Many cars have an ASS―Automatic Stop/Start technology, which saves very little gas and drains electricity. Just another in a long line of stupid auto regulations. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
EV batteries have many faults. They are preposterously inefficient as energy storage devices. It takes about 800 pounds of EV battery to store the energy equivalent of about half a tank of gas (which weighs less than 50 pounds). It takes a preposterously long time for them to recover the energy they burn through so quickly (this business of characterizing as “fast” having to wait 30 minutes to recover a partial charge is akin to characterizing as “public servants” people who tell you what to do).
Massively heavy EV batteries also accelerate the wear of tires (which are made of rubber, which is made of petroleum) and accelerate the obsolescing of vehicles, which when battery powered don’t last as long – requiring fresh raw materials to make new ones and using more energy to get the raw materials and transform them into new battery powered devices.
But at least EVs have just the one battery.
Most new cars have two. A main and an auxiliary battery. Because most new cars have ASS – the wonderfully apt acronym for Automatic Stop/Start “technology.” Part of this “technology” is a secondary battery that ASSists with all that stop-starting, which burns up a lot of electricity.
Ordinarily – in the days before ASS – a car had a single 12v battery that started the engine.
Italics to emphasize the singular.
Once started, the engine ran until the driver shut it off – as by turning the ignition to Off. In between, the engine replenished the charge that was discharged by starting the engine so that the battery would be ready to start the engine again when it was time to go for another drive.
