The principle of start-stop operation. Start-stop systems. Simple, but not easy. The start-stop system leads to rapid engine wear

If you bought a new car 2, 3 - 5 years ago and the car you were buying was of a middle or higher price category, most likely your car has one of the modern technologies that mercilessly turns off the engine at every stop if the car freezes for more than 1-2 seconds. All this disgrace is called the Start-Stop system, and it was made for the sake of ecology and economy. Is the game worth the candle, let's figure it out.

The Start-Stop System is being billed as a technology that is being promoted as one of the most ingenious developments in the automotive industry, next in importance to the invention of windscreen wipers or rear-view mirrors. Some automakers also refer to this feature as "micro-hybrid technology". Why? We will explain this shortly.

In theory, the Start-Stop system has nothing but advantages. Do you want to minimize fuel consumption in the city and traffic jams? The new function is able to provide you with it! Take care of mother nature and do not want to cause the extinction of penguin colonies in Antarctica? Your desires here can be satisfied by this simple system, the amount of emissions in the city, according to statistics, for cars equipped with it really decreases.

As is known from the official nomenclature, the Start-Stop system simply turns off the internal combustion engine (ICE), preventing it from idling during long (often completely short) stops. When you need to get under way, the device literally starts by magic, as soon as you take your foot off the brake pedal or press the clutch to engage first gear.

New vehicles equipped with the latest versions of the system go from "off" to "on" almost imperceptibly, in the blink of an eye, literally.

Does the start-stop system harm the car's starter?

Since the system can be fired many times in a short period of time, this can place a serious strain on a standard starter motor, causing it to fail prematurely. Therefore, cars that have a similar system use reinforced electric launchers designed to work in difficult conditions with large repeated loads. Such reinforced elements are really capable of extending life and surviving stress.

Cars are also equipped with higher quality batteries with a larger capacity, or additional batteries are installed, for recharging in some vehicles they are charged through the regenerative braking system, thereby creating micro-hybrids from them on the principle of micro-hybrids. In the general scheme of the hybrid car family, micro-hybrids are one step below the so-called "mild" hybrids (Mild Hybrid), and two steps behind conventional hybrid car types. *

* If you want to know how many types of hybrids exist and how they differ from each other, go to our article: We will put everything on the shelves for you there.

Some automakers resort to a so-called integrated starter-generator (ISG) circuit, while others only use a heavy-duty starter, which does all the hard work of the day. Both versions of the Start-Stop system work in a similar way and achieve the same effect, improving fuel economy by switching off the engine at stops and starting it in a minimum period of time when it is necessary to start driving.

If you answer the earlier question about the harmful effect of the system on the starter, then there are no official statistics on this matter yet. But from scraps of data collected from various sources, it is known that owners of cars equipped with the Start-Stop function have already faced premature starter failure. Is this a direct influence of the system? Most likely, yes, judging by what loads the starter experiences during such intensive work, however, we will not officially blame the system for the failure of the launchers.

All this is good and wonderful, all the more, it should be borne in mind that this technology is not expensive and weighs much less compared to those pood "weights" that are found in conventional hybrid cars in the form of batteries and electric motors. Everything is very cool and thoughtful.

And yet, is everything really as cloudless as the automakers are trying to present it to us? Are there really no flaws?

1. The Start-Stop system destroys the batteries

Modern cars have so many electronics and electricity consumers that they need a lot of electricity to keep going, especially when the main "volt-to-battery" distributor is turned off. Headlights, climate control, audio system, even airbags will not go off if there is no electricity. This is why in cars with Start-Stop the battery goes through much more testing and is significantly more stressed than in cars with standard operation.

2. Start-Stop will shorten the life of the machine, but it is beneficial for manufacturers

You will probably say: "Hey, stop slandering! Automakers are not stupid, they have thousands of engineers who have already thought for us about what is good for the car and what is not. Everything is calculated!" Of course, I am also sure that they did it, they calculated everything ... Only in whose favor? Don't forget, the auto business is, first of all, the business. And their main goal is to sell cars, as many cars as possible. We live in the 21st century, no one else produces cars that can drive for decades and run over millions of kilometers during this time. Now everything is strictly limited, you want to drive, or pay exorbitant prices for spare parts.

3. Turbocharging is afraid of this system like fire

Secondly, and this is a much more important factor in most modern cars, it is also done mainly in the name of efficiency. You probably know to what high temperatures a turbine can heat up under load. Older guys may remember that in every manual for a turbocharged car, the most important postscript was always written, which urged drivers, after an intense or high-speed trip, NOT to turn off the engine immediately, but to drive it at idle for a minute or two, allowing the turbine to cool down. Even turbo timers were invented for these purposes, for those who value time and who care about the good condition of the car.

Most new turbocharged cars use ball bearing turbochargers, they are oil and water cooled, which should ensure that the risk of overheating is reduced when a hot turbine is suddenly turned off or oil passages get coked. Note that the risks are only diminishing, but not going anywhere.

