Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

So i think this is intentional. At least, my 2014 Q5 has an adaptive cruise control that can only be enabled at >20mph. However, I can set it to anything above 10mph (and it will not automatically turn off with a speed too low warning until it drops back below 10mph).

I expect his car is simply set with 31, 30 (km/h), instead of 20, 10 (mph), like mine.

Interestingly, Audi's are incredibly hackable (relative to most other cars) due to the existing of VCDS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAG-COM), which pretty much lets you twiddle any possible parameter the car has as a parameter somewhere in it's system.

I would be shocked if the cruise control limits were not parameters controllable, particularly since

1. Cruise control is retrofittable onto a lot of these cars:

See

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/Retrofitting (look under cruise control)

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/Checking_Cruise_Con...

etc

2. The adaptive cruise control is different between the various models. For example, the newer sedan models can do stop and go cruise control, but my Q5 cannot, so it turns off at low speeds.

I'm near 100% sure this low limit is parameter that is controllable through VCDS, so it can be set to zero for these cars, even if nobody in the community happens to know the coding for it right now.

For a VW Golf 7 with adaptive cruise control (ACC), it works like this:

- if you have a manual gearbox, the minimum speed for ACC is 30km/h.

- if you have an automatic gearbox, the minimum speed for ACC is 0km/h, which means that you can just push the Resume button on the steering wheel to start moving again. Very useful if you live in an area with lots of traffic jams.

There are lots of things you cannot control.

For example, my damn A3 (the last Audi I'll ever drive, for gazillion reasons) will turn off when you're in neutral and release the clutch. There's no software setting to fix that. You can disable that with the press of a button, a button that defaults to 'I know it better than you do, this needs to be enabled' every time you start the car.

I could continue with the complaint that my ACC is limited to 150km/h although there is no technical reason for that. With the joke that is Audi connect etc. etc..

"Hackable" is really not a term I'd use for that car. "A hack"? More like it.

Huh, isn't it just start&stop ?

Yes, that's the misfeature that works most of the time and is annoying as hell when it doesn't work. And you cannot turn it off forever, as per the manual, my local dealer and various online forums/VCDS experts I've met.

You can disable it by setting the thresholds for activation to something unlikely.

//EDIT: the legality of this however is questionable. In Germany/Austria I'm pretty sure it renders the car illegal if you try to disable it permanently on a car that came with it.

Thanks and my apologies. I was absolutely certain that this isn't possible and have spent quite some time in various Audi related corners of the internet due to my main (Audi connect) issue - and (seemed to?) remember various inquiries to kill that feature and no one succeeded (some even modded the physical button to remember the last state and reset it that way).

Searching again today/with your hints I immediately hit the right settings (temperature thresholds) to set.

Thanks again and I apologize once more for the error here: It seems indeed as if Start/Stop can be easily deactivated using VCDS.

I used to be very annoyed by this start/stop thing and the pain from needing to press one whole button, once, after starting the engine to shut it off was enormous. Really spoiled my whole day, I'll tell ya.

But then I moved from Canada to Europe and it suddenly made perfect sense. In a stop-and-go urban traffic with lots of street lights, the start/stop feature effectively cuts down your car emissions by a non-trivial percentage. There are still cases when it interferes with driving (when entering roundabouts, for example), but then you go through all these cases in a matter of days and learn to recognize them automatically. If you can drive manual, adding an extra button press to the routine adds up to ... nothing.

Finally, there is an option in VCDS that allows you to turn this off, so I'm not sure what you are ranting about to begin with.

Hey, it's not like you bought the car and then suddenly found out that it had Stop&Start system. You knew what you were buying. And you are saying that it doesn't work for you? I am curious - what does it do then? Doesn't start the engine after stopping it? Then it's malfunctioning.

Right. And in the beginning I liked the feature.

It's just that it doesn't work all the time and I tend to forget about it when it works, but get quite annoyed when it doesn't. That .. might be a built-in bias that I need to work on, but could explain why this feature was okay on day 1 (and 10 and 30..) and is crap now.

What it does: Depending on circumstances I don't understand it has a reaaaally bad delay. Especially if you time it (unintentionally of course) just so that the motor dies and you want to move in that instant. There's a 'hiccup' and nothing happens for ~1.5-2 seconds. By now I rather let it die completely, count "One Mississippi" and then press the clutch instead of trying it right away - because it just doesn't work well in these cases.

Again, most of the time it works okay. But by now I'd rather not use it if it's not working 100%.

(Not sure if it matters: 2.0 quattro diesel, manual and this keyless entry thing: No ignition key)

Ok, I asked because I drive a car with start&stop system too(Nissan Qashqai 1.6dCi). I know what you mean, I also had a situation couple times when the engine turned off right as I stopped in front of the traffic lights and they turned green in that exact moment - and when I pressed the clutch again it had a second delay before starting the engine again. But yeah, I don't think it's a huge deal(it literally happened to me twice) - unless Audi fucked up and their delay is much longer. I wouldn't cross off the whole system because of it.

"There's no software setting to fix that. "

This is 100% changeable with VCDS

> For example, my damn A3 (the last Audi I'll ever drive, for gazillion reasons) will turn off when you're in neutral and release the clutch. There's no software setting to fix that. You can disable that with the press of a button, a button that defaults to 'I know it better than you do, this needs to be enabled' every time you start the car.

Of course you can change that. However there is no button for this in the HUD as this would probably be against the emission limits of the card.

On an automatic (A3, 2014) you can configure a custom drive setting (dynamic, economy, etc) that turns stop/start off. This is persisted between journeys.

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