start stop issues

[Stringman]

Hi all

getting to grips with the new(to me) 2.0tsi 190 dsg.
Start stop is doing some weird things.
It used to work quite often once it had warmed up.
Recently it wasnt working so, at the traffic lights I turned it off and turned it on again and the system kicked in straight away.
Yesterday on a longer journey ( no air con on) I couldnt get it to kick in at all.

Today the same thing, but somehow it showed a message.
whilst driving it said power consumption too high, when i was in traffic it said " engine needs to be running" It was.

I checked the battery on OBD11 and it said it was fine.
Any ideas what could be causing this?

Thanks in advance

 

[Giuseppe Busso]

Fine you mean it's over 12V with the car cold?

 

[andylong]

Look here ..

Thread 'Is stop start linked to climatronic settings?' https://www.seatcupra.net/forums/threads/is-stop-start-linked-to-climatronic-settings.472912/

Maybe it's too warm in the car?

 

[RUM4MO]

Just some comments, I have a CTEK battery analyser, a sort of cheaper price end type of tool that does seem to work, the battery on my wife's August 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI 110PS is dying slowly, but is still able to allow Stop/Start to be available quite quickly during a drive from cold, some years ago, I bought one of these cheap plug-in 12V DVMs that I plug into the 12V DC power socket and so I can keep an eye on what is going on, these things only cost about £5 but seem to be accurate enough for monitoring charging/battery state. One thing, if I drive that car kindly/carefully, the battery "gets used up" and so Stop/Start does not get enabled, but if I drive it "normally", Stop/Start gets enabled very quickly, okay I mainly disable auto Stop/Start,but I can predict when it will and will not get enabled by looking at the DVM readings - 12.9V and upwards when stationary means that the battery needs, and is getting charged, so auto Stop/Start will be disabled.

Really there are a few things that can influence when or if auto Stop/Start can be enabled:- general battery health, functioning battery charge monitoring unit, length of journeys, frequency of use of this car - and obviously if heavy power users are being used or the HVAC is demanding to get heating or cooling.

Have you run and complete scan of all controllers using your OBD11, doing that would rule out any obvious issues, getting the battery health checked would also help as its present CCA will probably be enough of a health condition indicator for you to make an assumption of what its present AHr capacity is - which will influence if it can make full use of the "wasted" energy being offered to it on overrun situations.

What battery stats have you been checking using OBD11 to try to work out if the battery is okay?

 

[Stringman]

Fine you mean it's over 12V with the car cold?

Not sure, it just gave me the green battery ok icon on OBD11

Just some comments, I have a CTEK battery analyser, a sort of cheaper price end type of tool that does seem to work, the battery on my wife's August 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI 110PS is dying slowly, but is still able to allow Stop/Start to be available quite quickly during a drive from cold, some years ago, I bought one of these cheap plug-in 12V DVMs that I plug into the 12V DC power socket and so I can keep an eye on what is going on, these things only cost about £5 but seem to be accurate enough for monitoring charging/battery state. One thing, if I drive that car kindly/carefully, the battery "gets used up" and so Stop/Start does not get enabled, but if I drive it "normally", Stop/Start gets enabled very quickly, okay I mainly disable auto Stop/Start,but I can predict when it will and will not get enabled by looking at the DVM readings - 12.9V and upwards when stationary means that the battery needs, and is getting charged, so auto Stop/Start will be disabled.

Really there are a few things that can influence when or if auto Stop/Start can be enabled:- general battery health, functioning battery charge monitoring unit, length of journeys, frequency of use of this car - and obviously if heavy power users are being used or the HVAC is demanding to get heating or cooling.

Have you run and complete scan of all controllers using your OBD11, doing that would rule out any obvious issues, getting the battery health checked would also help as its present CCA will probably be enough of a health condition indicator for you to make an assumption of what its present AHr capacity is - which will influence if it can make full use of the "wasted" energy being offered to it on overrun situations.

What battery stats have you been checking using OBD11 to try to work out if the battery is okay?

