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YSK: A car takes uses about seven seconds worth of fuel to start up. If you are going to idle for a period of time longer than that, you'll save fuel by turning your engine off. (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago by GatoB@lemmy.world to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

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Why YSK: People seem to, on average, think that a car takes a lot of fuel to start up. In reality, it takes on the order of a few millilitres of fuel to start an engine. That means if your car isn't equipped with an automatic start/stop system to stop your engine instead of idling, it saves fuel to turn off your engine and start it back up when you need it.

Caveat: air conditioning and radio might not work with the engine turned off.

Scenarios where this might be useful include waiting for trains to pass at rail crossings, waiting for food at drive-throughs, dropping off or picking people up on the side of the road when they need to load stuff, etc. May not be a good idea to use this while waiting at a red light because starting the engine does take time which would annoy drivers behind you when the light turns green.

Some cars are equipped with systems that will automatically stop the engine when you are idling for a while (e.g. waiting for a red light). If yours is, then manually turning off your engine will probably result in reduced fuel savings compared to just relying on the car to do it for you.

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[–] Dymonika 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Then why do so many new car models have auto-stop features that kick in at red lights? They would not do that if it wasn't more efficient.

[–] SpacemanSpiff@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

Well I think I can answer that. It is more efficient for fuel consumption. They all have the systems because it allows them to hit better EPA fuel economy numbers. But better fuel consumption doesn’t mean there’s no effect on the engine.

I’m not saying I’m 100% correct btw, I’m waiting for a mechanical engineer to explain why I’m wrong. But my limited understanding hasn’t found an answer for my concerns yet.