The Laws of Physics, or the Laws of Man?

A couple of weeks back, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals over on the West Coast ultimately threw out the fuel efficiency standards that had been imposed on light trucks.



The standards had called for the average fuel mileage for light trucks to increase from 22.5 miles per gallon in 2008 to 23.5 miles per gallon by 2010. Similarly, automobiles would have been expected to net 27.5 mpg by that same time.



It was suggested that trucks were considered to be primarily agricultural and commercial vehicles, just as they traditionally had been. I am guessing that to this day, far more light trucks (pickups and vans) are purchased to be dedicated business vehicles, i.e.: service trucks, and the proportion of passenger cars intended exclusively for that same role (taxis? Rental fleet cars? I don't know that government vehicles such as police cruisers are counted here...). But there's no denying that light trucks are driven more than ever before by people who seldom get their hands dirty.



I own three trucks. Two are projects awaiting fruition. One needs to be a project, but still gets used. It's a 1974 Chevy 3/4 ton heavy duty, meaning it's nominally a 3/4 ton but does feature 1 ton springs and drivetrain. It was a bit of an oddity for the era: it had BOTH power steering AND power brakes. A 1971 Ford F100 awaiting my attention will be a nice rig eventually, but one thing I'm trying to figure out how to work around is that it has manual worm and roller steering and non-power assisted drum brakes all the way around. Far from insurmountable, but definitely a bit of a headache to deal with. I've also got a 1974 Dodge D100 taking a hiatus, which has power steering and disc brakes. Now, don't put words in my mouth here...they're disc brakes, but don't assume that they're POWER disc brakes! Today's trucks have not only the power steering and brakes my Chevy does, but invariably they all come with complete climate control, contoured seats, tilt steering columns, cruise control, and good stereo systems. All but a few are fully upholstered and carpeted, too. My old trucks all have, or at least had, vynil seat covers, rubber floor mats, and lots of exposed sheet metal in the cab. Power windows and locks? Don't make me laugh! Is it any wonder that my home state keeps threatening to tax trucks the same as cars when they're registered down at the courthouse? Drop thirty grand on a comfy car and I'd be surprised if you write a check to the county treasurer for less than five hundred bucks. Spend the same amount on a truck, and $65 is all they ask for that first year and the first several thereafter. For farm use, right? Right.



The appellate court may have realized one true thing. Those fuel mileage requirements just aren't going to be met by 2010. They can't change pickup trucks fast enough to make it so.



Here's the truth: Fuel efficiency - a total sham. An internal combustion engine effectively converts roughly ten percent of the energy released from the gasoline/oxygen mixture into useable motion. Some of it is light, the vast majority is heat that needs to be dissipated into the atmosphere via conduction, convection, and radiation. Physics: Fuel contains 'x' amount of energy. Alcohol has some, gasoline has more, kerosene and diesel fuel have more yet. One gallon of any given fuel, blended with atmospheric oxygen at a rate to establish a stochiometric mixture and compressed, will equal a given amount of heat energy, of which about ten percent will be useable for moving the vehicle. This cannot be changed.



Here's what can be done: Lighten the load. If it takes 'x' amount of energy to equal 'x' amount of heat, which is equal to 'x' amount of work, reduce the work expected of it and the amount of heat required and thus the fuel needed to generate it will be equally reduced. Remember the big old 'land yachts' of the '60's and 70's? It seems to me that for the 1977 or '78 model year, roughly 900 pounds were cut from the Chevy Impala/Caprice design. Downsizing vehicles was the easy part, although shrinking engines a bit was done a few years before that. In the '80's, aerodynamics was the key. The weight was down by a third to a half, so reducing the air resistance trimmed things up a bit further. But there's a limit as to what can be done, and like anything, the law of diminishing returns starts to apply. Not everyone wants to be in a Dodge Omni/VW Golf/Chevy Sprint type of car. If you have more than one child, those kinds of 'econobox' rides just aren't going to be an option. In a way, we've kind of hit the wall...if vehicles get lightned up too much more, they won't be able to fare acceptably in crash tests. Isn't that why a lot of us prefer larger vehicles, anyway? Safety (read that: survivability) matters to more than just a few of us!



About ten years ago, I needed to swap out the engine in my Chevy truck. The original 35o had a cracked block that couldn't readily be repaired, so replacement was the only real option. The thought of getting something better than 13 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving was appealing even when $1.25 would fill a gallon jug. I inquired among some professional and serious amateur truck experts as to what gains could be experienced with smaller engines. Come to find out, the 305 or 327 cubic inch engines also got roughly the same mileage over the road. Sitting at idle to warm up the engine or for waiting at red lights, the smaller engines used less fuel, of course. But to move the truck, the smaller engines still had to do the same amount of work. They just worked harder and still consumed the same amount of fuel with the throttle farther open than on the bigger engine, which merely chugged along at a somewhat more leisurely rate. I put another 35o in my truck that year.

About two months ago, I was visiting with an acquaintence who pointed out that despite the fact that #2 diesel oil was about forty cents per gallon more, a trip across the eastern half of Iowa in his new diesel truck was the same as or even slightly cheaper than in his previous gasoline engined truck, which had also been of the same overall size and engine displacement. The aerodynamics weren't much different, and the weight was similar, within two hundred pounds at most. The same amount of work, but since diesel fuel holds more potential energy than gasoline, he was getting about 16 mpg versus about 12 that his gasoline truck did.

When we can learn to accept much smaller, lighter trucks as the norm - or not unneccesarily driving trucks - this is what we have to look forward to.

For the record, my truck seldom goes more than a hundred miles in a year's time, and even that's a stretch. After all, I bought it as a TRUCK, not a funny looking car! Besides, the car's a whole lot more comfortable to be in, anyway.

Take care,

The TiGor