In message , at 07:40:46 on Mon, 1 Jul 2019,
Recliner remarked:

I decided to bypass start-stop altogether on my latest car by buying a
full hybrid, where the engine has stopped long before the car comes to
a rest, and the car can be moved for short distances in heavy traffic
without starting the engine at all. However, the parking brake on this
car is electric and is quite hard to apply manually - it is applied
automatically when you shift the transmission to Park. The car has a
brake hold feature which leaves the footbrake applied after coming to a
stop. The brake releases when you press the accelerator to move off.
This works fairly well, but it doeas keep the brake lights on while
you're stopped.

I find all this gadgetry is fine on a reasonably level road. But trying
to do a hill-start in heavy traffic in an unfamiliar car with quite so
many individual quirks is a nightmare.

As with any automatic, hill starts should surely be easy?

I had an Audi inflicted on me as a hire car (I had ordered a Passat),
and over the week I had it couldn't work out how to do a hill start
using the gadgetry rather than the old-fashioned way. Part of the
problem being that nevertheless it would keep stalling [more than half
the time] as soon as it got under way (irrespective of the amount of
throttle).

Reported this as a fault to the hire car people, but they said in effect
"it's supposed to work like that". But they could have been just
covering up.

One of the reasons I bought a rather more simple-minded vehicle
recently, which works fine.
--
Roland Perry