Thanks so much for the detailed reply.
I have bought a chap pug in volt meter and will have a look at the voltage when I get a chance on my multi meter.
The car does come up with two faults, cant remember what they are but 1 is on the dashboard and one on the infotainment. I am away with work for a week or so but will check when I get back.
Its more the fact that when I switch it off and then back on and it kicks in that it confuses me.

 

[Stringman]

Look here ..

Thread 'Is stop start linked to climatronic settings?' https://www.seatcupra.net/forums/threads/is-stop-start-linked-to-climatronic-settings.472912/

Maybe it's too warm in the car?

I have just read this.
I have the climate set to low A/C off and fan set to manual So I guess that could cause it to stop working

 

[Mr Pig]

Why do you want the stop-start to work anyway? I have it disabled on both our cars.

 

[andylong]

It's nice to save some fuel, I don't see a down side. Each to thier own ofcourse.

 

[Mr Pig]

It's nice to save some fuel, I don't see a down side.

I think it's going to be better for the engine is it's kept ticking over. Every time it stops, the oil pump stops. It's also a huge number of cycles for the starter. And, unless you're sitting in traffic a lot, I doubt it will save much fuel.

 

[andylong]

You'll find the engines are designed with start stop in mind, maintain temp and have parts designed to cope with any additional loads.
Whenever the engine is stopped it's also producing no emmisions so that's good, using no fuel, also good. One of the reasons your tax is at the level it is, good too.
The lack of oil flow isn't an issue as it's warm, has oil covering it's bits and the pump is running again by the time the engine is.
Starting a cold engine where the oil isn't up to temp, clearances aren't right and it's all sitting in the sump is a different matter.
But it's up to you what you do with your car.

 

[Mr Pig]

You'll find the engines are designed with start stop in mind, maintain temp and have parts designed to cope with any additional loads.

You buy that?

Take the starter for instance. Yes, they make the starter better quality but how many more starts does a stop-start starter do? Ten times more? Is the starter ten times stronger? And the system does not wait until the engine is up to temperature before it kicks in. If you drive in town you could be looking at three of four times the number of cold starts.

Stop-start is like a lot of other things that were introduced to tick a box and get brownie points. I'd rather uses fractionally more fuel and keep the engine running. By the way, I track my actually fuel usage for both of our cars and have done for decades. Having the stop-start active or disabled made no noticeable difference to the MPG. Maybe it would if you sit in traffic for hours.

 

[Glosphil]

You buy that?

Take the starter for instance. Yes, they make the starter better quality but how many more starts does a stop-start starter do? Ten times more? Is the starter ten times stronger? And the system does not wait until the engine is up to temperature before it kicks in. If you drive in town you could be looking at three of four times the number of cold starts.

Stop-start is like a lot of other things that were introduced to tick a box and get brownie points. I'd rather uses fractionally more fuel and keep the engine running. By the way, I track my actually fuel usage for both of our cars and have done for decades. Having the stop-start active or disabled made no noticeable difference to the MPG. Maybe it would if you sit in traffic for hours.

I agree with all that you say.

 

[andylong]

I have no doubt stop start along with pretty much all the other economy measures are aimed at reducing emmisions to target levels. It's not really a tick box as the results need to achieve those levels.
My commute has start stop kick in half a dozen times maybe. Not many.
If my commute was in a city I'm sure it would kick in more.
I don't know about your car, but my stop start won't operate unless the motor is up to temperature dependent on other factors, some of which seem odd to me.
The starter has a way easier job turning a warm engine so the first start of the journey can't be similarly compared to the following stop start, starts.

 

[mjj4]

Each to their own but your starter and battery take a hammering with start stop active. Manufacturer's were forced to implement it to meet emissions targets, not because it's beneficial for the consumer. Also remember that the manufacturer only needs to warrant the car for 3 years / 60k miles, so they don't need to worry about starter or battery failures after this time. Your car also injects more fuel on startup than on idle, so unless you're stationary for over a certain period of time, stopping and starting the engine actually uses more fuel.

