Quote from tristancliffe :

Do let me know how you get on in the BMW/Mini regarding this feature. Monitoring things like engine temps, oil temps etc if possible. I somehow doubt you can measure emissions though, but I'd bet there isn't much, if any, saving...

But I would be interested to know how you get on, so don't forget!

Well I've had the Mini for a few weeks now. I haven't forgotten, just... haven't been on the forum much lately. Anyway, I don't have anything to say: the car doesn't have any gauges for engine temp or oil temp so... I had kind of expected that, because I'd driven a Mini before and couldn't remember there being any gauges but still... almost every car has a simple kind of gauge to see if the engine/oil is still cold or at optimum operating temperature or getting warm. The Mini has absolutely none. It does display the outside temperature, though Maybe it's because it's a Diesel (d'uh, only rich people can afford petrol fueled cars these days) and they never run hot. Or that's my experience at least.

About the engine cutting thing: it does cut the engine completely and it starts back up when you depress the clutch to put it in gear. You can disable it by pressing a button, but whenever you take the key out of the ignition and put it in again, it's enabled again. I suppose if you really want to have it disabled permanently, you can have it done by a Mini dealer. I don't mind, though. I do find myself keeping the clutch depressed when standing still if I know I'm not gonna be standing still for long, to prevent the engine stopping only to have to restart a few seconds later.

It's realy funny that they market that as a new feature, golf carts made by Harley have been doing that for years. You stop and the engine shuts off, you press the accelerator and it starts the engine again.

Never had a reliability issue on a golf cart, but they run 2 stroke so it's different.

Actually, it's because they're not a highly stressed engine like a road car is (relatively), rather than the combustion cycle. A two stroke under load is MORE critical of temperature, so you wouldn't want to keep turning it off at the lights - it'll get cold (or rather, not get fully warm), so the pistons then seize. Not good.

Four strokes are more forgiving, but a city car that turns off every 30 seconds will never get warm, will create a lot of emissions, burn a lot of fuel, put more loads on batteries, starter motors etc (and there are some nasty metals in batteries that you won't want to be replacing every 6 months if you want to look after the environment). Then on a cold morning it'll be rather harder to demist a car (or de-ice the screen) if it turns off every time it stops.

I just think it's daft marketing rather than scientific sense.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I just think it's daft marketing rather than scientific sense.

I agree too automatic shutdown of the engine is very bad idea.

I hope mitsubishi will get back on their gdi engines. those engines idle at very low rpm(650-700), making then more economical in city' s. Those engines do use 15% less fuel then other cars of that time(late ninetees). Also the direct injection gives a lot of torgue at low rpm' s making it very nice to drive with. Even today, those cars are still more economical then new cars of same type and size. For example, Toyota prius is only more ecomomical because of its ugly super streamlined design and narrow extra-low-resistence-tyres, the engine/hybrid system itself is worse then the 1.8 gdi engine of mitsubishi.

The downside was, the gdi engines need high quality petrol, which made them inpopular in Netherlands due to crazy tax systems on anything which has something to do with cars.

So, all those fancy systems are just a complete waste of money, its all about the engine.
hybrid-systems, automatic shutdowns, feedback systems, are a complete waste of resources and are very bad to the enviroment due to very dirty production. Often it is said this is countered with reclycling. But a normal car gets also for 95+% recycled too..


But ontopic:-) Some agree automatic shut off in lfs should stay in lfs, some don' t care at all, and some people agree with me.
It will be up to scawen i think

I don't mind the engine shut-off feature. But, and I already posted this in the bugs forum, it shouldn't do it even when you pause the game. Right now, if you pause in the middle of a race for a minute, and then come back and pick up where you left off, you have to turn the engine on again.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

I don't mind the engine shut-off feature. But, and I already posted this in the bugs forum, it shouldn't do it even when you pause the game. Right now, if you pause in the middle of a race for a minute, and then come back and pick up where you left off, you have to turn the engine on again.

The anying part is somethimes it happens in the middle of a race it costed me the 2nd place like 2 days ago