lots of traffic today so I decided to engage the eco start (normally it's the 1st thing I disable). I must have confused the system because when I tried to go on the green light it started flashing "D" and didn't do anything...took a few seconds for it to finally start. And of course everybody was honking! anybody else have this issue?

 

Yes. Stupid, stupid, stupid feature. The same thing has happened to me, twice. The solution is to put it in Park, turn it off, turn it back on, engage Drive and get away quickly without making eye contact with the honkers. Don't forget to press the Eco button to disable it so it doesn't happen again. A nice smoking burnout helps restore the damaged ego. Did I mention that the feature is Stupid?

 

Even when it works it feels like a tractor turning over on startup. I'm used to hitting eco off when getting in the car but I might just do the battery trick now.

 

Me too. I just received a Ctek battery maintainer so I will be in the trunk messing about anyway. Might as well remove the 2nd battery wire while I am at it.

 

Eco mode sucks. I simply always start it and then toggle Dynamic mode. Goodbye ECO.

 

Eco mode is so terrible that on the 2016s they changed the button. It no longer says ECO... Trying to fool us. Heh... Still sucks... Call it what you want.

 

I'd bet a healthy chunk of change that all manufacturers hate it too, but it's necessary for them to struggle to get every possible edge on CAFE, while maintaining the demand for performance. Engine start-stop is becoming pretty ubiquitous with virtually all manufacturers now, until they all develop better technological approaches to fossil fuel efficiency, while trying to keep consumers hungry for power reasonably happy.

GM used another weird, but clever, approach to passing the fuel economy certification test without getting hit by the "gas guzzler" tax on the C6 Z06 by putting a "skip-shift" circuit into the Tremec M6. That car was only available as a manual. If you shifted below 2K rpms, you'd be locked out of 2nd and 3rd, and it would force you into 4th gear. It was also easy to defeat by simply waiting until past 2K to shift, which the vast majority of Corvette owners would do anyway. You could also simply unplug a connector on a box mounted on the outside bottom of the transmission to defeat it permanently.

These are both examples of very clever ways to "fool" the certification testing process into higher mpg ratings, and, quite frankly, I'm surprised that every manufacturer gets away with making such systems so easy to defeat. You'd think the certification authorities would have raised eyebrows about that by now.

 

Sound dangerous, who's libel if this stupid feature someday causes an accident?

 

First thing I disable upon start up...

 

GM had that "feature" back in 1995. I had a Pontiac Trans Am with a 6 speed manual and hated that "feature". Someone quickly designed a plug and play module that installed in 30 seconds flat and disabled that terrible gas saving "feature".

Disconnecting the battery in the F-Type is even easier than using any plug and play module, and far less expensive too.

 

I know. BTW that "plug and play module" was just as dummy connector to reunite the now disconnected connector ends of the skip shift circuit, but there was nothing inside it. You accomplished the same thing by disconnecting and covering each end with electrical tape. It was really no different than disconnecting the 2nd battery in the F-Type.

If memory serves, I think it cost less than $20, and that was probably a greater than 100% mark-up over cost, and they sold massive numbers of them.

 

yeah, i too have had very strange behavior at a stop light. i think i may have come to a very slow rolling stop, but then let up when the light changed...that seemed to freak the eco stop out. i just couldn't move as i think it threw me into park or something. took me a few secs to figure out. yup...just flick it off upon start

 

That does sound strange, and I suspect the couple of incidents reported here are glitches. While I almost always use one of the 4 ways to never see it, I do play with it from time-to-time, and it's always been seamless and completely non-intrusive once you program your mind that it's OK for your engine not to be running right then. Re-start has been instant 100% of the time with no hesitation or loss of time at a stop.

 

Happened to me once too. Car would not start back up. Disabling Eco button did nothing. Putting the car in neutral/park/reverse did nothing. Finally shut her off and restarted. Stopped using ECO ever since.

 

That happened to me once too - stopped at a light, put it in park, took my seat belt off to remove my jack, seat belt back on - then WTF? Finally figured out the ignition was off.


This has happened from a few times when I arrive somewhere. Come to a stop, put it in P, start raising the roof - then the ignition cuts off, and the roof stops. Turning on the ignition with the engine off doesn't help, roof still won't move. Have to start the engine to move the roof.


Sometimes, just turning the ignition on will allow the roof to be raised/lowered, but not always. Hoping the SmartTop module I installed will get around that.

 

Lol, that's an undocumented feature. If Eco is enabled and the engine cuts off, the car/ignition will turn off if you put it in park and remove your seatbelt. Convenient if you are parking at home, very bad if you take your seatbelt off to reach something because you will not realize the car if off.

 

Not on my base car. If so, that's part of some fancy "option pack" I'm glad I don't have.

 

Already seen owners unplug the second battery and the eco is disabled

 

I've done this, with no ill effects as others have pointed out.

Very nice to not have to worry about defeating it using the various methods mentioned on each start-up.

 

I've seen this happen a few times on my car. Generally occurs when the time between you coming to a full stop and having to start driving again is very very small (like in less than a second). The ECO stop system seems to take time to figure out that you have come to a stop and have now raised your foot ever so slightly from the brake pedal to start the engine.

If you are ever in this state, the only way to recover is to turn OFF the car and then turn it back ON and then put it into Drive. What a pain this is! What makes it worse is that its not obvious to you that the car is in this faulty mode till you lift off the brakes and hit the accelerator and nothing moves!

I tend to work around this most of the times by not pressing the brake pedal fully - just leave a very small travel distance (of course not so much that the car starts moving). This is when I am not on Dynamic mode.

Also, have you observed that the car does turn itself ON from auto stop if it realizes that you have stopped for long enough and it needs to turn on the engine to get AC at desired temperature? I like that part of it.