 

[andylong]

Each to their own but your starter and battery take a hammering with start stop active. Manufacturer's were forced to implement it to meet emissions targets, not because it's beneficial for the consumer. Also remember that the manufacturer only needs to warrant the car for 3 years / 60k miles, so they don't need to worry about starter or battery failures after this time. Your car also injects more fuel on startup than on idle, so unless you're stationary for over a certain period of time, stopping and starting the engine actually uses more fuel.

I don't care if people don't want to use start stop.
I do care that people's beliefs are peddled as facts.
Why does it take more fuel to start a modern fuel injected engine than run it at idle?
My car starts in less than a second, no churning the motor over like in the old days.
How much fuel to idle for a second?
How much fuel to start an engine?
There's a reason start stop exists and this is to reduce emmisions. You can only reduce emmisions if your using less fuel while stationary(in regard to start stop)
Is there any evidence start stop reduces the life of a battery or the starter?
Batteries don't mind discharge, they don't like low states of discharge or overcharging or extremes of temperature.
Car batteries are starter batteries, meaning thier capacity isn't the relevant spec but the current they can provide to start a car...that's all they are for. They should never see much discharge anyway since when the engine is running it's charging back up.
My little diesel has a battery capacity of 70Ah ( or 252000 Seconds)
A 300 A start would use 300 of those amp seconds. It's quite a few starts , 420 in fact to get to half battery capacity.
Use it as designed and with modern charging systems then I can't see how batteries suffer.
And starters and batteries have an easier time today than they ever have, engines start faster, have lower drag and batteries, even tho we haven't moved on to lithium yet are better than ever.

 

[Mr Pig]

I don't really care if stop-start reduces emissions. Modern cars are very clean and stop-start only reduces emissions fractionally. What I do care about is the health and longevity of my engine and that is something which is not even on the radar of the people who forced stop-start and other environmental measures on us.

Do you really think people who hate cars care about how long your car will last? These are the same people who are trying to force us to buy electric cars when the technology is clearly not ready. They don't care about you. They only care about pushing their bullshit political agenda from their ivory towers. They are making my life expensive enough as it is.

 

[andylong]

Well if we volunteered to cut emmisions etc we wouldn't need to be forced, but that's not really a thing is it.
It's going to continue like this for the foreseeable future, change will happen because it has to. Politics is the force that's preventing change not creating it.
Otherwise the world as a whole would have been doing this much sooner.
Heads have been buried in the sand and the consequence of that is that there's urgency now.
I'm not sure why you'd think electric car tech isn't ready, seems to work pretty well, but people don't like to change, to be inconvenienced, we get a sense of entitlement and each generation has its own often immutable idea of what is best.
Our behaviour in relation to things like emmisions tends to be an 'I'm alright jack' type of thing, like lead in paint or fuel, or smog , eventually things change but only because some one makes them, people are too selfish to do otherwise.
When my grandchildren grow up I'd like to think I was less of the problem and more of a solution to thier problems, which will be without doubt a very different world than I grew up in, environmentally, socially and economically and it will be all they will know.
Clearly by specifying AGM batteries for example the longevity of the engine and associated parts as a unit was considered, no one here has offered any evidence that start stop causes more wear on engines, and I couldn't find any studies to support that idea.
Anyway, I'm not trying convert ppl into eco warriors, but I'm sure you can see the wisdom here, even if it's ignored and that's ok.

 

[Mr Pig]

I'm not sure why you'd think electric car tech isn't ready, seems to work pretty well, but people don't like to change, to be inconvenienced, we get a sense of entitlement and each generation has its own often immutable idea of what is best.

It's got nothing to do with feeling entitled. The tech is not ready.

It will be ready when the cars are affordable for ordinary people. It will be ready when the range is enough for high mileage, long distance drivers. But most importantly, it will be ready when charging solutions for everyone exist. And that's a long way off.

