Limbo dancing for licence holders??

[grober]

I know this has been tried before--I think by VW ( With their Formel-E Polo and Ecomatic Golf)?? but in todays vehicle licencing climate it seems a good idea. By switching off the engine when stationary and using regenerative battery charging BMW has managed to reduce its diesel MINI to a lower licencing band. Like all good ideas it seems obvious in retrospect. It works on a sort of "semi-hybrid" principle without all the extra bits. How long before we get some more "limbo dancing" licencing mods from other manufacturers?? http://www.whatcar.com/news-article.aspx?NA=225791

 

[Carrotchomper]

Audi were not particularly good at limbo dancing in late 2003. My A4 is, very annoyingly, 1 gm/km into the higher band. Grrr, I'm sure a tweak SOMEWHERE would have done the trick.

 

[Dieselman]

That's a good idea. It would also reduce the wear on brakes so makes the car cheaper to run..aha, maybe that's why it's not been implimented more.
Citroen have a device that replaces the flywheel, acts as a regnerative braking alternator and starter motor.

I thought it was mandatory to turn the engine off in Germany when stationary for more than just a normal traffic light change.

I may be wrong though.

 

[hawk20]

Regenerative battery charging sounds fine, but you need a lot of it to make up for continually restarting the engine. When there isn't enough, then fuel is needed to recharge the batteries.
Cutting the engine every time the car stops seems a good idea but the trouble with these systems in the past has been that: -
if you keep stopping for quite a long time, then the fuel saved outweighs the fuel needed to charge the battery enough to replace the amount used to restart the engine.

But in stop/start traffic, brief pauses at lights and so on, the fuel saved by continually cutting out the engine, may not equal the fuel needed to replace the battery drain from continually restarting the engine.

 

[television]

The System developed by Bosch is called the STOP-START

this is used on the latest BMW 1 serries petrol and diesel engines from this month on. The sytem uses a special starter motor by Bosch.

The system switches off the engine when stationary and starts again automatically when the driver wishes to move off by de pressing the clutch pedal.

I have no idea about auto's