Sounds practical but the reality is that power sells in the SD class of trucks. Fuel mileage is secondary. Power is marketed by HP, torque, towing capacity, payload and physical presence. Very few will buy a SD class truck just because it gets a few mpg more but many will buy because it puts out more HP or torque than the other guy. Based on past behavior, I've always thought Americans don't want high mpg vehicles. They want cheap fuel. You see it every time fuel prices go up significantly, high mpg vehicles sell better while low mpg vehicles languish on the lots. When fuel prices go back down the opposite happens.

 

Until the power grid goes down because everybody wants to run their AC’s at home when it is 100*F +............now what? We still have a loooonnnng way to go.
Then, due to the fact that states are not collecting fuel tax, our already defunct highway system gets so bad no one can drive on it; we then need to triple or quadruple our electric rates. And the vicious circle continues going round and round. There ain’t any free lunch, regardless of what talking heads say.

 

I remember my first Super Duty.... one of the very first 1999 7.3l CCSWB. Tan with black two tone. Loved it.
Advertised as 500 lbs of ground pounding torque. Big for the day, but a real dog today.

Torque numbers should never stop. Less never sells.
If you think this torque is high, just wait for electric..

 

Yeah but you can’t actually get it to the ground.


The nanny programmed into these trucks is so harsh it is dangerous. Cant accelerate for ****.

 

I wonder if there's a post from 20 or so years back where members were lamenting 600 lb/ft and 300HP and calling for more government control.

 

This is nothing new. I had a 1997 Kenworth that had410 HP/1450TQ that was a dog accelerating. As long as the truck was accelerating, it would limit the boost to like 25PSI in all gears. But when ones foot was on the throttle and were losing RPM/speed, the boost would come up to 35-40 PSI and pull like a SOB. When I talked to Kenworth or Cummins about it, I was told that it could not be changed because it was designed that way to protect the rest of the powertrain. But I agree........the nanny’s suck wind.

 

No there wasn’t.

 

Exactly. Huge mark-up. They are pricing the average blue collar middle class working family out of buying new trucks. New trucks now cost the same or more than formerly more expensive luxury cars.

 

A very interesting discussion.....
Interesting points being brought out... In all fairness, the "Average American" is not a member of FTE or any other vehicle / mechanical / maintenance website. At what point will they be forced to throw in the towel on owning a vehicle ?

Hobo

 

Prices are expensive because we allow it. We keep buying $70-80k trucks instead of the XL models or XLT. We keep paying for options we don’t really need. We keep signing up for extended financing instead of paying it off quickly. We keep allowing politicians to add meaningless safety measures that only add substantial cost and don’t really increase safety that much (mandatory rear view cameras, never ending EPA regulations, “Prius catchers” under the bumpers, the list goes on). If we really want prices to come down, let’s start looking at ourselves first. Trucks used to be a tool, now they’re a luxury and we are paying for it. A modestly optioned XL truck has more bells and whistles on it than top level trucks of 15-20 years ago. I’m glad the manufacturers are still innovating and getting better with every year, but to complain about the cost when you compare a 2021 truck to a let’s say 2004 truck is silly in my opinion.

 

Good point about truck owners wanting all the luxury stuff. Capitalism usually works to correct itself, except when the government regulators dictate how producers make their products and regulators also dictate what consumers have to buy. Even still, there is huge mark-up and prices really jumped in the last ten years.

 

In 1957, Ayn Rand wrote the book "Atlas Shrugged".

The book depicts a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations.

American's are now living out what Rand visualized 60 years ago.. Literally no one in government has, or will in the future, produced anything. She rightfully labels them as "looters".

Again, JMHO.

Hobo

 

The torque from an electric motor depends on the size of the motor, cable, and battery cells. The real key is that full design torque may be available at zero RPMs! But there will still be limits based on weight and size.





The current major downfall of electric, is that the "energy density" is much lower than gasoline or diesel. That means that for a given powerplant weight, you will go fewer miles on motor+battery than on engine+fuel. The second (and partially related) downfall of electric is that recharge time is much slower than refuel time. I can put 25 miles of fuel (0.5 gallons) in my plug-in Prius in about 5 seconds, but it takes 2 hours to put 25 miles worth of electricity into my same car using a 220V charger and 5 hours using a 110V charger! Of course researchers are working on new battery science, and engineers are working on new ways to build vehicles, but that can take many many years to make it to actual production vehicles.

Agree. But there are actually multiple reasons:
1. The current software and sensor systems do not fully recognize the conditions that we drive our trucks in. Fortunately, this should improve over time as they increase in capability.
2. There are passenger safety and vehicle integrity issues that the systems try to account for. This is the "nanny" you reference. Hopefully some of this will improve as well if possible, but unfortunately some of it is related to lawyers and also the fact that more people are commuting instead of hauling in trucks, so the eye of Sauron is turning our way.
3. There are limits on the torque that the trans, transfer case, diffs, shafts, leaf springs, and axles can handle. I've seen a couple posts here of folks experiencing axle wrap and even having to add traction bars to compensate
4. The final one of course, is tire traction. This is a limit even if there are no nannies and you are OK with twisting your driveshaft.

 

Not sure how you came to that conclusion, they run 27% ethanol blend and 10% biodiesel blend.

 

The current mandate is 25 percent ethanol in gasoline set June 1, 2007. Brazil aggressively developed cars that operated only on 100 percent ethanol. In 1979 the Fiat 147 was the first modern car to run on pure ethanol. By 1988 almost 90 percent of all new cars manufactured in Brazil were E100 (alcohol only) cars.

So by now, all cars made are E100.... made by suger cane....