by Mr Cholmondeley-Warner » Thu Jun 26, 2014 7:43 am
Modern VAG (including Skoda) systems are very good. We spent a session with a RoADAR associate a few weeks back with a new Golf with DSG gearbox, electronic parking brake and stop/start technology, to work out how all the systems interact, and that thing can sing! There's an auto-hold function on the parking brake which comes on when the stop/start kicks in, which doesn't display the brake lights. So coming up to traffic lights or a junction with no immediate prospect of pulling out, you can let the system do its thing, and it's just like stopping a manual car, putting it in neutral, applying the handbrake (in whichever order floats your boat), and switching off the engine. Then you touch the accelerator and everything is reversed and you're ready to go. If you don't want the stop/start to activate, you just press less hard on the brake pedal - this had been a revelation to the associate once she had learned the ins and outs of this technique. You can apply the parking brake manually at any time if you want to. You can also disable the stop/start (per journey) if it annoys you.
Insanity, when you say "you haven't noticed any difference" - did you measure economy over the same journey(s) with stop/start on and off? Did you allow the system to operate normally when it was "on". How many miles was the measurement carried out over? How many repetitions of the same journey? Manufacturers aren't putting these systems into cars for fun, you know, but to meet ever more stringent CO2 emission standards (and economy). Burning fuel creates CO2, whether idling or restarting the engine, so if CO2 is being saved, so is fuel.
My Pug - and I'm sure many other cars with lane change indicators - will indicate the required number of times if you engage the switch fully in the direction required (i.e. until it clicks). This is the only way you can cancel the indication should you wish to, for example, switch to indicating the other way, too.