See the 2011 5 in action

[monsta]

Maybe it's been posted. I dunno. I just ran across it while looking at Nissan's E51 ElGrand. (A friggin awesome minivan, BTW!)

It's in Japanese, though.

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[flcruising]

I think they hired japanamators to design that thing. The front is so ugly. The rear is not much better. Not as much character as mine IMO.

Curious as to how the i-stop works. Did they just reuse the existing starter system, or some other method?

 

[DKaz]

I don't hate the looks, lol. You can hate the smile all you want but the Mazda 3 is the #1 selling car in Canada YTD so obviously the smile is not a detriment, people recognize a great fun to drive yet economical car at a great price. It looks more muscular though which I like. If they do bring the 2.0 with i-Stop here (big carrying capacity, yet as fuel efficient as a Corolla? Bring it on!) in addition to the 2.5 models, I think they will easily sell 30,000+ a year.

They park a piston at some position of the cylinder so a single spark is all that's required to start the motor again, the starter is not used in this case.

 

[1WICKED6]

What's up with them only ever showing that blue color?...Would love to see it in action in White or even Black

 

[SuperJETT]

So since i-stop can do that, is there a need for a beefy starter more anymore? I could see istop being the preferred means to start your engine and only using the starter motor under cold or other severe conditions. Ilike Istop

 

[flcruising]

I wonder too. The i-stop appears to have to stop the pistons at a precise location in the power cycle, then simply inject fuel and ignite to get going again. The alternator somehow plays a role in it too according to the animations I've seen. If they can do that, what would really keep them from doing a starter-less system? It must be cold startup conditions that make it inefficient.