PDQ wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
SNIP
The car manufacturers, particularly in the US, are victims of NIH
Syndrome.
You really think that if Ford could reduce the size of their engines
by a factor of ten while doubling the efficiency in these days of CAFE
they'd ignore it because of "NIH"?

--
I hate to burst your bubble, but, ---

When CAFE was adopted there was a big hole in it for trucks - they were excepted.

The big 3 thought, and rightly so, that they could carry on as before as long as the cars they produced were on a truck platform.

Do you remember SUV, Crossover, AWD, Hummer??

All of these are produced on a "truck" platform and, as a result, did not get counted in CAFE.

Think about which vehicles have been touted the most and which ones sold as "safest".

This has come back to bite us with 10 or less mpg in a lot of the really big vehicles.

I think the greed of the "bean counters" prevailed and any effort to garner efficiency was castigated.

P D Q

Some of the "really big" vehicles do pretty well. My '04 Silverado 2500
Duramax diesel (6500 lbs) gets 21 mpg highway at 75mph and 14.5 mpg
towing a 10,000 lb 5th wheel at 65 mph.