I highly doubt Ford is using Al for anything in the driveline of a truck to begin with, where did you hear that? All they're talking about right now is exterior body panels, and some of the subframes and bracing in the chassis. Even the main frame rails (much less the drivetrain) will still be steel
Cylinder heads have been AL on a lot of vehicles for a very long time now. This indicates that the entire engine used in the Ecoboost powered F150s is AL.
I think the aluminum is just the cheap way to increase the fuel economuy. The basic problem with a truck is the aerodynamics and the engine. The aerodynamics are always going to suck, and there is little that can be done about that. The engine, OTOH, can be adjusted.
Right now most trucks are powered assuming that they are going to be carrying a significant load, and that consumers are going to be expect a good performance with that load. The result of this, and the reason many like trucks, is that when they are not loaded they are overpowered and therefore can achieve a great speed. That many people buy trucks for speed and not load is indicated by the number of automatics that are sold.
This need not be the case. We had an old Toyota pickup and it was a four cylinder 100 horse power r siries engine. When loaded it was slow, but like most people I did not drive it loaded all the time. But it was a working truck. We had a big chevy truck as well for work around the farm. Fords engines are not inefficient, at around 50 horsepower per cylinder. The point is that most people are driving around in a six cylinder truck wasting gas when what they need is 4 cylinder. It can be significant. In they city my six cylinder car get 16 MPG while my 4 cylinder car, just a fast, gets over 20.
That old Toyota was also significantly lighter/smaller than most full size pickups are today. The tiny truck went out of vogue in the US for reasons unknown to me. The smallest thing I know of on the market in the US truck-wise currently is the Nissan Frontier, and it's not exactly small.
Weight is the bane of almost everything performance wise, and everything efficiency wise. Less weight means less power required to change velocity. This could (not necessarily should or will) translate into smaller engines, and lighter running gear and brakes, which will also cause more weight loss.
I wonder when I can get an aluminum Mustang so I can polish it like a P-51.
Sweet.
Have something a little more interesting.
Mazda Miata hoods...
And boot/deck lids.
I think Porsche might want to argue against your quote about "being handled in a gentle manner" with the Al engine block on their GT3. It's been their most successful racing car engine for years and is bulletproof as far as those things go. In no way will the truck engine exceed the strains of a racing engine designed to run at high compression at 5-8.4K for hours on end. As far as strain - the truck has an automatic transmission which is easier on the engine, and puts out less HP and torque perdisplacement, lower compression, etc.
Of course there will be a few problems as there always are with something new, but to blame in on AL will be foolish. Hell, they even have had Al DIESEL engine blocks for a while.
I would posit that the mass and volume required to keep an explosion inside of a combustion chamber is significantly higher than what a body panel will be made from.
...and there won't even be neither turkey nor booze, over here in Europe *g
(emphasis mine) At least, I hope for you there aren't any grammar-Nazis over there...
No, the eurozone has effectively expunged "Nazi" from their vernacular, if the media is to be believed
Money quote:
Users were warned not to take bids on Nazi items from people in France, Germany, Austria or Italy because of laws in those countries. Users with French- or German-language Web browsers also were blocked from searching for Nazi-related items, eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said
No... these electric vehicles were destroyed because they were awful. They were slow as hell, and/or had crap range. And they took a half day or so to recharge.
Tesla has succeeded because they have good/ok performance, and ok range. The charging time and availability is still an issue, but that's something the buyers can deal with.
I can't speak to the RAV4 or the Ranger, but all reports of the EV1 were that it was acceptably quick and had nearly 100 miles range if you were kind to the accelerator. The EV1 was destroyed because someone at GM didn't want it around anymore.
I wouldn't imagine it would be that difficult given what some people have been doing with these plus an arduino or Raspberry Pi.
It's good to have an old pre OBD2 car...
As an Oregonian I can say right away, this is a partisan biased post. It isn't the big bad Government floating this idea to take yer moneys. Rather, we have lots and lots of more efficient vehicles, and there is a strong cultural push to move away from Big Oil. So we want to have our tax structure set up so that it is ready for that; if everybody bought a hybrid today, next year almost no road repairs would get done, because we wouldn't have the tax revenue. And with the same number of miles driven, there would be the exact same need for revenue. So if we can succeed in tying those related things together, then we'll have a forwards-looking tax code.
You're pushing for a "forward-looking" tax code that removes an incentive to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, along with adding more otherwise unnecessary equipment and administrative costs. This is fine if you don't care about the environment -- both for the loss in fuel efficiency and the unnecessary parts -- and want extra bureaucracy, but I think it's stupid.
At what point does it stop being "forward-looking" and start becoming "reality"? At some point, fuel mileage is going to improve to the point to where collection at the pump will become infeasible. I think the contention is that laying the groundwork for that time NOW is better than "Oh crap, we can't repair that bridge because we didn't sell enough fuel and spent the rest on mass transit!"
cover the cost of road maintenance
But I drive an SUV. I don't need roads.
Why not charge more for the people who drive low riders and ricers? The ones who always complain when they bend a rim or lose their exhaust in a pothole. Its because of them that we even have to pave the damned roads.
Offroading or potholed asphalt works fine if you're willing to drive considerably slower everywhere. You're not doing 40, much less 70, over heavily potholed roads, and even less offroad unless you've bought yourself something like a Raptor or better. Getting much better than 25mpg in something that's built to take the level of abuse that high speed cruising over completely unprepared or poorly maintained roads isn't currently in the market.
the gas tax is going away as cars get more efficient. Yes yes, raise the tax you say and you can make it up. What about non-gas cars? Used to be so niche a segment as to not matter but very quickly it's going to be a significant portion. Plan ahead and make it a 'use' tax (and frankly I had use taxes, terribly regressive). Maybe have a minimum free usage of say 20k miles; tax anything over that. The gas tax is nothing but a crude tax on miles driven coupled by vehicle weight. Big vehicles usually get lower mileage and do more damage...hence they pay a higher tax than a motorcycle which gets 10x the mileage of a semi. The odometer combined with vehicle registration is all we need to accomplish this. No privacy implications at all.
Every time I bring up the "Use the odometer" statement, I get a rash of comments saying "That doesn't properly account for the edge case".
I didn't even click on the link and knew it was some fag linking xkcd. It's not clever. It's not funny. Just the subject containing something about RNG, with a link under it and not even a short, useless, one sentence post shows the kind of unoriginal, uninspired, idiot is making the post. It was funny to read when it came out. It's even funny when clicking on the Random button on the site and seeing it. It's NOT funny when someone links to it from a one-sentence post and thinks they're so fucking clever to have discovered xkcd. You probably still use lmgtfy and think you're so damn clever. It means in real life, you're an unoriginal hipster doofus. Got anything to do with sanitizing inputs to a SQL database, etc.? Link to Bobby Tables. Got a nerd-project slow-ass turing machine? Like a minecraft logic circuit from redstone? Link to the one where it's some guy alone in the world making a computer out of rocks. Got a story about password security or encryption? Link to the one where they beat the password out of the guy with a wrench. Fuck off. You're not clever.
Guess you're not one of today's 10000. Thanks for playing.
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky
