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CAFE standards based upon wheel base penalizes small trucks with hybrid sedan level fuel economy requirements. Larger the truck, lower the fuel economy requirement.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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The oil companies and tire manufacturers would not be too happy if the majority of pickups in the USA were small and got 50 mpg.
Dealers and manufacturers would be lean on profits if USA trucks ran to 1m miles, as do my 20 mpg Cummins 1st Generation Dodges. But my 50 mpg pickups meet 80% of my needs, and the CTDs will tow 30,000#. After that I use my Mack (56,000#), then jump to the Kenworth (105,500#).
But I'm always amazed at the massive loads the Toyota diesel Hiluxes haul throughout the world.
Americans prefer supersized everything, and they can apparently afford it.... So manufacturers are very happy to be supply fully loaded $80,000 pickups, instead of $12,000 basic utility pickups.
Crank windows, rubber floor mats, manual transmission, long box (or 10-12 ft flatbed), diesel engine, dually, positraction, 4x4, hubs, winch, heavy duty bumpers and front and rear + 5th wheel hitches, trailer brake controller, gun rack, 1000 mile range for fuel capacity... And I'm all set.
Just the basic essentials for a small (working) truck.
I didn't know this. CAFE is fairly complicated and I have still never seen it explained clearly and well. In any case, it appears that as trucks get larger, the requirements for them to have high MPGs gets lower. Just by basic physics, you can more easily get high MPGs with a smaller truck than a larger one, so the basic trend of the rules anyway, I think makes perfect sense. I think that what Alex was saying is that for the smaller end of the scale, (a) it becomes increasingly difficult to meet the requirements without cost penalties, and (b) since the smaller trucks are also less expensive, the same absolute penalty will be a larger proportion of the MSRP on a smaller truck.
I still don't understand the finer points of this, but to be honest, what I do understand doesn't sound wrong. CAFE is after all meant to encourage higher fuel economies in the fleet, and to do that, you're going to want to set requirements so as to be achievable and yet, still applying some kind of cost pressure, otherwise, CAFE actually has no effect. It sounded like Alex was saying that he thought it was too aggressive on the smaller end - this may be true, but I wish he could have made his argument clearer and used more specifics.
Last edited by OutdoorLover; 12-05-2022 at 01:16 AM..
I didn't know this. CAFE is fairly complicated and I have still never seen it explained clearly and well. In any case, it appears that as trucks get larger, the requirements for them to have high MPGs gets lower. Just by basic physics, you can more easily get high MPGs with a smaller truck than a larger one, so the basic trend of the rules anyway, I think makes perfect sense. I think that what Alex was saying is that for the smaller end of the scale, (a) it becomes increasingly difficult to meet the requirements without cost penalties, and (b) since the smaller trucks are also less expensive, the same absolute penalty will be a larger proportion of the MSRP on a smaller truck.
I still don't understand the finer points of this, but to be honest, what I do understand doesn't sound wrong. CAFE is after all meant to encourage higher fuel economies in the fleet, and to do that, you're going to want to set requirements so as to be achievable and yet, still applying some kind of cost pressure, otherwise, CAFE actually has no effect. It sounded like Alex was saying that he thought it was too aggressive on the smaller end - this may be true, but I wish he could have made his argument clearer and used more specifics.
We know they can engineer a small body on frame rear wheel drive truck that could get close to midsize sedan fuel economy in base power plant form. But those CAFE standards would need it to be a unibody front wheel drive plug in hybrid costing nearly as much as a midsize truck.
And how much would such a truck cost? Already full size trucks are about as expensive as BMW sedans. The technology and engineering to reach such a standard would greatly increase the cost of the vehicle and will reduce the towing capacity.
I doubt it. People get really excited when smaller trucks are introduced. Ford can't Mavericks on the showroom floor.
For people whose egos aren't tied up in the size of their truck, small trucks are the way to go for 99.99% of buyers. Something along the lines of long-bed pre-Tacoma Toyota was perfect. Enough bed space for just about anything. Low lift-over. Small-size made maneuverability much easier. Decent fuel economy. Today's trucks, especially full-sized ones, offer very limited utility relative to their enormous dimensions.
People only want small trucks when they are cheaper. I think that was the downfall of the original Ford Ranger when it was discontinued the first time. The price for it and a comparable F150 were nearly the same. People started seeing the F150 as the better value, so sales of the smaller Ranger started to sink.
People want small trucks for small truck prices. I guess maybe those days might be gone.
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