Dema

It was huge thread that ECO never gets green. I got one observation, if you drive more aggressively you have more chance to get it green. If you drive all time using distronic, it keeps your RPM below 2000, so voltage in electric system is low. If you try to floor car, and gets 2500 or higher, it brings voltage up, and ECO is going green. So my explanation if you drive conservative you already in ECO mode and no reason to save more, but if you drive aggressively, then saving some fuel on stops makes sense. What do you think guys?

BenzV12

I don't have distronic therefore I can't make a concrete input on your 1st part of the message .
My observation on ECO is ,if I coast down when coming close to traffic lights , parking spots , garage I can see it turns green.When A/C is not fully blowing cold air I can see it turns green too .
However, this following has happened a few times. When ECO stops the engine following by I tilt up the pano roof with A/C more than 3 bars the car stats on it's own .
I think pano roof consumes some hefty energy and to compensate it ECO or whatever it is involved decides it's the best move to get the engine to start up again to charge batteries
I like that feature but I turn it off under these following conditions when I hit the parking lots because I dislike it when it stops the engine during parking maneuvers . The other one is after driving a bit aggressive I wanna let the turbo idle for 10 secs ,with ECO green an abrupt stop could damage the turbo parts ,may be I am making this up lol

beshannon

My ECO works just fine.

I drive with my Distronic on all the time. I drive conservatively all the time.

I have noticed that the biggest thing that keeps it yellow is the climate controls and the variation of the temps inside and outside the vehicle. When the climate control system is close to equalizing the temps, my ECO is green most of the time.

edbro

One weird observation of mine is that I can drive for half an hour and ECO won't go green. But, after parking the car for an hour and starting out again, it goes green right away. last night when I got back in, it shut the engine down at the first stop light, about 3/4 mile from home. Then, it continued to go green at every next stop.

noka

Maybe there is a MB tech on the forums that could explain how the algorithm works.

konigstiger

ECO function explained:

PeterUbers

Algorithm:
{startprog
Randomnumber(n, 1, 2);
n = ECO;
IF ECO == 1
Initiate_ECO;
IF ECO == 2
Donotinitiate_ECO;
RINSE;
REPEAT;
Endprog}

DerekACS

Thank you for this information !

BeachBunny

Aww.. leave it to konigstiger to spoil a thread full of speculation with facts.

But this new information leaves room for more!

So... My guess is that 2 things are keeping ECO from showing green more often:

1) Battery voltage.
I've not taken delivery of my Benz yet, but I'm going to be curious to see what the battery voltage shows while driving. Alternators have gotten bigger over time, but I suspect not as large as the number of loads. At the Infiniti dealer on Friday, the woman before me had numerous complaints about her battery being bad. Tested out fine in the shop. Her driving patterns were never more than 3-4 miles at a time. Their guess was that the battery never got a chance to charge up. On ECO, I'm not sure which battery would be to blame the most, the main (starter) or the ECO battery in the trunk. 12Ah is a relatively small battery if you're running motors like the AC blower.

2) Climate control settings.
Not sure how common this is elsewhere but in Florida I find a lot of drivers who leave the temperature setting down to LOW and just control the fan speed manually. In the eyes of the computer, this would probably say that the AC isn't ready for the engine to shut off.

SteveFromMN

I can do it in one statement.
Pushecobutton("off");