Well I just don't know what's going on. After yesterdays jaunt it not working just took the car out and within 3 miles it worked for the first time. Outside temp, 2 degrees. I pulled into a supermarket car park to test whether it would work again and blow me after several stop starts in an empty part of the car park it worked every time . Got me thinking now if the battery was low when I picked up the car and 200 miles later the battery is in peak charge, I don't know.
Could be, that was my suspicion. I can only speak from my own (CVT) experience which as I've said is that it works most of the time and there's always a good reason (engine temp or AC usually) why it won't. John Ratsey's explanation of specific fault conditions only being checked on startup might also account for what you've seen.
One other thing is that although my car is parked outside during the working day it is housed in a garage overnight so almost never experiences sub-zero temperatures at startup (although as some of you may remember that hasn't prevented it being a bit temperamental about starting in the past).
As for the benefits of it..they are minor but I do believe they exist. A couple of years ago there were road works on the road leading to my office and they resulted in long queues (over five minutes). If I stopped, IS would kick in and the mpg display would just freeze. If the change took too long (as it often did
) the mpg display would start dropping by .1 every half a minute or so.
Are the benefits worth what we've all paid for Honda to incorporate it into the vehicle? I don't know. However since it
is in the car it makes sense to use it. It will be (however slightly) reducing fuel consumption and pollution every time it turns the engine off for more than ~3 seconds. With a little thought and anticipation (always a good thing anyway) you can minimise the frequency and ensure that it only turns the engine off when it's worth while and when it won't interfere with you.