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 enorm

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.