Hi,

I’ve been driving a Ford Focus hire car for a few days whilst some work is done on my normal car.

It’s a 1.0 Litre Zetec so fairly basic but it does have an automatic electric parking brake and also stop / start technology.

After reversing into my drive the auto parking brake comes on and the stop / start feature switches the engine off after which I would normally switch off using the ignition key and leave the car.

On two occasions now, whilst the ignition was still switched on, but after the auto parking brake was on and the engine turned off by the stop / start technology, I was surprised when the steering wheel suddenly moved about 25 mm to the left and the engine re-started.

I’m fairly sure I didn’t touch any of the controls so what’s happening?

Won’t affect me as the car goes back tomorrow but I’d love to know what might cause this. It’s certainly a bit unnerving.

John.

Engine is restarting presumably because the stop/start has recognised battery voltage has dropped below what it regards as satisfactory, so it starts the engine to recharge. As the engine starts power steering kicks in & causes the system to take up any "wind up" in the system, hence the steering wheel moves

Does it have an autopark assist? might be mechanical notification of it being triggered?

I think Russbost has it pretty much correct.

Auto Stop/Start does check a lot of stuff before stopping the engine and has a lot of triggers that will cause it to restart the engine. Something is triggering the system to re-start and that is causing the electrically assisted power steering to kick a little as the power comes back on.

Don't know why it's exhibiting the behaviour, but is there a means of disabling the auto start/stop feature?

If you can disable it that may well prevent it behaving as you describe.

Ahh technology.
On a similar note, a female friend of ours parked and locked her new Range Rover in the garden centre car park. She returned an hour later to find the car still locked and the engine running !

Yeah, haunted

would a ghost of this car be an
out of focus experience ?

or perhaps a hire being...

[Edited on 14/1/20 by gremlin1234]

If the Auto stop/start has switched the engine off, you have not switched the ignition off and so in effect the car is still running.

I have a mondeo with this featute and if you stop and apply the parking brake and the engine is not needed at that time it will switch off but restart when needed, ie run the A/C or recharge the battery etc. The car will only switch off when you press the stop start ignition button.

As said in the last post the wasn’t switched off it’s only switched off once you have pressed the ignition button