I'm concerned about the impact on the battery of the stop-start technology on my new Volkswagen Golf. Surely sitting in traffic with the engine off but, say, headlights, wipers and radio on is going to take a lot out of the battery?

Plenty of people will tell you what they like and don't like about stop-start systems. But, does stop-start damage your engine?

Fundamentally, the difference is that portable power stations use rechargeable batteries rather than gasoline. What power stations lack in raw power compared to generators they more than make up for in portability and the ease of recharging rather than refueling.

Start-stop systems as we now know them, have had an eventful history. More than 40 years ago, Toyota developers presented an electronic system to automatically stop the engine when the vehicle stopped.