Auto Start/Stop Could Disappear

In an effort to help lower fuel consumption and emissions, in recent years, car companies have increasingly introduced automatic start/stop – a feature on petrol and diesel models which shuts the engine off while the vehicle is stationary.

But that trend might be about to change.

While the technology has improved dramatically over the past decade, many drivers still find it annoying – particularly when the system defaults to ‘on’ for each journey.

Someone who isn’t a fan appears to be the recently-appointed head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin, who’s taken to X (formerly Twitter) to air his grievances.

“Start/stop technology: where your car dies at every red light so companies get a climate participation trophy,” he wrote in a post online.

“EPA approved it, and everyone hates it, so we’re fixing it.”

According to US publication Jalopnik, the US EPA never mandated auto start/stop, but merely provided incentives for the addition of the feature to new cars.

Regardless, the US Department of Energy found cars sitting at idle wasted an estimated 22.7 billion litres of fuel annually – to say nothing of the tailpipe emissions – resulting in the uptake of what is a relatively simple piece of technology.

It’s not clear how Mr Zeldin plans on “fixing” auto start/stop, but any change would likely result in the environment – the very thing he’s charged with protecting – taking a hit.