it stays shut for trains going both ways including having to wait for one to leave the station. In this case I just turn the engine (and of course all of the electriics) off and listen to the radio.

[Shed Load]

Thanks for kind views. The Start/Stop function activates after about half a mile and has always been active unless I switch it off, which, as I said, I do. We live near a level crossing which frequently has a 'doubler' i.e. it stays shut for trains going both ways including having to wait for one to leave the station. In this case I just turn the engine (and of course all of the electriics) off and listen to the radio.

You will, of course, have to leave your lights on, front and back, if it's dark/poor visibility.

Sorry to state the obvious

You say it always works. But it WILL stop working if you switch on a variety of electrical system and AC, and it will stop working if you only use the car infrequently for short journeys.

[DrAdrian]

Good point..... however, the wait is so long the queue can stretch nearly a mile. This crossing is a local legend!

[Shed Load]

Good point..... however, the wait is so long the queue can stretch nearly a mile. This crossing is a local legend!

Hypothetically, if you leave your stop/start system switched on then next time you are in that particular queue your engine should switch off automatically using the stop/start system. No need to switch the engine off yourself.

If you are in the queue for quite a while and decide to turn up the heating/AC put the radio on, and it starts to rain so you then switch on the wipers you will find that the start/stop system will sense this excessive energy load and it WILL switch the engine back on.

If on the other hand you simply turn off the engine yourself and sit there for an hour with all the bits and pieces drawing energy then you will end up with a flat battery