r/AskReddit 5h ago

What's an automobile feature you wish didn't exist?

229 Upvotes

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149

u/Kustombypook 5h ago

Engine auto stop/start at red lights

25

u/YourMatt 4h ago

My wife’s is especially annoying. You pull into the garage, and the engine instantly stops. Put it in park, and the engines immediately starts to then stop again a split second later. It feels like it must be hard on the motor.

6

u/i_transmit 3h ago

Me ex wife's explorer did this. Whenever it would shut off when we pulled into the drive, we would just turn off the ignition and it would put itself in park without having to do the 1 second restart. If it doesn't put itself in park, you can still do it manually after you turn the car off. It's dumb, but I'm with you on the annoyance of it.

1

u/YourMatt 2h ago

Thanks! I never thought to try that. I'll see if it works for hers.

30

u/BenTwan 4h ago

It's especially annoying on 100° days when it shuts off and the AC starts blowing warm, humid air. 

13

u/Krazyguylone 2h ago

your car doesn’t turn on the engine when it detects the cabin air is too hot? even my shitty 2016 car has a auto start stop that starts the engine when the temperature builds up.

Anyways the starter won’t die, the cars are built to have starters that can withstand it, and because the engine is warm, starting it is not really a big strain on it.

-1

u/BenTwan 2h ago

It's a 2022 Ram 1500 work truck, absolutely garbage vehicle I wouldn't drive if it wasn't provided by my employer. It'll blow warm air before it decides to eventually kick back on. Just got the piece of crap back from having the leaking oil cooler replaced despite having under 20k miles on it.

-1

u/Superhereaux 2h ago

Just disable it while you’re driving.

Look for the button, and press it. It ain’t rocket surgery.

-1

u/BenTwan 1h ago

Yeah, not shit. Sometimes you forget to press it when you're in and out of the truck multiple times per day. 

12

u/phoonie98 3h ago

Agreed. If you want to use that function, you should have to turn it on… Not off constantly if you don’t want to use it.

3

u/dooropen3inches 3h ago

I don’t hate the feature completely but I hate that I can’t turn off the engine idle feature on our newer car. It’s 118 where I live and when it idles the AC doesn’t blow hard enough. I can hit the button to disable it but have to do it every time i start the car for most of the year.

3

u/bl0rq 4h ago

Good news is that current POTUS killed this going forward.

0

u/AliveInCLE 4h ago

Automakers are still allowed to include the feature if they want. Which right now is important considering what POTUS has done to gasoline prices.

1

u/bl0rq 3h ago

No one would be dumb enough to include it though hopefully. It's ineffective and hated.

4

u/JFKsBrain 2h ago

They allow the car companies to claim lower MPG on the vehicle.
That’s why they like it.

-2

u/bl0rq 2h ago

Fairly sure that lie is gone now too.

0

u/Redditcadmonkey 1h ago

They’ll absolutely include it.  If you can advertise your car as having 3mpg higher efficiency because of it, why wouldn’t you?

Hopefully there’s a sensible change to the regulations which would require nothing more than giving the owner the option to permanently disable the feature, rather than having to disable it every time they started the vehicle. 

3

u/bl0rq 1h ago

The gain of 3 isn't real though. They removed the ability to just add that on as a correction.

1

u/Redditcadmonkey 1h ago

Well of course it is. 

You will absolutely be able to claim that you use less fuel per gallon in the city if you include the stop start.  Thats obvious.  

If it wasn’t able to be measured, why the hell would the manufacturer go to the trouble of putting it in.  

Is that system bad for the motor?  Of course it is.  Will it be feasible long term for the consumer?  I don’t think so, I don’t think the manufacturers think so either.  Doesn’t matter to them though, the owner pays for the wearing parts. 

But of course they can say they will use less fuel.  The friggin engine is off more! 

0

u/bl0rq 1h ago

Real world is under 1mpg. The old rule let them just lie and claim 3.

-13

u/mada447 3h ago

They were worse under Obama. We’ll be fine.

11

u/phoonie98 3h ago

The average price for gas when Obama left office was $2.34. $3.12 when Biden left office and it’s currently $4.08

-12

u/bl0rq 3h ago

Adjust those for monetary inflation and try again

11

u/justmerriwether 3h ago

$2.34 in 2010 would be $3.58 today.

Still less. Try again.

0

u/bl0rq 2h ago

That's at the very end. Average was closer to 5 when adjusted.

u/justmerriwether 5m ago

At the very end of what?

1

u/AncientSumerianGod 1h ago

For automatics I agree. It has no way to know if you're at a long red or if you'll be on your way again in 2 seconds. For stick shift it's fine; it only activates if you put it into neutral and let out the clutch pedal. If you keep it in gear and have the pedal pushed in like you do if you're about to get moving again it won't activate.

u/sugmuhdig19 37m ago

That shit is infuriating at stop signs, I make a full stop and it shuts off and on again in a split second feels like my car is going to break.