So I'm not entirely convinced that the start-stop system on high-performance turbocharged cars like the BMW M-Series or Mercedes-AMG is a good option to keep their engines in good working order for many years.

And yet, can you imagine what will happen to multi-turbine engines, which will soon have two, three, and even a turbocharger?

4. The start-stop system leads to rapid engine wear

And last, but certainly not least, even if you don't have a turbocharged internal combustion engine under the hood, but your car turns off the engine every time you stop, you will face the problem of durability, this time of the engine itself. Judge for yourself, a normal engine goes through about 50,000-100,000 start and stop cycles during its life. The supplied motor goes through a million / million (?) Of these cycles in the same period.

Experienced drivers who have already driven cars equipped with it know quite well what a start-stop system is, but in Russia there are still a minority of them. It was invented and introduced into the design of vehicles a long time ago, back in the 80s of the last century, but in our country it is still a rarity. Automotive market analysts claim that by the end of 2017, almost all modern cars coming off the assembly line will be equipped with it. Therefore, to be aware of what it is for, how it is arranged and functioning, what are its pros and cons, it is time to find out to everyone who gets behind the wheel at least from time to time.

According to statistics, approximately 30% of the engine operating time of any modern car falls on idle. This means that during the third part of his "life" he simply burns fuel, and does not serve to move the car in space. Accordingly, the unit wastes fuel and, moreover, pollutes the environment with exhaust emissions. Therefore, the engineers who developed the start-stop system set themselves three main tasks:

• Reduce fuel consumption;
• Reduce air emissions;
• Reduce vehicle noise.

As a result, they managed to make it so that if the power unit does useful work (that is, it moves the car), then it functions, and if it does not, it turns off. In this case, the transition from one state to another occurs almost automatically: the engine stalls according to signals received from special sensors, and starts when the driver either presses the clutch pedal (in cars with manual transmission), or releases the brake pedal (in cars with automatic transmission).

Interestingly, initially, the start-stop system was almost exclusively equipped with hybrid engines. After it demonstrated its really high efficiency in practice, it began to be installed on "ordinary" machines.

How the start-stop system works

Structurally, the start-stop system consists of two main parts:

• Engine start and stop control systems;
• A device that allows you to quickly start the motor.

It should be noted that a quick engine start can be achieved in several ways. For this, in various versions of the start-stop system, the following is used:

• High power starter;
• Starter-generator (reversible generator);
• The system of direct injection of the fuel mixture into the cylinders with its ignition.

Systems created on the basis of a reinforced starter are considered to be the simplest in design and at the same time very effective. It was developed by the well-known Bosch company and is used in cars of such well-known brands as Volkswagen, BMW and Audi. The starter, which is its core, has a long service life and increased power, as well as a low-noise mechanism. Control signals come to it from a special actuator, which, in turn, is connected to the control unit and input sensors.

The start-stop system based on a reversible generator was developed by Valeo and is used on Mercedes and Citroen cars. Their manufacturers claim that thanks to such a system, it is possible to save about 10% of fuel. A reversible generator is an electrical device that can act as both a generator and a starter. The advantage of using it instead of a reinforced starter is a shorter engine start time and almost complete quiet operation.

The start-stop system with direct fuel injection is a Mazda innovation. An important point of its functioning is that when the engine stops, the pistons "freeze" in the cylinders in such a position that is most favorable for the subsequent start-up. Only those power units equipped with direct fuel injection are equipped with this system.

Pros and cons of the start-stop system

Experts note that the "start-stop" system has both advantages and disadvantages. The pluses, first of all, should be attributed to the fact that it really contributes to significant fuel economy. In addition, it reduces the amount of harmful emissions into the atmosphere, and the noise level emitted by the car becomes significantly lower.

As for the disadvantages, the most serious of them is the increased load on the starter and the battery (it is from it that all the on-board devices of the car are powered when the engine is turned off). In addition, many drivers, in their own words, experience moral discomfort when the engine does not make a sound during a long period of standing in a traffic jam. However, the last problem is easily solved: in most car models, you can disable the start-stop system using a special button.

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   Fragments of the post text: ... How the system works start stop An analysis of the operating mode of cars suggests that up to 30 percent of the time the car engine in urban conditions is idling, that is, the car is standing and not moving ... ... The system was named function start stop Start stop ... ... In the beginning, the system was developed for hybrid cars, but today leading car manufacturers are already producing conventional cars equipped with the function start stop ... ... It is predicted that by 2015 the function start stop already half of the produced cars will be equipped ... ... The idea behind the development of the system start stop consists in the fact that when the car stops, the engine turns off by itself, and if the brake pedal is released or the clutch pedal is pressed, the engine will immediately start by itself ... ...Function start stop will turn on only when battery will be charged ... ... Therefore, there is no need to fear that battery will be completely discharged ... ... In vehicles equipped with the function start stop the role of the battery is increasing ... ... For vehicles equipped with the function start stop special batteries have been developed that are capable of operating in the mode of frequent returns of high currents ... More details:

Start-Stop systems automatically shut off and restart the engine to reduce idle time, thereby reducing fuel consumption and emissions. Most manufacturers install VARTA® batteries in new vehicles with Start-Stop systems.

