Around the mid 1980's we were told starters were going away. They planned to fire an injector, then the spark plug on a cylinder that was just past TDC, not sure how they were going to do it without a compression stroke though. That obviously didn't pan out. They also said camshafts would be replaced by solenoids controlled by the PCM so valve timing could be infinitely varied. When Escorts were introduced Ford was working with and Australian company called Orbital on a 2 stroke engine, it made good power and got excellent fuel mileage- until they leaned out the fuel/oil mix to make the EPA happy and the engines started failing. It's good to try new things, sometimes they even work. I'm sure I'll eventually have a vehicle with start/stop, hopefully the off button will still exist. Starters aren't getting cheaper.