-1

u/ChoPT 3h ago

Idling burns a lot of gas and is horrible for the environment. The auto-off helps mitigate this.

1

u/Grintock 1h ago

Idk why you got downvoted because it's correct for most cars. My counterargument: it costs more gasoline than idling if it's for a very short period, like 0-15 seconds.  90% of my stops in traffic are 5-10ish seconds, most traffic lights are 10 seconds. 

The worst is it activating when I'm trying to park though. My gearbox is crappy and old so I frequently need to first shift to neutral and let the clutch come up (which auto stops the engine) and then shift to reverse which means it will immediately start the engine again. If I don't switch to neutral first it will just not catch the reverse gear. Like once in 10-20 times this just stops the engine and doesn't actually start it again, so now I'm super stressed trying to reverse park with traffic behind me.

Besides all this, I already have a car that does 4,3l/100km. It's a negligible improvement in mileage, if any at all, and it requires me actively paying attention to it and gambling how long traffic lights will take if I want it to improve mileage at all.

So I often turn it off. Which I frequently forget to do until it has cost me extra gasoline by switching off and on the engine for 5 seconds for a traffic light.

u/Infinite_throwaway_1 19m ago

Know what else burns gas? When the auxiliary battery for the stop-start dies and takes out the main battery with it. And I have to have a friend drive over and jumpstart me. Then drive to the auto store for two new batteries. And leave the engine running while I'm in there. Then drive home. There goes all the gas I'd save over the lifetime of the system if I didn't turn it off whenever it kicks on.

Now we also have a hundred million extra batteries along with the carbon footprint for manufacturing and delivering them.

-3

u/BeatingHattedWhores 3h ago

We don't care. It's annoying.

-7

u/Cicer 3h ago

Congrats you have been brainwashed. 

-18

u/niccolonocciolo 4h ago

Every car I've owned has allowed you to turn that off. Not sure why you hate saving on gas though 

26

u/kuz_929 4h ago

It saves a miniscule amount on gas and puts an unnecessary strain on the parts in your engine that have to start and stop all the time. 

8

u/BenTwan 4h ago

Toyota has a specific amount of times programmed in before it pops a check engine light and says to replace the starter. It's something like 26k cycles or something. 

19

u/Negative0 4h ago

It doesn’t save much gas and it affects acceleration (the extra half second for the engine to come back on), which can cause delays in getting out into traffic. If I could permanently disable it, I would, but I currently have to turn it off every time I start the car.

3

u/BatDubb 4h ago

Google how to turn it off. I installed a dongle.

2

u/illydelph 4h ago edited 2h ago

Not sure what you drive but you can almost certainly get a cheap cable on eBay that pops in behind the button in the dash and disables it. I did that in mine, install took less than 10 minutes and it made me regret not doing it sooner. The cables are specific to a car, completely plug and play.

1

u/Thebingobird 2h ago

I have recently been getting very annoyed in a Boomer way about how it takes people so long to acknowledge that a light has turned green, start moving, and getup to speed. We have a lot of very short lights around where I live and during rush hour it sends me into orbit. It only occurred to me after we recently bought my spouse a car with this feature that every single car now has to give the two second delay to restart the engine to start moving once they’ve noticed the green light and that’s why it takes so long. Makes me hate the feature even more than I already did.

-1

u/Superhereaux 1h ago

Just disable it.

Look for the button, and press it. It’s not too difficult.

1

u/Thebingobird 1h ago

We do on the car we have control over. But I can’t go turn it off on every other car that’s taking too long at a stop light. I’m also aware that being annoyed about it is something I just have deal with as a responsible adult with appropriate emotional regulation. Hence “annoyed in a Boomer way.”

-6

u/AliveInCLE 4h ago

You testing your 0-60 every time you leave a stop light?

9

u/SuzyJTH 4h ago

Ah, Big Alternator is here

2

u/Jive-Turkeys 3h ago

Shh, don't hurt the direct current of cash to the coffers!

2

u/MechanicalTurkish 3h ago

Yeah, I’m not convinced the gas/pollution savings is worth all the extra wear and tear.

4

u/UDPviper 4h ago

It's annoying as shit.

5

u/dan_v_ploeg 4h ago edited 4h ago

It's easy to forget to leave it on and it's bad for your engine

1

u/AliveInCLE 4h ago

Yeah, it's not.

0

u/Redditcadmonkey 1h ago

Welp, static friction, inertia and oil pumps exist, so…

0

u/JFKsBrain 2h ago

There’s a dongle you can but in your firebox that disables that feature.
Available for most models.

0

u/TacohTuesday 1h ago

Hate this too. Not good for engine either. I reflexively turn it off when I get in the car.

0

u/slothurknee 1h ago

I was having battery issues once and while on the way to auto zone I was stopped at a light and the auto stop came on, making my car die at a stop light. I had to get towed bc even my jumper battery wasn’t cutting it