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08-29-2011, 02:56 PM
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#127
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Tavares, FL
Posts: 1,652
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You missed the point. If you trying to increase fuel efficiency, after each mpg you get, each additional mpg gets harder and harder to get. The law of diminishing returns. You can not get an additional 23% just by making it a mandate, Engineers will have to try and do it. What will happen, is no new trucks will be built. Engines will keep on being rebuilt and trucked patched up resulting in lower mpg and less safety that the replacing of fleet truck now at 3.5 years and 1.5 million miles.
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08-29-2011, 03:07 PM
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#128
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Senior Member
Winnebago Owners Club
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Posts: 841
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Just an observation, nothing to do with the original post. Just following AS POSTED.
Posters from CA want federal mandates, the rest of the USA want free market.
If someone was to produce an all electric auto that would run from Las Vegas down to Kingman and stop overnight in Flagstaff, AZ....It would be in my garage NOW.
And I believe many others, particuliarly RV'er if the auto could be charged while being towed, would be in line behind me to purchase one.
Let's get it mandated.
Kerry
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08-29-2011, 04:18 PM
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#129
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Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Aguanga, CA, USA
Posts: 239
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lindsay Richards
You missed the point. If you trying to increase fuel efficiency, after each mpg you get, each additional mpg gets harder and harder to get. The law of diminishing returns. You can not get an additional 23% just by making it a mandate, Engineers will have to try and do it. What will happen, is no new trucks will be built. Engines will keep on being rebuilt and trucked patched up resulting in lower mpg and less safety that the replacing of fleet truck now at 3.5 years and 1.5 million miles.
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The story you are spinning is an old one. It's been trotted out every time a new fuel or safety standard has been proposed. Please refer to the story of the boy who cried Wolf.
I recall an especially entertaining time back in the eighties (I think) when GM or Ford (or both) testified before Congress that the new proposal was impossible to meet. Honda then offered to sell them cylinder heads with their CVCC (something like that - it was a multiple stage combusion system) with which GM (or Ford) current engines would meet the new standards. GM/Ford shut up, developed their own engine improvements and met the new standards.
And the latest standards, as I recall, were developed in cooperation with Detroit. Pretty sure the manufactures are on board this time and have already said they can meet them.
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08-29-2011, 04:22 PM
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#130
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Senior Member
Newmar Owners Club
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 4,589
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If mandates are the answer why not just mandate that nuclear power be safe and our problems will be solved.
__________________
2007 Newmar DSDP 4023
Discovery is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
If you want to see what man made go East; if you want to see what God made go West.
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08-29-2011, 04:32 PM
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#131
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Tavares, FL
Posts: 1,652
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Keep on dreaming. The best minds in the diesel engine manufacturing community have been working continuously to increase millage for decades and have made progress via engine improvements and through aerodynamic, but once again mandating a 23% improvement in 3 years isn't going to make it happen. No trucking professional I have ever met is for lower millage. At the same time there are very large mandated reductions in CO2 emissions.
Why not just mandate world peace?
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08-29-2011, 05:11 PM
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#132
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Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Aguanga, CA, USA
Posts: 239
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I said that fuel efficiency and safety has not improved until mandated. That is in no way, shape or form the equivalent of saving everything (like world peace) can be created by a simple mandate.
You might re-read "Alice in Wonderland" (written to teach logic and mathemetics). At one point she says something like (from memory - it's been awhile) "I say what I mean, or at least I mean what I say. It's the same thing." and the response (from the cat I believe) is "Not at all. No more than to say 'I see whatever I eat' is the same as 'I eat whatever I see'!".
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08-29-2011, 06:18 PM
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#133
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Tavares, FL
Posts: 1,652
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Actually over the road truck fuel efficiency has improved drastically over the years without mandates. It is the incentive of the free market and the profit motive. It has improved to the point where additional improvements are hard to get (law of demising returns.). An additional 23% in 3 years isn't possible no matter who mandates it. It would be nice if it was as manybe some could transfer over to RV's.
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08-29-2011, 06:21 PM
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#134
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 1,943
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08-29-2011, 06:55 PM
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#135
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Senior Member
Texas Boomers Club
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Cypress, Texas USA
Posts: 8,854
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lindsay Richards
Actually over the road truck fuel efficiency has improved drastically over the years without mandates. It is the incentive of the free market and the profit motive. It has improved to the point where additional improvements are hard to get (law of demising returns.). An additional 23% in 3 years isn't possible no matter who mandates it. It would be nice if it was as manybe some could transfer over to RV's.
