Doug Winterburn wrote:
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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The economy is better now and the deisel is even better than gas.

I remember a 74 Merc wagon that gave me 12.5 mpg whether or not I was towing. Gas was cheap then.

Last fall I took an 08 Silverado 4X4 with the big gas motor (6.5?, 7.5?) from Oshawa to Lucan (maybe 150 miles) for a dealer. Started out with a full tank and had to add more in St Marys so I could get back. That thing sucked fuel faster than I could put it in To top that all off, the truck acted like a dog - no getup and no go.

Would you believe that truck was not what the dealer ordered so it had to go back. Took it back and got another that had the big blown diesel. Same 4X4 as the other one but for the motor. This one was a real pleasure - great off the line and still had real punch at 80 mph.
To top it all, started with 3/4 tank and still had some left when I got home.

That said, we are still paying for the big 3 greed in circumventing the thrust of CAFE. And now we are going to have to bail them out???

P D Q