I am thinking that this right here is spot on. Extra wear on starters and batteries in particular is going to be huge. And with China buying lead like its going to be the next gold battery prices are not going down any time soon.
My advice to anyone who has a stop/start vehicle would be disable the system if possible, and buy an AGM battery if it didn't come with one.
How much wear, though, does idling cause? When I lived in the city, I frequently had to wait five minutes or more for a train. I'd put the car in park, and shut off the engine. I also shut off the engine while I'm waiting for somebody that I'm picking up.
Ok, let me put this to you: If I'm making deliveries, and stopping for two minutes at a time, multiple times per day, how much wear does it cause to my engine if I'm leaving it running while I run into the business for a few minutes? I guess the answer is that for each minute I idle my engine, it's equivalent to driving two miles, is that what I read earlier in this thread? Would it be significant enough to lead to replacement of an engine sooner, rather than later? For the sake of argument, let's say that it does.
So, over the 150,000 mile life of my truck, if I'm constantly starting the engine, maybe I'll replace the starter twice, and the battery twice. Cost of battery replacement would be about $150.00, starter about $500. So you're around $1,500.00. Last time I got a quote for engine replacement, it was in the neighbourhood of $3,000.00, and that wasn't for a new engine. I think I'd rather shut off my engine, and start it up again when I return.