Hey Terry, I've only had mine for 2 days but have been driving the bejeesus out of it.
Starting from autostop varies for me so far. If I quickly go from break to gas, I don't really notice any noice differences from the gas firing up although the car seems to 'lunge' a tiny bit more than it normally would if I do this quickly. If I just normally take my foot off the break and go to the accelerator, then (if there's no music/radio on) you can hear the gas engine fire up though it's not really noticeable and is basically replaced by the engine accelerating right away either way. Personally I don't mind it at all and actually have been enjoying it.
When the engine cuts out when it goes into autostop THAT is when you can feel it every time. It's just a small rumble/noise as it switches off the gas and already it's pretty much a normal thing for me, then you sit in blissful silence
Unless you have some tunes on, in which case all you feel is the engine shut off and it's pretty minor and can actually put a bit of a smile on your face once you're used to it!
All in all I'd say the hyrbid's 'extra' noices aren't noticeable enough to be distracting and like I said, I'm already pretty much just used to hearing them and don't really notice. If anything though I enjoy it, but that would be a personal preference type of thing.
Climate control I'm still playing with. I'm in Ontario, Canada so it's nice and cold with lots of snow here so I haven't had the A/C on yet. There are two A/C buttons though, one for full or normal A/C power, and another one that throttles back the A/C's power so that it won't disable autostop to run. For the climate control heating I'm finding the fan speed it selects is the equivalent of a wind tunnel and prefer to just select it manually until the car is warmed up, then I can leave it on auto to maintain the temp and it works great and doesnt seem to affect the hybrid's autostop.
I'm getting a lot of kicks out of the regenerative breaking system. It almost feels like I'm using engine breaks to a very small extent when I'm coasting and I really like it, especially when I see my little Eco buddy come on and showing the battery is enjoying some juice.
My only disappointment so far is that the gas engine comes on whenever you take your foot off the gas; so when the car is in park, in Drive and with just the e-break on, etc. And this is after the car is very warmed up and with the battery having lots of charge unfortunately. For me it may be a bigger deal than others because I essentially work out of my car in a huge geographic territory, and sometimes in the winter I have to put in lengthy phone calls and it would be awesome to have the electric engine keep things going and not have to idle the gas engine every few minutes to keep warm. I still haven't tested out how well the car keeps its heat or anything like that, but first impression on this aspect is a big let down for me.
Anyway I still have a whole lot more playing around to do but thought I'd give you my early impressions
Cheers!
