AutoblogGreen

Most of the damage to an engine happens at startup. These engines will have drastically shorter usable lifetimes unless they have re-engineered how oil gets to the cylinders, and I hope people using these engines use damn good oil...

Also, the batteries are going to take a significant hit, likely reducing their usable life - and at a minimum a gell cell battery will be required I would imagine.

So to make no other modifications to the powertrain, this seems like it might be one of those good in the short term, but in the long term does more damage than good.

However I am sure that if an engine was designed around this - then it could be better managed...

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For the last long while, BMW has cared nothing for the durability of their vehicles past the warranty period. So long as it makes it four years with no problems, that is all that matters. BMW realizes that most of their customers buy new every few years and trade up to a new Bimmer when the warranty expires. Building a car that is bullet proof beyond the warranty period doesn't make them any extra money. Mercedes has caved to this thinking too where marketing is king...engineers just have to design a car that performs well and impresses with no requirement as to whether engine or any other systems will only last 7 or 8 years. If it can get through the warranty period with little to no maintenance (as evidenced by BMW's insanely long oil change cycles that started when routine servicing became free during the warranty period), and be dolled up for the local dealer's CPO program to keep them happy, it benefits them nothing to see a car last longer than that. BMW and Mercedes can get away with this because their brands are now almost entirely based on image...a fashion statement essentially. My worry is that this line of thinking will only spread further througout the auto industry as time progresses. Cars are now largely disposable items. Longevity for some brands is certainly not the badge of honour it used to be.

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The damage happens at cold starts, which is not happening here. (Thick oil, large bearing clearances)

The answer to the planned obsolescence, would be to have an electric motor spin the engine's own oil pump prior to startup in order to 'complete' the oil circuit.

This would preclude crankshaft gerotor oil pumps, and would require so sort of decoupling mechanism (thrust actuator integrated with the motor to allow the pump to spin free from the chain drive)

and if the starter is only a 2 kilowatts and runs only 0.5 second to restart the engine, that isn't very much energy drawn from the battery.

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Hello,

The Automatic Start/Stop in a way presented by BMW and also the High Precision Injection are already invented by Telcopol Ltd (in Finland) and they are subject to their IPRs (patents). For more information please see www.telcopol.com email: vazvan@telcopol.com . So it sounds ridiculous that now BMW claims to have developed such innovations. BMW first must obtain a license from Telcopol for infringing their IPRs!

SAM

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The start-stop device is a dream of most of the people who cares about environmental protection since it can reduces CO2 emittions. My concern however is about how could it operate in rush hours when the engine have to star and stop too many times.

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