A Self-Starter

 My daily driver car is a 2013 Buick LaCrosse with 2.4 liter eAssist hybrid engine. It wears no "Hybrid" badging, and the only way to distinguish it from the more common variant, which has a 300hp 3.6 liter V6 under the hood, is the rear bumper, which lacks the dual exhaust cutouts the V6 models sport.

In the almost four years I've had this car, I've come to call it a joke of a hybrid, because what GM did was to add an induction motor that functions as a combination starter, alternator, and auxiliary drive motor to an existing four-cylinder EcoTec engine. It never completely takes over from the gasoline motor; it just makes that wimpy four-banger a little less wimpy by adding an extra 15 horsepower to make a total of around 185hp. To do this, of course, it has the requisite 115v lithium ion battery pack taking up space in the trunk, along with a recursive braking system to charge it and an utterly useless 'ECO' gauge in place of a far more useful temperature gauge. 

Although the six-speed transmission helps get the most out of this not-so-powerful power plant, it's an okay cruiser, despite the fact that the car is arguably too heavy for a four-cylinder engine. The automotive press generously calls this a "mild hybrid" setup, but General Motors didn't even call it a hybrid at all. Their marketing materials just said it "uses hybrid technology" to produce more power without using more gas. And to be fair, it does get decent gas mileage for its size, although not what one might normally expect from a hybrid. You'll never see 50 mpg in this car. The best it will do on the highway, downhill, with a tailwind, and not running the air conditioner, is about 36 mpg. Normal in-town driving with the AC running is closer to 26. Those numbers are only about four miles per gallon less than what the car I had before it, a similarly sized 2011 Chevy Impala with a 3.5 liter V6, would do. 

I really don't grouse much about the car, because despite being a fairly unimpressive hybrid, the LaCrosse is still a comfortable, yet economical car, albeit with a puny trunk, thanks to the aforementioned 115v battery pack, which lives back there. But I can't complain too much about that, because it holds a secret super power. Ironically, I discovered this secret super power a few days too late to take advantage of it. 

In addition to the battery pack, the car has a conventional 12v battery under the hood to start the engine and run the myriad 12v systems the hybrids share in common with more traditionally powered Buicks, and like 12v batteries in most cars, they eventually go out. Mine started to show signs of weakness over the past month or so with erratic behavior messages on the driver information screen, located between the speedometer and tachometer. 

Annoying as that was, the problem soon escalated to the point where the car failed to start twice in the space of a week. The first time, I was at church and a friend was parked close by with some jumper cables and we quickly got it started. The same thing happened a week later, but it was late in the evening, and I was alone in a parking lot, so I had to summon another friend to bring cables. The next day, I bought a new battery.

On both occasions, I found myself thinking how nice it would be if I could somehow use the 115v battery pack to jump-start the car. I since have read that few hybrids are set up this way, but guess what? It turns out my LaCrosse is a rare exception to the rule. It has a little-publicized feature by which it can indeed jump-start itself, giving a whole new dimension to the idea of a self-starter, the name by which electric starters on cars were known a century ago. Better yet, it does so without the need for jumper cables and you don't even need to leave the driver's seat!

According to the owner's manual, this feature is accessed via a couple of switches on the turn signal lever. First, press the "Menu" button on the side of the lever to bring up the Vehicle Information menu on the aforementioned information screen. Then, using the up/down switch to the left of the menu button, find the "Jump Start" screen, press the button set into the end of the turn signal lever, and wait for the prompt to start the car.

I haven't yet tried this feature, since I didn't know it existed until after I had already bought and installed a new battery, but if it works as advertised, it would be a real life saver. And that makes me wonder why in the world GM didn't publicize this onboard-jump-starting feature as a significant selling point for the cars that were thus equipped. The only thing I can figure is that the eAssist hybrid was the base engine configuration for the LaCrosse, along with several of its other Epsilon platform siblings, such as the Chevy Impala and Malibu, and GM was more interested in up-selling customers to the 3.6 liter V6. Of course, it's kind of a moot point now, given that the eAssist system was discontinued a couple of years before the LaCrosse itself. Be that as it may, I'm glad my car has this particular 'super power'.