Hi all,

I've now had my 2015 F56 S for just over a week now, and I'm having an absolute blast driving it. So much more fun than the BMW 128i that it replaced.

This is, however, the first car I've had that has the engine auto shutoff when you're stopped and in neutral. I'm told it can make a pretty significant difference in your fuel economy, but I find that it really bothers me. I keep it turned off most of the time.

How do you guys feel about the auto-off? Perhaps my dislike for it stems from my car being a manual, and I'm relatively new at driving a manual, so I associate the engine shutting off with "uh oh, I stalled it..". But even after trying to use it for a couple of days, it still bothered me in a way that I can't quite explain.

Do you use it? And if so, has it made a significant difference in your day-to-day fuel economy?

 

It's been turned off since the day it left the dealer in April. It'll stay off as long as I own the car.

Save a few pennies on gas; cost a lot of dollars on batteries and starters. Totally foolish idea!

 

I did actually wonder about that, but forgot to mention it in my post. I assume the starter is beefy enough to handle it, but I have to wonder if it will cause some sort of premature wear. I own this car, and intend to keep it for quite a while, so I will do what I can to prevent wearing out expensive parts like that.

 

Same here......I will NEVER use it. Talk about beating the battery and starter to crap. This will put years of use on your starter in a very short amount of time. You can still drive in "Green" mode and have it turned off. I've been driving a stick for MANY years, and yes, you feel as if you stalled the car. Ridiciously STUPID idea!!!!!!

 

Always off for me as well. It's jarring and annoying.

 

I also have 2015 Cooper S and keep the auto shut down/start disabled. I have worked around engines for decades. Worked as a mechanical engineer on large emergency diesel generators. On those generators we had problems with pistons transfering tin from the pistons to cylinders due to rapid starts and loading. We had a piston that turned blue from heat due to rapid starts and loading. We changed the starting procedure.

Granted these F56 engines don't produce the horse power that those generators did but a lot of the dynamics are the same. We learned to start the generators and let them warm up, then slowly took the generator to full power.

Starting and stopping an engine causes more wear when it is done repeatedly. Minimize the number of starts and you extend the engine life. That does not mean you should not start an engine it just means you do it only when needed.

So its not just the starter that gets wear on starts the engine also gets more wear and costs a lot more to repair. Gas is expensive but not that expensive .

 

According to whom? Europeans have been using it for years, where's the literature supporting this claim?

 

Lot of who moved my cheese in this thread...

 

I fully expected to leave it off but tried it for a bit just to see how it worked. It has NEVER gotten in my way, it always has the car ready for when I need it to be. I've left it on. I figure the engineers at BMW know more than I do about starters and batteries and have figured it all out so that starting and stopping isn't destroying the car.

Besides I'll never keep this car beyond the warranty (maybe normal warranty, possibly extended) so if the starter or battery die then MINI will take care of it.

 

I don't know if there is any literature on the topic. I would like to know how much gas it potentially saves. As for wear on the starter - one would think having the starter operate 3-5x as much as normal has to increase wear in the long run.

 

We've had this technology on cars in the US for quite some time too. Every BMW loaner car I had did it, and let's not forget the Prius, which has been doing this kind of thing since 2003. So there should be enough data to prove whether or not this is prematurely wearing down our parts.

In practice, the harm may be minimal. But if it is even 0.01% more harmful than keeping it running, I'm not going to chance it. Not to mention it just feels odd to me.

I'm all for letting the car do its thing the way that MINI/BMW designed it, but this is one feature that I think I will have to go against the grain on. Just doesn't feel right.

 

Still have a black and white TV as well?

 

Just to play devils advocate to myself, proponents of the auto start stop feature point to less wear on the engine itself. So perhaps there's a trade off there. Dunno.

 

Yep, I heard all this over and over again when we Yurpeens first got stop-start in the R56. A few comments:
- Mini say they fit a beefed up starter and an automotive starter is about the lowest standard of electric motor made, so it is not rocket science to make it a bit tougher. Some industrial motors operate continuously, reversing every ten seconds, for decades so a few extra engine starts is nothing.
- It is cold starts that cause wear, on engines from which all oil has drained away from the bearings. Restarting a warm engine that had oil circulating seconds ago is not the same thing.
- R56s in Yurp do not appear to eat either starters or batteries, so all these dire warnings of calamity should be translated as "this is change, and I don't like change".

