Builder
Super Member
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2006
- Messages
- 6,155
- Tractor
- Kubota, AGCO, New Holland LB
I agree. The focus should be on making the big gas guzzlers better. The little cars like the Kia, Honda, Saturn, ect all ready do a decent job. I get a magazine from Ford every quarter. About 3 years ago they had a 5.4 4x4 F-150 that got around 60 mpg in town. It got the same mpg on the highway, about 18. They way it worked was they took away 3 inches of bed depth and below the bed it had a large tank similar to a well bladder tank. I think it was 100 gallons or so and what it did was use the auto tranny to pressurize the bladder tank with tranny fluid. It then used that fluid to propel the vehicle until it was used up then it went off the engine. That's why it did so good in stop and go and no better on the highway. The truck also had something like 800 ft lbs of torque from a dead stop. Anyway I never hear another thing about it.
Anyway, they really need to look at the big cars and adapting diesels to the cars folks are buying now. My sister just bought a Accord 2 weeks ago and they have a diesel coming out in the Accord in June with 52 mpg.
Chris
My friend, the future is CNG.
It's cheap, ready for action right now and it's an abundant resource in this country. You'll see some CNG cars, but it will really work well in city delivery trucks & busses. It already does. We have CNG trucks around here right now.
With falling oil prices and the typical mentality status quo, I'm afraid all those alternatives will be shelved once again. I wonder if we'll ever learn.