How does push button start work so well with just 1 attempt?

I think it's psychological vs a key because with a start button you dont have to hold it while the engine cranks, you just press and release and the car fires up, not like with a key where you turn it to start position and hold it there for the duration of the cranking before releasing.

In reality the cranking time is no different, just the time you have to commit to it is much lesser with a push button.

That being said, a little known thing (i think) is that you dont have to hold the key to crank in most modern cars anyway. If you just flick the key to start position and let go immediately the engine will keep cranking and start up by itself.

Newer cars prepare before you actually start car. Many cars when drivers door is opened they will start the heater coils for the diesel, prime the fuel pump and build up pressure in fuel rails etc.

Many cars when you hit start will delay a bit, display "starting" on display but not actually crank until engine is primed and ready. With newer ECUs etc they can adjust the mix and disable headlights, all to help starting. Often the A/C will delay for 5 or 10 seconds too.

If you are comparing like for like on same year car with and without button start then it's probably physiological.

In that case there is a clutch switch on the Verso so it will not start or restart unless the clutch is pressed. Otherwise it just cycles through off/acc/on positions when you press the button.

Of course. It was doing what it was designed to do (prevent the car from being started accidentally or in a way that would damage the car)

Cars with regular keys do that too now.

Definitely true. The occasions I've sat and waited in the car for a few mins before starting resulted in the start-up procedure taking much longer. It's was quite a clever idea to initiate the startup on driver door opening tbh.

Very true, and from what I've seen and read about to date, I'm not looking forward to the day.

I wouldn't consider myself to be a luddite, but some of the autonomy today is dangerous/annoying - Tesla's sometimes do scary things when driving autononomously. Even some "ordinary" cars with adaptive cruise control and/or lane departure systems can lock on the brakes for no reason on an open road. Going back a few years, I was shocked when told by the proud owner of a Passat TDI in the late 90s that the engine wouldn't rev if the brakes were applied. This - in the days before VWs brought out the DSG gearbox - meant an end to heal-and-toe downchanges which could either be done for fun or to save the clutch.

On some new cars, various "nanny" modes are enabled by default requiring a pre-flight process to disable them before you set off. Every time. If new cars are really that clever (and they're not), then a cheap fingerprint reader borrowed from a €100 smartphone could be used to allow the owner to digitally authorise the default startup to disable these.