Whether stop/start saves fuel in real life is a different question. The Yurpeen urban fuel economy cycle spends a significant percentage of its time idling, so the stop/start makes something like a 2mpg improvement in that cycle. Whether we actually get that is so hard to tell, accurately (ie, not just inventing a number that "proves" one's pre-conceptions).

 

Remember gas costs nearly triple in Europe, so any savings there you can divide by 3 here. I bet the savings in gasoline use is negligable if any. It's like driving in the Green mode, who's really gonna spend premium dollar on a performance subcompact car and drive it like a Prius?

 

Well put. I do find it hard to believe that BMW/Mini and countless other car companies would introduce a feature like this if it were creating significant and unnecessary stress on the engine parts. I'm sure there are some conspiracy theories around this, but I'm not one to subscribe to those..

I suppose the mpg advantage depends entirely on the kind of roads you're driving on, but even in the "best" case scenario (lots of time spent at red lights), I can't imagine the gain being huge. While it's true that at idle you are in a way, getting zero mpg, it's also barely sipping fuel at that point. But anything helps when you (or your marketing team) are trying to reach an EPA goal, I suppose.

Thanks all. It does seem the consensus is if you don't like it, turn it off, and your mpg is unlikely to plummet.

 

I'm not concerned about extra stress on the car; but I dislike the "feel" of the feature and have kept it "off" since day 1. I never drive in "green" either.

 

The feature doesn't really bother me, nor am I a huge fan. If I'm sitting at a stoplight and it looks like it will be a while, I will allow the car to shut off. Otherwise, I just keep the clutch depressed and wait. Like others have stated, I figure the smart engineers at BMW have worked through the issues and don't see any major negative impacts to the engine.

 

I don't own an F56 but when I test drove one, I didn't even notice the start/stop until my husband asked me if I stalled it. I instantly got offended (my daily driver has always been a manual whereas he aims for automatics) and said I was in neutral, I couldn't have stalled it. When I shifted into first and went to drive off, we noticed the engine came back on. Both of us went, "oooooh, that's new". So during the test drive, I didn't even notice. To me, if I get fantastic gas mileage out of it, it's worth it. But I don't drive an F56 as my daily driver so I couldn't really tell you whether it would drive me crazy or not. I have had to drive a Prius once all day and absolutely hated the start/stop. Ah heck, I hated everything about the Prius ha.

I did take a friend out on a test drive last week and forgot to tell her about that feature and she didn't even notice...

 

The unknown is how much fuel is consumed on "start up" as opposed to sitting in neutral, foot off clutch, at a light?

 

For what it's worth, my saleman, on delivery, told me the start/stop does not stress the starter, and that, on average, this feature provides an additional 3 miles per gallon. He gave me a brief technical explanation of why that is but I didn't retain it. Yeah, I know, he's not a BMW engineer, but I figure he's relaying company information.

Personnally, I'm not all that concerned with a few extra miles in a gas-saver like the Mini, but I'll take it. I've had my MC only ten days but find it fascinating that the engine cuts at lights in neutral. What crazy, fun, interesting, and environmentally-friendly new technology! For now, I'm keeping it on. I'm old(ish) but not averse to change.

 

I guess my concern would be the lack of oil going to the turbo when the engine shuts off at a stop light.

 

+1

 

It's so easy to turn on and off that I'll use it in certain parts of town when the traffic light is a long one etc. I'm in charge of the function.
I do like that I can reduce environmental emissions on the fly. Think of your grandkids!
And having a nice warranty should sort out any started/battery issues.

 

Foot on the clutch does put stress on the thrust bearing on the engine's crankshaft (and keeps the throwout bearing working too). Not that I'm saying you'll generate problems with it - just making the observation. The throwout bearing is obvious, but it caught me by surprise when the thrust bearing was pointed out.