I recently purchased a 2018 Jeep Cherokee. It has the engine cut off feature when engaging the brake pedal. It restarts when disengaging the brake pedal. I’m wondering how or if this feature affects the starter.
It will wear out the starter faster. Hard to argue it wouldn’t. They are there to reduce pollution and improve fuel economy. Good ones are seamless, don’t know how good the Jeep’s is. Your call there.
I find them extremely annoying and would turn it off.
Given Jeep’s lack of durability and reliability in the long haul, maybe you, too, would like to turn it off. Instructions should be in the owners manual.
I have a 2015 Cherokee with the same feature. I can’t speak to the starter issue, but I can tell you it’s a huge draw on the battery. After a while my stop/start quit working. The dealer replaced the battery sensor twice, then finally put in a new battery. The new battery did the trick (I suspect the battery will need to be replaced much more often than normal). I don’t know about the 2018, but mine has a button on the dash below the radio that allows you to turn off the feature if you like. When the feature is engaged at a stop light, I get a light in the instrument cluster that is an A with a circle around it. The dash button to disable it is marked the same way. Personally, since I do a lot of city driving, I’m a fan of the feature. But as Mustangman says, it’s for you to decide.
The starter in your Jeep is not a conventional starter. Of course, dramatically increasing the start cycles requires some modifications to prolong the life of the parts involved. CarTalk’s Craig Fitzgerald did a little research for our partner site and goes into detail on how the technology works if interested.