this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the explanation. It's just infuriating

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

And this is exactly why we don’t see small trucks like Rangers or Dakotas anymore. I don’t know if it’s because it’s impossible to make an engine that efficient or if manufacturers are just lazy, but the consequence is that they can avoid stricter efficiency requirements by simply making bigger (larger wheelbase) and heavier (body on frame vs. monocoque) vehicles.