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auto/start/stop really sucks

Model Years 2018 to 2023 
25K views 125 replies 51 participants last post by  erader 
#1 ·
I make it a point to always hit my disable button for the auto/start/stop on my 2020 crosstrek every time i get in the car but sometimes forget and yesterday I forgot. Anyway, I stop at a stoplight and engine shuts off,no problem,right."wrong". I was at a very slight incline and when the light turned green I let my foot off the brake and the car rolled back about 6 inches before the engine fired up. I, of course hit the brake pedal again because I thought I was going to roll back into the truck behind me and the engine shuts off again. I let off the brake and go for the throttle as soon as I could to avoid it rolling back and this time the engine fired up and the car lunged forward and almost hit the car in front of me.Needless to say,I HATE THIS FEATURE. Hopefully there will be a plug and play work around from the company that has the ford f150 fix in the near future because I don't want to start hacking into anything just yet. The "keep a light push on the brake pedal" is inconsistent and the trailer harness trick does not work on these new USA crosstreks.
 
#3 ·
Stomp the brake while stopped and it will turn the engine back on. I mean go from medium pressure (while fully stopped), to fully to the floor. You can also let off the brake more slowly and it will turn the engine on. Or you can turn the wheel slightly and it will turn the engine on.

Not to be a dick, but maybe instead of driving around with it disabled all the time, you should get a feel for how to deal with it in normal traffic so that you aren't almost hitting other cars. You chose a car with AS/S.
 
#4 ·
Stomp the brake while stopped and it will turn the engine back on. I mean go from medium pressure (while fully stopped), to fully to the floor. You can also let off the brake more slowly and it will turn the engine on. Or you can turn the wheel slightly and it will turn the engine on.

Not to be a dick, but maybe instead of driving around with it disabled all the time, you should get a feel for how to deal with it in normal traffic so that you aren't almost hitting other cars. You chose a car with AS/S.
Pushing the button sure seems easier to me than all the other work arounds that don't always work. I
 
#6 ·
Sorry,I hit send before I was done. I understand all the tricks to start the engine but I don't want it to shut off to begin with which is why I disable it. I bought a new 2019 base about 3 months ago but it had an engine issue and Subaru offered me a 2020 premium upgrade at no cost to me so I jumped on it. I really wanted another 2019 model but none of the local dealers had any left.
 
#8 ·
Next time your in that situation, just press the start/stop button, it will start the engine without lifting off the brakes.

Some things I notice about it on my 2020.
1) Start/Stop can be on, or Semi-Off.
"On" is simple enough. It's on, and does its thing as you would expect.
"Off" is "mostly" off. It will not activate unless I give a more positive press to the brake pedal. But I can decide if I want to shut off or not as I wish from one stop to the next. There is no true "off".

2) My start stop remembers in which state I last set it. On or Off. When I start my car, the icon will show the Autostart icon with a slash through it. I need not press the button each and every time I start the car.

If your someone who, how can I put this politely, is more aggressive with their brake pedal and their driving style, you're going to end up deep enough in the brake pedal stroke, when your stopping, to re-activate the start/stop, even in its off position.

3) As mentioned above. If you need to start the engine, while stopped and on the brakes, just press the start/stop button.

4) When its on, for those that don't like that the engine restarts when shifted into park, just pull the emergency brake as you normally would, place the car in neutral, shut the engine down, then place it into park, and turn the car off.
 
#9 ·
A horrible piece of tech unless an engine/drive train system has been designed from the ground up to work effectively. A hybrid comes to mind as a possible good fit. Current state for most vehicles is it's been slapped on to improve gas mileage with no real design work or good systems integration. A loser, I'd never consider it now.
 
#10 ·
If you have forgotten to push the disable button and the engine stops , at that stage just push the disable button, this will start the engine and disable the function.

I dont think stop start is a big deal as it is easy to turn off. I do agree generally that there is to much of this type of stuff on new cars. Just added complexity for little user benefit, a lot of it just to get the right government and safety rating ticks.
 
#11 ·
Wow, it appears there is a lot of loathing for this feature. Every time I read a thread on this, it makes me even more glad I found a MT 2020 on the lot. (y)

It's really too bad you have to disable the feature every time you start the car. Subaru really could have made a way to permanently switch it off if that's what some prefer. I can see it could be a significant gas mileage saver in lots of city traffic. Sounds downright dangerous on steep hills.
 
#15 ·
This useless feature is not only dangerous, but Subaru decided to put it in their vehicles without testing it to see if it actually worked.... What I mean is that most of the time when I stop at a light, after the engines shuts off, for some reason that I haven't been able to figure out, the car starts again even though I have not touched the steering wheel or move the brake petal at all.... I am trying very hard to help the car save as much gas as possible by not touching or moving anything so that the engine will continue off until the traffic conditions change and I can go, but the Subaru software behind this useless feature is so dumb that it starts the engine only a couple of seconds after it shuts off, for no apparent reason.... Clearly, the engineers at Subaru decided to put UNTESTED technology in their cars and now we are all paying for their stupidity, simply because they wanted to lie about their fuel consumption!! I say "IT IS TIME FOR A CLASS ACTION LAWSUITE"....
 
