Theodor

I miss the physical button to disable stop / start on transmission tunnel. Almost as much as I miss the lack of a physical sports exhaust button.
That said, you can still steer when it turns off engine, it just requires more force.
Ultimately, bite the bullet on the (quite horrendous) fuel consumption and put it in sport (preferably via the Sports Chrono steering wheel toggle) every time you start and enjoy the sports exhaust and more immediate throttle response and firmer dampers.
I am thinking they should have added a bigger fuel tank however...

cometguy

Is your Panamera newer? I suspect that all new Porsche models have changed the auto-start/stop disabling ability. My 2015 Panamera allowed permanent disabling of auto-start/stop, but its sounds like the new models don't allow that. (I have a 2018 Pan4 E-Hybrid, so it's a non-issue in that car.)

djwpe

Apparrently, EPA rules require that if the auto stop-start can be permanently disabled, the manufacturer is required to use the average of the fuel economy ratings with and without auto stop-start.

Therefore, if they really need the extra mpg to make their corporate averages, they will go for the non-permanent disabling. Probably the loss of the diesel from the lineup really hurt the CAFE ratings.

jrtouareg

Just to add to this, I was in Europe last summer (Italy & Switzerland) for a family vacation and rented several cars. We rented a Skoda Octavia wagon, Alfa Romeo Stelvio (to visit the Ferrari factory & museum) and A VW Troc. All these vehicles were manual transmissions and all had auto/start stop with no way to turn them off. There were blank plates where the auto start/stop buttons should be. And all of these vehicles were diesels, BTW.

pokingaround

My 2018 Panamera always defaults to On.

Turns out I've naturally learned to modulate the pedal to avoid the engine shut off while in Normal mode for the most part. But yesterday played around with stops quite a bit and echo the sentiment...the steering 'dies' when the engine shuts off. Not sure if I would call it locked exactly, but all of a sudden the steering wheel feels leaden. And yes if I apply turning pressure to the wheel the engine will restart and the steering comes back to life. But it's not a good sensation.

I'm still experimenting with the various settings in Individual mode, but one thing's for sure - Auto Start/Stop is OFF no matter what!

jtsmith18

Firstly let me apologize as I do not own the new Cayenne but have a 2016 base in the 958.2 model. I have written numerous times on this issue as it also is present on all of the 958.2 edition until the end of production. I own or have driven many other vehicles with auto/start stop, even went out and test drove a new Audi, nobody else programs it to go off at 4km/hr. Not only that, if you are in a hot climate like Southern California, every now and then the vehicle will lurch forward as you take your foot off the brake because the idiots didn’t program the AC to not kick in with the compressor as its restarting....very scary for my wife. I’ve tried having it reflashed and they have never fixed it. There is only one explanation for Porsche doing this, they are so close to the line in meeting their miles/gal. requirements that they have to cut the engine even earlier than everyone else. This is one of the poorest programming/engineering efforts I have ever seen in a Porsheand I have owned a number of 911’s. Best to never use it as has been concluded by others.

wkearney99

Mine was the 958.2 they used to configure the module. I have it installed and it works as expected.

It watches how you press the start/stop button and remembers it. It then waits until after you start the vehicle again and "replays" that button sequence to the vehicle. As in, if you turned off start/stop the module will turn it off again for you. If you turn on start/stop the module will "do nothing" as start/stop comes on by default post-late-2015 models.

It's totally transparent to the vehicle. PIWIS doesn't see it, nor does it interfere with anything else. It works nicely.

It works based on there being a LIN-BUS connection from the button panel to the body control module. It's basically just a LIN-BUS listener/sender, pretending to be the start/stop button. Pretty clever in it's simplicity.

I don't know where the setting is made in the newest models. If it's built-into the PCM then a module like this probably isn't going to be possible, at least not as easily as it was for the 958 and other models that have a separate start/stop hardware switch in the console. There'd have to be some other point on the control bus to inject the off command, but with PCM integration I'm guessing it would be difficult.