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Comment by globular-toast | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't introduce lag. At least not in a manual car. By the time you've pressed the clutch down and selected a gear the engine will be ready. You can completely forget about it. If you're talking about automatics then maybe you should get a manual if you are so concerned about lag. Engine start/stop might just be your first "don't like it because it's different" thing.

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A manual has the same lag, except you're coving it up by adding clutch lag instead.

Not really. The start/stop system is only activated when the car is put into neutral. This is completely the driver's choice. Most drivers will shift into neutral when they anticipate a longer stop (like when they've just seen the light change red or they've pulled over to take a phone call) and then shift back into gear when they anticipate movement. It's rare to be caught "out of gear" and would generally only happen when the driver isn't paying attention. Nobody shifts into neutral every time the car comes to a complete stop like at a give way sign or in a queue.

The clutch lag is there regardless of the auto stop/start, so adding auto stop/start does not introduce any additional lag.

Exactly. That’s what I said.

> If you're talking about automatics then maybe you should get a manual if you are so concerned about lag.

I agree with the rest of your comment, but this seems disconnected from any reasonably modern automatic transmission vehicle I’ve seen. The torque converter is never really fully disengaged, so there isn’t lag from a stop to a creep, compared to in a manual transmission which is generally disengaged and covers up the start-stop lag during engagement.

In the US only 2.4% of cars are manual mostly driven by enthusiasts.

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