Not really seeing the comedy here, to be honest. This is more of a whinge strip.
Yeah, nobody wants wide cars. Manufacturers are making them wider to make it easier for them to meet NHTSA’s CAFE standards.
The standards require year-on-year MPG improvements. The problem is that they require proportionally more improvement on the smallest, highest economy cars, and less improvement on the largest, lowest economy vehicles.
The standards are based on the “footprint” of the vehicle: the rectangle between the contact patches of the tires. The larger the area of that footprint, the larger the vehicle, and the less MPG increase it needs to have.
So, they are pushing the wheels toward the corners, and widening the wheelbase, approaching a square to maximize their footprints. They are making cars bigger and boxier so they don’t have to make them more efficient.
Fuel economy of the cars on the road is actually falling, because manufacturers are effectively prohibited from continuing to make their smallest, most efficient vehicles. They are compelled to either discontinue those vehicles, or embiggen them to fall in a larger class.
Yeah, I was expecting it to be a joke like:
- Introducing Longtrucks. 🚌
- Impress even more strangers of the superior person-hauling capabilities with 32 seats.
- Includes a light-up sign 🚍 so you can proudly show to strangers where you’re headed.
- Access a world-wide network of pick-up bays 🚏 for you to pick up strangers from.
Simpsons did it. Canyon Aarow
Fixed url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA
What some folks may not know is that at around the same time, Ford had problems with tires imploding on SUVs. While not called out in the Canyonero spoof, I always thought it captured the public vibe about big trucks at the time in light of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy
I hate this about newer car models. Many are unnecessarily wide. Lanes don’t get wider though.
They’re wider and longer because the EPA uses the area under the tires to determine fuel economy requirements.
It is “necessary” for them to be that wide.
CAFE standards are based on “footprint” which is basically the rectangle of the tire contact patches. If you’re a car manufacturer who can’t meet the NHTSA’s MPG requirements for the size of car you produce, you can increase the size of your cars, so they fit in a larger class that requires less of an MPG improvement.
The most effective way to increase the footprint is to widen a narrow car, increasing its footprint toward square.
Am I understanding you correctly? There is a standard somewhere that says you can’t have tires of a certain width on a car unless the car is also broad?
Why is that even a requirement? I thought broad tires were safer, why would the width of the car have anything to do with it?
To be brief, some boneheads ages past decided to class vehicles based on footprint rather than simply weight.
No, you’re not understanding me correctly. Mostly because I misspoke, so that’s on me, not you.
The contact patches I was talking about are the corners of the rectangle. Everything between the wheels is the footprint.
The area of the footprint basically determines the minimum MPG you can have. (The more complicated point is that it is related to all the vehicles you produce rather than a specific minimum, but that overcomplicates the issue. The point is that CAFE standards provide strong incentives for manufacturers to increase the “footprints” of their vehicles. The larger the footprint they can claim, the less MPG improvement they need to make. So, longer and wider wheelbases.
It’s crazy to think that Humvees were designed with war in Europe in mind. They are pretty wide and may have been wider if they didn’t have to worry about train tunnels
Remember the times when Humvees were considered big and stupid to drive in civilian applications?