#17 ·
Why are you claiming it's untested? I've seen it around since at least 2000.
I don't understand the dangerous argument either - but I'm not sure I want to beat that dead horse.
If you don't like it that's fine, to each their own. This sounds like a lot of personal experiences and opinions and not so much backup. I'd be interested in learning if I'm wrong. Educate me.
 
#20 ·
Last week I had to stop very hard in the highway because of an accident ahead and the stop start funtion shut off the engine, then I notice in my mirror that a semitruck was trying to stop behind me, so I immediately tried to get out of the way, but the steering wheel was very hard and the second that took the car to restart again made it impossible for me to get out of the way on time.... We were extremely lucky that the semitruck was able to steer away from us.... So, I say, YES the Auto Stop Start Feature is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.... As for the reason why I believe that the technology was not ready to be rolled out, is because the algorithm behind it causes the car restarts for no apparent reason after only a few seconds. This happens to me 8 out 10 times at a light even though I am trying to do everything I can not to trigger the system to restart until the last minute and that way I can actually save on gas. When you say that this are my personal experiences and I don't have backup, well I have no idea what kind of backup you want, since I am only an individual and I don't have an engineering team to run all the necessary tests in order to provide you with 'backup'. I am afraid that 99% of what you are going to get from these forums is going to be personal experiences.
 
#18 ·
Welcome to the forum UG. I suspect Subaru did do at least a bit of testing as there are a significant number of engineered parameters that cause A/S/S to engage and drop out. Study your owner's manual beginning on page 7-55 and you'll find some useful info. That said, I don't particularly like A/S/S or the way it defaults to ON with each new engine start. Use the forum search and you'll see there are ways to override this feature.
 
#24 ·
@uglygator
There are a number of factors that influence Auto S/S besides the brake.

Page 7-59 of the OM highlights some. I've found that if my oil temps get in upper range the system won't stop the engine, for example. In other words, the car is smarter about what to do with the Auto S/S than the driver is... because it considers a lot of other factors besides saving gas.

Auto Start Stop systems save gas. Therefore they're more environment friendly. However, given the fluctuations in the price of gasoline, what you save one day can be totally wiped out the next fill.

Enjoy your fine car.

And seriously, peace out, man.
 
#25 ·
I have also experienced the engine restarting way early. Seems a big waste to be stopped for a one minute stop light and the engine restarts after 10 seconds.

I found that the best way to use auto s/s is to let off the brake, let the engine start, and then drive. That is much smoother than starting to drive before the engine has started (which works, but is not smooth).

But after a month of trying to live with it, I installed an Autostop Eliminator. That's one less annoyance in my life.
 
#35 ·
Okay something is odd with my 2021. I sort of forgot about the auto/start/stop feature until earlier this week when I was sitting waiting for someone and pushing buttons all over when I noticed that the auto/start/stop was off. Thought to myself that I must have turned it off when pushing buttons, but then I realized that I had never experienced the vehicle doing the auto/start/stop....ever.

Turned it back on and while driving around it did it once, which I really noticed since I had never experienced it before, but still couldn't understand why it had never worked before. Thinking about it I thought that maybe someone had installed the Autostop Eliminator (it is used from a lease), but don't think that this is the case. Turned off the car and turned it back on and bam, the auto/start/stop is turned off. Turned it feature back on, then cycled the engine again and once it started back up the auto/start/stop is off again.

Looks like either something is wrong causing the system to be turned off every time the vehicle is turned off (thought I am not getting any in dash errors) or someone has installed something somewhere to disable it every time the vehicle restarts (though the modules I have read about like the Autostop Eliminator doesn't work that way).

Looked under the drivers sear and didn't see the any module installed (I have a limited model that lets you install one of their modules under the drivers seat installed of up in the eyesight system area).

Wonder if my vehicle is just glitched (I guess in the good way by the amount of hate online I have read about the auto/start/stop system).
 
#39 ·
I went thru the 5 stages of grief with the A/S/S in mine.
1) Denial - I actually really thought I liked the feature
2) Anger - I started to have moments where the a/s/s-function greatly annoyed me
3) Bargaining - I started to tell myself, its easy just to turn this feature off with the button every time. No need to fret.
4) Depression - Everytime I forgot to turn it off and the engine shutdown at a weird moment, SIGH.... not again.
5) Acceptance - I accepted that I hate the feature, I bought the A/S/S-Eliminator.
 
#45 ·
Unless you consistently drive in stop and go traffic jams in large urban areas, I can't see that this feature will make a noticeable difference in gas mileage.

Did I mention how glad I am that I got a manual transmission Crosstrek?
 
#50 ·
If we really want to reduce CO2, we should get rid of ethanol in gas which reduces fuel economy. Not to mention all that clearcut land being used to grow corn for ethanol could be used to grow food and feed the planet instead.
 
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