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Long haul over-the-road truck diesels are already in the 40%-50% thermal efficiency range versus 20%-30% thermal efficiency for spark-ignited car engines. If you're at 50% thermal efficiency today, finding a 23% improvement in just 3 years is a significantly greater challenge.
Rusty
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08-29-2011, 07:10 PM
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#136
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Tavares, FL
Posts: 1,652
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Quote:
finding a 23% improvement in just 3 years is a significantly greater challenge.
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Some of the best minds in America have been working on it for decades. Can you imagine the value of a patent of a new engine that would improve over the road trucks by 23%? It would be worth tens of billions of dollars and that incentive has been there in place. If it could easily be done, then it would have already have been done. Much of the known things have already been done. You can make a passenger car into a tin can that gets to zero to 60 with a calendar and gets 55 mph unless the driver is fat. An over the road truck must carry 40,000 pounds of product. The trailer weights have come down drastically in the last decades and aerodynamics have come close to maxing out. Thinking a mandate will just magically make this happen in 3 years is bizarre.
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08-30-2011, 01:05 PM
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#137
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 1,378
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And their are those that said we would never land a man on the moon.
American engineers are the best in the world; give them the time and they will come up with the correct answers.
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08-30-2011, 01:16 PM
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#138
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Tavares, FL
Posts: 1,652
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Quote:
American engineers are the best in the world; give them the time and they will come up with the correct answers.
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They have made great strides in the last decades, but a mandate of 23% increase in the next 3 years won't be happening unfortunately. It is just on new trucks, so they won;t be able to sell any new one, the old ones will be rebuilt and rebuilt. We might look like Havana driving down the road.
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08-30-2011, 02:21 PM
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#139
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Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Auburn, CA, Havasu, AZ & Mulege, BCS
Posts: 5,385
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Couple of inconvenient truths about GM-
1) bond holders and others did in fact get ripped off in the bankruptcy. BK has rules, and there is a priority to payoff of parties. Bond holders got zip or a little more, in preference to others who were not legally entitled to receive anything. Few tens of billions in cost to this experiment there, but to the economy at large not to taxpayers alone.
2) GM did not pay off all the money dumped into this experiment. Gubmint picked an arbitrary date and wrote off few tens of billions prior to that date, then allowed (actually participated in) press releases lying about having paid off all the money, when it was only money dumped in after the arbitrary date that was paid back. Few tens of billions in cost to this experiment there also, to taxpayers alone.
3) GM's stock floats at a non-zero number due to the $45bil placed on its books out of thin air as tax credits. Since we are in a deficit position, add to that the perpetuity of interest due on that sum, be kind, and round it to, say $60bil. Out of taxpayer's pockets. When tax credits are used up, stock will float to a real number. Then we'll know how much was lost. Which could be a dramatically larger number. Don't we still, as taxpayer's, own 80-90% to this day? If that goes to zero (think Chrysler who was bailed out, came back for a while, went BK, came back for a while, then got bailed out and is still on life support), we could be in this way deeper. Taxpayers take this hit fully.
With all the rounding and allowances for future events, and truth in accounting, I ballpark the current taxpayer loss (gift to the UAW) at around $100bil (assumes no catastrophic losses on stock going forward).
Losses on the Chevy Volt can't possibly be significant given the overall size of the problem. I don't mind the Chevy Volt experiment as much as the too-big-to-fail experiment. There is no question the Volt experiment would be done with radically greater efficiency if borne by private investment. There are several aspects of this at work around the globe, numerous firms driving battery innovation forward on purely private venture funding, etc. The real problem IMHO is that too-big-to-fail really means fail-big-by-another-route. Think Chrysler again. Most dead from the neck up failing companies cannot fix their loser culture. In ten years I expect to see GM looking for its next bailout, just like Chrysler has done. Twice. Volt or no Volt.
__________________
Baja-tested '08 2-slide 36'
Alpine: The Ultimate DIY'er Project
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08-30-2011, 03:56 PM
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#140
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Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Aguanga, CA, USA
Posts: 239
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Then why did almost all the manufactures sign on the the new fuel efficiency standards. And it's particularly interesting to note one who didn't (Volkswagen) who released a statement
"Volkswagen does not endorse the proposal under discussion. It places an unfairly high burden on passenger cars, while allowing special compliance flexibility for heavier light trucks. Passenger cars would be required to achieve 5% annual improvements, and light trucks 3.5% annual improvements. The largest trucks carry almost no burden for the 2017-2020 timeframe, and are granted numerous ways to mathematically meet targets in the outlying years without significant real-world gains."
Is it possible that you do not completely understand the standards? I suspect that Ford, GM,... understand them quite well.
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