this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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I completely believe this and also absolutely hate the feature because it is a net negative outside of dense cities with a lot of stop and go traffic. Plus my particular model loves to restart after anywhere between 5 to 20 seconds, seemingly triggered by people talking since it even happens a while after putting the vehicle in park. My wife's model is better, it generally stays off when not moving.
But in both cases, it introduces problems with driving on the roads we most commonly use. Stop/start absolutely sucks when it kicks in at roundabouts or when stopping to let oncoming traffic go before turning left. Yes, you can let off the brake a little to get it going again but then it just wasted gas by not being off long enough for a benefit. Don't even get me started on stop signs, where it is off for far less than a second. While there is an option to turn it off in both vehicles, it then displays a prominent bright yellow warning looking light which is distracting and it has to be turned off every single time the vehicle is started.
I disabled mine after a year of being annoyed, and now I get 10% better gas mileage because my driving patterns don't involve stopping for more than the 7 or seconds often enough to break even. I do manually shut it off at drive throughs, which saves more than the automatic process since it doesn't start up until I'm ready to go.
Honestly I would love for easier control over stopping it temporarily myself than having an automatic system that assumes stop signs take more than 7 seconds.
I never had that feature but I just rented a Volvo Hybrid for a week for a road trip and I’m pretty sure it had the feature. Because it’s hybrid, the gas engine turned off but I never really noticed because the electric engine would start you off while the gas engine did its thing. The result was a pretty seamless experience. I couldn’t really tell when the gas engine was off or on in city driving. There may be better options out there as this is the only one I’ve driven but that was super smooth. I heard when it’s gas only that the experience can feel “lurchy”.
This is not a hybrid hybrid, so if it stops there is at couple seconds to start and then start moving forward. Horrible experience at roundabouts.
I would have taken a hybrid or all electric version of this vehicle if one was available.
I still haven’t owned a car new enough to have the start/stop feature so it’s helpful reading these comments about the experiences with it. One day (after the wheels fall off my car), I’ll keep this in mind while test driving vehicles.
It is the one feature that I hate that is obnoxious to deal with on a regular basis. I had to physically disable it so I don't have to deal with it every single time I drive.
Get a hybrid or electric and you won't even need to worry about it!