Terence E ENoh

Hello there,
I wanted to find out you guys opinion on using your ECO mode. We all know when you start the car by default, it always goes to ECO mode. The advantages I found for ECO mode are:
- Its a less aggressive ride
-It saves you gas.
However, the nuissances with ECO mode that I have had are:
- Many times it has almost got me in an accident. Even though it is practical during traffic, it is very dangerous while trying to merge in traffic and taking a turn because the constant braking turns off the engine several times and an on coming car may get to you before the engine starts up and you get up to speed.
- It killed my battery. Even though my battery was maybe kinda weak, it helped kill my battery fast by starting and stopping the car during traffic like a million times. I even got stuck in traffic once and a tow truck had to get me out of highway. I called the dealer and changed the battery and everything was fine again.
- It will kill your starter. There is no way in hell all this starting and stopping is not destroying and wearing out your starter. I do appreciate the fact that ECO mode may save you some gas (who knows? maybe 2mile/gallon), but I am good on that if it will kill my starter in the long run and cost say $800 or more to replace. I will rather drive regularly and safely than have problems down the line.
That said, I make it a habit of turning off ECO mode every time I drive. Because I have been doing that a lot, I get an error of " START/STOP currently inactive" even when ECO mode is on, and goes off when I turn it off. I am actually happy I get that message because I didn't want that function anyways
What do you guys think? What are your inputs to this?

1MavRick

cosmicclubber

it killed my starter 3 years ago. since tuning the car its been deactivated, it is a waste of time. get a tune, get it deactivated.

Terence E ENoh

I like your style. You always drive it on it's sports + beast setting all the time, after all, the car is a beast and that's why you paid for it. I on the other hand baby my car and always drive in comfort mode until I see some cars acting suspicious as if they want to race me. I then immediately switch to S+ and burn them, then switch back to comfort. But I think I will start driving the car the way it was meant to be driven. Oh and do you have any tunes? can we see a picture of your car?

Terence E ENoh

You know it! That's exactly what I have planned to tune the car in the near future. I think it deactivated itself due to me turning it off all the time, hence the constant error " START/STOP currently inactive". So that's a good thing and I hope it stays that way lol. Btw what tune do you have?

1MavRick

no tune, yet. i'm doing cosmetic mods, first. will start the performance stuff, this summer. here's a pic i took, on monday in savannah...


Wormsloe

Terence E ENoh

Very nice car! I was thinking of getting black aswell but ended up getting gray which is also nice. The car already looks sick and looks good as is even without any more cosmetics. I was also planning on tuning my car this summer. I was going to go with either Eurocharged or Alpha performance but I will keep you guys posted with what I end up doing.

Jan AMG

I'm on my 2nd CLS63S and the 1st one I drove most of the time with ECO on, using the Start/Stop feature very often during city driving. I use an app to record consumption and I can tell you there is no difference in fuel savings unless you would of course wait at railroad crossings for 15mins every day with engine on etc. but you'd shut off the engine yourself anyway so I count only typical city driving.

My conclusions
1] using ECO for ecology or fuel savings makes no sense

As for the battery/starter reliability I can just say that I replace batteries on all my cars after 4 years maximum for the peace of mind therefore I didn't observe any relation to increased wear on them.

2] Wear may be negligible

And lastly, we have to think of the ECO mode in our W218 as the 1st generation of Start/Stop, the 2nd already has a 5sec city / 30sec hwy delay which finally makes sense.

3] If you can have the "ECO default on" deactivated, do it

Nowadays, I mostly turn the ECO off manually just after the start or I go directly to S. It doesn't bother me but I see it as the 1st gen technology and treat it as such.
ECO is not related to driving modes in any way, so if you drive in Comfort with the ECO off, you are still getting the same non-aggressive ride you are talking about.
For the city I prefer driving in S because it makes the MCT shift faster.

hyperion667

Eco button is always the first button I press when getting in and pulling off.

drjohn08318

Which app do you use for fuel consumption? Do you also use the one on the Comand Module?

Jan AMG

Hi, I use iPhone app "Road Trip"

drjohn08318

Awesome. Thank you so much. By the way, I know there’s a way you to get this information from the vehicle (CLS in this case), but I haven’t figured it out yet. Do you know how?

drjohn08318

I’ve just downloaded the app. Looks really cool. Thanks again!

Jan AMG

The W218 has only a basic trip + consumption logging. W213 has improved this feature and you can now check both total and last trip.
Ideally, access it via the Mercedes Me app.

RussZTT

I developed the habit to hit the button to turn it off soon as I start the car.

hyperion667