21 hours ago, Llanigraham said:

Why can't it be good for the car?

The car has systems and equipment designed to cope with it.

Perhaps, but major reason for stop/start is to allow manufacturer to meet emission test targets, nothing to do with everyday motoring. Mechanically it is not advantageous having a internal combustion engine starting and stopping every few seconds, oil and coolant flow to turbocharger is one questionable area and although Skoda have built in safety features it is still more efficient to keep the engine running for short stop periods and manually turning off when it is obvious the delay will be significant.

Yes but manually turning it off stops fans demisters etc. A car with stop start just needs a quick press on the button to enable or disable it, much easier than turning a key.

If enabled when engine stops, everything else keeps going, unless the car decides the engine needs to keep running for charging, air conditioning etc, in which case it would be better not to stop the engine anyway.

Do people not sit behind other vehicles in traffic or side by side with them and nothing moving and their fumes coming into your car even if the air intakes are closed.

Obviously the stop / start is there to cut emissions not just to cheat the out of date EU Emissions tests.

 

Millions of cars have Stop / Start now and are not dying from it functioning, but then not all manufacturers fit rather crap batteries.

Too many have been allowed to have them that have systems that have them disabled when they are needed most for the environment, 

cold times of the year in commuting / gridlock traffic and vehicles all around with engines running as traffic is stationary.

16 hours ago, kenfowler3966 said:

Yes but manually turning it off stops fans demisters etc. A car with stop start just needs a quick press on the button to enable or disable it, much easier than turning a key.

If enabled when engine stops, everything else keeps going, unless the car decides the engine needs to keep running for charging, air conditioning etc, in which case it would be better not to stop the engine anyway.

Fair point, okay rather than turning engine off it is better to switch stop/start on and let it stop engine when stationary for any length of time. 

OK so lots of views on this...all correct (depending on your point of view).

 

Perhaps it would have been better for Skoda, (et all) to offer the option of being able to set the default to "on" or to "off"....with the option to temporarily turn "off" / "on"...then perhaps everybody would be happy ....(onto Brexit next...)

If the car having Stop / Start gave people a lower  VED band that meant they saved a few quid a year then the option as no Stop / Start as default and a higher Annual VED would have been the answer.

As it is people need to 'press the button', hit the A/C button, whack up or down the temp control or just 'disable' the S/S with the various means of doing that.