The Added Cost Of Stop/Start Technology
Tuesday, 3. December 2013
Stop/start is an energy saving method that is now being fitted into more and more new cars as it saves fuel and cuts emissions. Great news. I have it on my car and although I had intensions of switching the damn thing off (which you can do on most cars) I am now used to it and it doesn’t cause any difficulty whatsoever.
It means when I am stop start in the middle of a town or attempting to crawl round the biggest car park in the UK, commonly known as the M25, my fuel consumption doesn’t drop to single figures. But one thing I didn’t mention in my ‘lease a new car vs HP a used car’ series of articles was the increased cost of service and maintenance due to this new technology. I hadn’t realised but the cars fitted with stop/start technology need a much tougher battery than those fitted in a standard car.
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English: Halfords at the Ocean Park retail park in Portsmouth. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
And to make matters worse, until recently you could only buy replacement batteries from main dealers. I only found all this out when I read that Halfords are now able to fit replacement batteries into cars with stop start technology. The reason for the delay was that they needed to invest in new diagnostic equipment for its branches and be able to provide suitable replacement batteries.
Dave Poulter, head of trading at Halfords said that Halfords were the first national retailer to sell and fit the new Yuasa batteries at a cost of between £175 – £200 a go! Mr Poulter went on to explain that their prices were between 20% and 40% lower than main dealers. Kwik fit stated that are also able to replace batteries in stop/start cars with AGM batteries designed for stop/start cars.
So as this new technology expands so does the cost of service and maintenance. Another reason to lease a new car.
