…and getting used to stop-start

SVEN JIRGAL is something of a big cheese at GE. He’s the commercial director and introduced the speakers at the GE Capital conference at Gaydon (see blog 308 ‘Early Start’): “The future of fleet: it’s the here and now,” said Sven in his introduction, “and that’s costs, costs, costs. That’s what our customers are saying to us.”

Later, I asked Sven what he answered to those customers. “Well, we ask them what they’re concerned about – is it the rental costs of the cars or what? And then we look at the whole package, because it’s never just the rentals. It can be the cars, the car usage, sales staff area allocation and so on.

“In our own company we’ve made savings by having video conferencing for example. It saves people travelling between our sites; saves on the fuel costs; and gives our staff a better quality of life.”

Matthew Bowden, Volkswagen’s fleet national sales manager was also at the conference – his company was sponsoring the event. He’s very excited about the new Polo and new BlueMotion Technology models, which include fuel-saving stop start and so on.

“Customers seem to like stop-start,” said Matthew. “But often it’s a question of educating them about the system. They might come back and say the system didn’t work. We then have to find out if the air conditioning was working at full tilt – in which case that’s where the energy is directed. Or some people keep the clutch slightly depressed at standstill. And again that stops the system working. But once they know, they’re impressed.”

I’ve driven stop-start systems and they are good. The only time, though, that I’ve turned it off was when I was stuck in heavy traffic. I was driving a MINI Cooper at the time. The continuing buzz of the engine starting again, then going dead as we crawled along just became too annoying! A case of never mind the fuel saving, the driver comfort is being affected.