It's easy for out of touch politicians to say that we should all drive electric cars. They don't live in a block of flats or in a city where you have no private driveway to charge your car. I know people who can't even park anywhere near their house. For on-street charging to work you'd need chargers every car's length on every street and what do you do when you come out for work in the morning and find the local neds have unplugged all the cars in the street? Or the charger doesn't work? Have you seen the videos about chargers not working or being unavailable? Have you seen the huge queues of Teslas waiting to charge? And charging times are never coming down.

Digging up coal and oil is evil but lithium is good? Really? Have you seen a lithium mine? Do you know how toxic that **** is? And how much more of it we need if all of the cars in the world were electric?

So I guess the tech will also be ready when we have batteries that aren't worse for the environment than oil and don't burst into almost un-extinguishable flames when faulty or damaged?

And unless you're generating all of your electricity with wind and solar aren't you just playing at it? Otherwise all you're doing is moving the problem from one place to another. But hang on, you can't generate all of your power from renewable as it's net reliable and responsive enough...

Don't get me wrong, I think electric cars will one day take over but the current political timescale is dreamland. Ideological people out of touch with reality. And they're all lying to you. For example have you heard any of them tell you that fifteen large container ships emit more CO2 than all of the cars in the world running at the same time?? Or that bulk carriers put out three times more than that? Do you know how much CO2 is even in the atmosphere? Or how much more or less there has been in the past? Electric cars are not evil but..we're being had. Global warming, global cooling (Now they just say climate change so they can scream no matter what happens) the ozone layer, acid rain, don't you get it? It's always something. And that something means more cost to you and more control for them.

 

[andylong]

There's plenty of energy to be had from renewables.
Ofcourse it's going to cost something, altho if 20 years ago solar panels were put on a roof we would be well in profit by now but that would require thinking ahead, and having the capital to start with.
When you extract fossil fuels Thier co2 trapped for millions of years is now released.
Lithium is recyclable and reusable as batteries even after they aren't good enough for a car anymore, they are still fine for electrical storage, then recyclable.
Energy generation can't suddenly go from no solar to all solar forvexample, too costly and traumatising to economies.
So everyone has to play at it for the time being.
Last year wind power accounted for more than a quarter of the power generated in the UK and renewables about 38%.
You can decide for yourself if we're still playing at it.
If I had a house roof to use, there's no doubt I'd cover it in solar, it's a great investment with known returns.
Oh and I would get free electricity to fill my car, it it was electric.
There's lots of charging points today and more happening all the time, and since the average commute is 23 miles range anxiety should be tempered.
My deisel will do 600 miles on a tank , wasted range, my commute is 22.
I filled up 2 days ago and one of the deisel pumps was off,but here were 3 left... So it was ok.
In time there will be loads of chargers, until then electric car users will have to plan and seem to do ok.

 

[andylong]

On climate change and the rest,
You can measure yourself how much co2 is in your local atmosphere.
Here's a speriment for you to do.
Get co2 meter, go into the garage, shut the door and measure the concentration write it down.
Run the engine in the garage for 30 mins and take another reading. You can then see what your car can do to a relatively small volume.
Co2 can be measured historically from ice cores and others so actual we not only know how much co2 there is but also how much there was.

Breakdown of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions by sector

How much does electricity, transport and land use contribute to different greenhouse gas emissions?

ourworldindata.org

Here's a good source of all sorts of stats.

Acid rain was a thing, another thing was done and now it's not.
The hole in the ozone layer, again an actual thing, the cause identified, the way we did things was changed and now the hole is very much smaller and shrinking.

All these things are researchable while you're sat on the toilet. Actual science is available to all who can understand it.

It is problematic however that much of science requires understanding and that many people don't have let's say a science brain.
The COVID thing is a case in point, the ppl with degrees and experience try to give ppl with a limited grasp of anything scientific information to decide the right course of action.
A herd of ppl is a daft unpredictable thing, get one person and you can usually get the message across. Usually