On my car the stop/start system disables itself - apparently due to a low battery.
The Fabia will do that. Interrogating the system generates a message about high electrical demand.
The battery did go flat at one time and I was getting additional messages to recharge it my driving. This was during the pandemic lockdown when I was working from home and herself was doing the shopping.
It did eventually fail dead and would not recharge even with a proper condition/charge cycle.
I do remember a thread a while ago about this issue to do with the Toyota Yaris hybrids, whereby a good number of owners (often elderly people) use them for frequent short runs to the shops which continually discharge the main battery, flattening that, and also never having sufficient time/distance to recharge either the main or hyrbid batteries.
Large bills ensue to replace them at far more regular intervals than if the cars had been specifically designed to cope with such evetualities, which in today's world are increasingly common.
It's the sort of driving pattern that my elderly parents do.
Perhaps a PHEV range extender where the ICE system just recharges the EV battery and does not (whether directly or indirectly via an inverter*) may be the solution?
* John Cadogan was looking at the new Qashqai electric-ish car and had a good amount of choice words to say about the [in his opinion] poor design in terms of how its to be used vs efficiency (and alternatives) and possible safety-realted issues.
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