DaimlerChrysler's New Efficiency Tech Will Add 1 MPG To Dodge Ram

NEW YORK - DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit, the No. 3 U.S. automaker, will add gasoline-saving engine technology to some of its least fuel-efficient pickups and sport-utility vehicles.

The 2006 Dodge Ram pickup and Durango SUV will have technology that can shut off half of eight cylinders when less power is needed, Chrysler engineering chief Eric Ridenour said at a dinner recently in New York. The feature will come standard on all trucks ordered with Chrysler's 5.7-liter Hemi engines.

With the additions, 85 percent of trucks built with Hemi engines next year will have the technology, Mr. Ridenour said. "We'll put it in across the board, with the exception of heavy-duty trucks," he said. All Chrysler cars using the 5.7-liter Hemi engine have the technology, which cuts fuel use by 5 percent to 20 percent.

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Adding the technology improves the highway mileage for the 300 sedan to 25 miles per gallon of fuel from 20 miles per gallon, Chrysler spokesman Cole Quinnell said. For the least fuel-efficient Ram pickup, which gets 13 miles per gallon in the city and 17 miles per gallon on the highway, the engine improves city driving mileage one mile per gallon, or 7 percent, he said."

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http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050526/NEWS08/505260348

Ooh! 1 MPG!

Thank you Dodge! and thank you BushCo! I can rest easier now due to your amazing technological feat.

is pathetic - if indeed it gets that much. Pickups and SUVs are engineered to waste fuel, unlike real the commercial vehicles they mimic. Private passenger vehicles over 4,000 pounds that get less than 25 mpg (combined) should be taxed mercilously into extinction.

have very expensive diesel motors that have an output of 300-550 hp, coupled with a transmission with 9-18 speeds.

a high end pick up truck like a dodge ram with a 5.7l HEMI has a relatively inexpensive 345 hp gasoline motor.

If pickup trucks were made to haul stuff 100,000 miles a year, they'd have a 180 hp diesel motor and 6+ speed transmissions.

I've heard of Dodge rams with the cummins diesel getting 25 mpg plus.

Outlawing or excessively taxing vehicles that get poor mileage might make you feel better, but won't be effective: a 10 mpg truck driven 5,000 miles a year uses less fuel than a 35 mpg car driven 20,000 miles a year. The appropriate tax should be applied directly to the behaviour you want to change. If its using oil, tax oil. If it's polluting, tax pollutants. If its using foreign oil, tax foreign oil.

I think the best tax of these is associated with carbon emissions. Such a tax would raise the cost of burning fuel, and thus change behaviors: from miles driven, to types of cars built, to land use (sprawl).

Such a tax, on the revenue side, will have to be regressive. To make it progressive, give a portion of the total revenue, say half, or even all of the total revenue, back as an energy credit. E.g. if the tax raised $30B, everyone in the country would get $100 a year. Roughly half of the people would spend less than $100 on the tax, and the other half would spend more, but just about everyone would change their behavior a little bit.

I especially like this line, "I think the best tax of these is associated with carbon emissions. Such a tax would raise the cost of burning fuel, and thus change behaviors: from miles driven, to types of cars built, to land use (sprawl)."

The ideal would be to recognize that energy has an external cost. An appropriate thing would simply be to charge for the waste associated with a type of energy reflecting the cost to society as a whole. For instance, it would be worthwhile to charge coal companies for the cost of lung cancer and emphysema not connected with smoking. It would also be useful to charge them for the cost of collapsed ash containment dams that have destroyed rivers world wide. If it is shown that the rise of autism specifically and the insanity of the inhabitants of a prominent North American nation is attributable to coal spread mercury, they should pay the costs of treatment of mercury induced toxicity. And so on...

This of course would shut the coal industry down in a few weeks...

It's not likely to happen though, precisely because it makes sense.

That would also spur development of cleaner burning vehicles as well as more fuel efficient ones.

The revenues should go into an R&D fund for extremely low/zero emissions vehicles and to fund mass transit.

Outlawing or excessively taxing vehicles that get poor mileage might
make you feel better, but won't be effective: a 10 mpg truck driven
5,000 miles a year uses less fuel than a 35 mpg car driven 20,000 miles
a year.

A truck getting 35 mpg going 5000 miles a year will also use less gas than a 10 mpg truck going 5000 miles a year. The principal reason for shoddy truck mileage is lack of engineering and investment - many of them use crude 2 valve/cylinder designs, no variable valve timing, forced induction (turbo motors: high torque, good highway mpg's), 4 speed trannies, and they're designed for macho, powerful appearance instead of aerodynamics. A retractable bed cover going from the top of the cab to the tailgate would drastically improve drag and improve highway mileage. You can't buy one, at least not from the car maker... A CVT would probably greatly aid a truck since it could adjust engine speed for load as well as speed and acceleration. Let's not even mention their signs of emission levels.

Both GM and Ford built prototype diesel hybrid Hummers for the Marines. The idea was to reduce the demands on the fuel truck/logistic supply chain.

GM had a diesel hybrid in several of its "Cadillac" Precept prototypes (several were fuel cell powered, several were gasoline hybrids) - the Precept is kind of a 21st Century, high tech Cadillac Seville.

Never any actual progress. They like to keep their disruptive change comfortably in the "future", which never arrives.

1. They were never serious about the EV - just sold them to placate the California Air Resources Board.

2. The GM employees and the vendor employees and the EV1 lessees did get good health benefits - a free colonoscopy (sedation optional at extra cost).

3. That's why their bonds are "junk bonds" - and why Toyota will probably pass them in sales.

In a way, it's sad - kind of like watching the "legacy airlines" and "Big Steel" and "passenger trains" -- the passing of my child hood and my "roots" in Rust Belt America and the deaths of the "Rust Belt" communities (I deliberately said "communities" and not "cities"), and the newly unemployed.

I am saddened by what GM has done to itself - and its workers and home towns and vendor communities.