The battery is the heart of the car. It powers everything from the ignition system to the always-on vehicle electrical systems and in-flight entertainment systems. The battery provides continuous power to all other functional blocks involved in the Start-Stop process. These batteries do much more than just start the engine. That is why the BATTERY is the HEART of the car.

Most cars today are equipped with a Start-Stop system, so we have created two innovative VARTA® batteries to support it: VARTA® Silver Dynamic c batteries for vehicles with advanced Start-Stop and regenerative braking systems, and Blue Dynamic c batteries for traditional Start-Stop systems.

Movement and acceleration

Advanced Energy Management turns off the alternator during acceleration and during normal driving. This allows the wheels to receive more power from the engine. The generator only starts up again when the battery charge reaches the set lower limit.

Battery Requirements:

The battery is discharged and charged, while providing power to all electronics alone.

Braking

Regenerative braking converts part of the vehicle's kinetic energy into electrical energy that is fed back to the battery.

Battery Requirements:

The battery must be rechargeable quickly and have sufficient capacity to receive additional energy. The battery should operate at low charge levels.

Stopping and switching off the engine

When the car comes to a standstill, the Start-Stop system turns off the engine.

Battery Requirements:

The battery must, even when discharged, provide enough starting power for the engine ignition system to start the engine again.

Once a colleague at the electronic research institute took up a hack. He came across the perfect client from the ministry: with money, but no brains. With a simple foreign car radio and a request to "train" it to receive domestic radio broadcasts in stereo. The client was offended that the yellow Stereo LED stubbornly refused to light up. Want to know what the start / stop system has to do with it?

My colleague did not invent a stereo decoder. He did it easier: he took and soldered the harmful LED directly to the Mono / Stereo switch. The customer immediately calmed down: if you press the button, the light will flash yellow, here's a stereo for you. Press again - here's a mono for you.

Exactly the same "care" for a person has been demonstrated by the world auto industry for some time now. Only instead of the stereo mode, which was once inaccessible to the average man in the street, he slips him another linden.

The first example is the Euro-6 and more standards. Honestly fulfilling them, without bringing the cost of a passenger car closer to the price of a rover, is not yet possible. Whoever got caught is a fool himself.

The second example is hybrids with a declared consumption of a liter per hundred. In principle, you can declare zero liters per hundred - and it will work! After all, it is not at all necessary to inform the buyer that the first hundred kilometers will be carried by the battery, which will then be discharged.

The third example is cars with start / stop mode. I drove up to a traffic light, stopped at a red one - the motor immediately turns off, saving personal gasoline and public air. The green light turns on - you release the brake (or you press on the gas - sometimes it happens), the motor quickly wakes up and carries you on. The win is obvious!

But - only on paper. And the point is not even that the extra hundreds and thousands of starts will necessarily affect the resource of the machine's units. And not even that, especially for such machines, it was necessary to invent batteries, which are one and a half times, or even two times more expensive than usual ones.

So what's the deal? And in what turned out in practice: start-stop cars frankly "sleep" at intersections, and with the economy of gasoline, too, there was a problem. And it turned out not today or yesterday.

So that no one says that the Russians have mixed everything up, and that the author is a brake on progress (however, they will say so anyway), let us turn to our Western colleagues. The journalists of the German AutoBild took 15 cars with the start / stop system for a test and set up a simple experiment: it was decided to measure the start delay from a traffic light. In other words, the time taken to accelerate the car to 20 km / h with the system turned on and off was taken into account. In the first case, the motor at the traffic light was de-energized by the automatics, and in the second, it threshed at minimum idle, as usual.

The Volkswagen Polo 1.4 TDI (1.48 s additional delay) and the Hyundai i30 blue 1.4 (1.12 s) were doing slightly better. How many beeps in the back will get their drivers at each intersection, estimate for yourself.

Against this background, a loss of only 20% looks already gorgeous. This is exactly how the Audi A4 3.0 TDI quattro and the Porsche 911 Carrera have shown themselves. And the Mercedes-Benz GLC 250 4Matic is generally covered in chocolate: it lasted only 0.08 s.

By the way, no one warns the future owner of the car about such a deterioration in the dynamics of the car. Say, pay money for innovation and save nature! And do not think about how many natural resources were additionally ditched in the production of all these bells and whistles.

Calculation error? Nothing like this! The same test was carried out back in 2012! Here are some of the numbers at that time: BMW 116d worsened its performance by 84%, Audi A6 TDI - by 63%, Volkswagen Passat TDI - by 59%, Porsche Cayenne - by 47%. Only a car with a three-pointed star on the radiator grille managed to keep up appearances.

Against this background, boring reasoning about the dangers of frequent starts, the cost of flimsy bells and whistles, and the high cost of AGM batteries look unprofitable and outdated. By the way, as far as batteries are concerned, we are unambiguously hinted that there will be no others at all soon. Why produce them if AGM batteries replace old women in any situation?

In general, you push a button, light the right light bulb - and everyone is happy.