CNBC Says only racing enthusiasts buy manuals, let’s correct them

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

How damaging are studded tires? I see people running them during the summer.

If they are very damaging, they should carry a high sales tax to recoup the damage over the course of the service life.

Studded tires cause $27 million a year in damage to Oregon state highways (That does not include damage paid by federal, county, or city governments)

We should just ban studded tires and mandate winter tires be used in the winter.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

We should just ban studded tires and mandate winter tires be used in the winter.

That was my initial thought, but then my liberty filter kicked in and then my wondering about unforeseen unintended consequences.

I still like the idea of an extra tax to recoup the damage caused. If a set of studded tires costs $2,000 and a set of studdless is $600, we'll see a huge shift in that direction, and those that highly value studs can still have them since they've paid for the damage upfront. It would effectively be a ban without having outright banned them.

There'd still be those who purchase studded tires out of state or those from out of state with studded tires, but this might be a very low percent of people.

I dunno, I could be convinced to ban 'em. You just can't beat studs in ice though, and there might be certain areas particularly susceptible to icing.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

I don't know about studded tires, but winter tires are usually more prone to get damaged while driving on warmer weather. Second-hand ones have been imported to my country a few times and sold as a "half-life" performance option, but it was totally unsuitable to most local conditions.

I run studless winter tires December - March / April. The traction is a night and day difference compared to all-seasons. I bought my first set the first year in Oregon. One trip to Bend over the mountain passes taking chains on and off all the time was enough.

Run seasonally they cost very little. Yes, you have to pay out of pocket for another set of tires upfront but then tire wear is averaged over the two sets. The only real extra cost is for the wheels. I'm running steel wheels that cost about $50 each.

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

That was my initial thought, but then my liberty filter kicked in and then my wondering about unforeseen unintended consequences.

My liberty filter asks why jackasses with heavy vehicles should damage my roads with impunity, especially when they are transporting the same number of passengers on their commute and the same number of weekly grocery bags as my Fit. A work truck doing actual work is reasonable, but a work truck doing the job of a Civic or Corolla is not. A work truck built to do the job of a Civic or Corolla is even less reasonable, so I say F@¢<'em. If your ego is so big that you need to buy a tank to schlep your ass to work and back, you can afford to pay more than me in my little blue roller skate that does a fraction of the damage. Said roller skate can carry just as many passengers as an SUV (and with my utility trailer, it has a 5x8 bed), just saying.

Originally Posted by JSH

The difference in damage done by a my VW vs my Astro is trivial.

1. The VW weighs 3330 lbs and the Astro weighs 4300 lbs
2. Passenger cars in general do very little damage to modern roads. The vast majority of damage is done by heavy trucks.

Yes, the damage done by heavy trucks is much greater- that's just math. Like I said above, a work truck doing work is reasonable- and higher fuel taxes will be reflected in the cost of transported goods. But I've had many road trips on interstates where the right lane was turned to gravel because of the trucks that were then running in the left lane (slowly turning it also into gravel) and unable to pass them because I couldn't go faster in their damaged, graveled right lane than they could in the still decent left lane. I'm not blaming the truckers, I'm blaming the system. But I'm still pissed about the gravel that they made that they wouldn't subject themselves to (and why should they damage their trucks when the system they worked under wouldn't fix the roads?). My compact car shouldn't have had to fight through that gravel while the damage-causing trucks cruised on the smooth lane, eventually killing it. Higher fuel taxation would have at least spread the pain, if not leveling the playing field.

Luckily, I spent many years in the Field Artillery, where big dumb guys without any sleep still manage to do math, and forces and the damages they produce get thoroughly studied (ENIAC was actually built to calculate FA ballistics). One of my many jobs as a howitzer chief was to fill out every night the DA Form 2408-4, the record of fire. Every tube and breech has a rated life, counted by full charges. On the 155 I had, a Charge 8 was one full charge. From Charge 3 up to Charge 8 the shell's range would be proportional to the charge, but the force applied to the breech and the tube was exponential (think person-miles travelled versus damage to the road, if you will). The tube's life was rated at 1,750 rounds. In a war, shooting only Charge 8s, you could wear out a tube in little more than a day. In the Guard, in peacetime, you could shoot 35,000 rounds at up to a Charge 6 before reaching the tube's rated life. Since the cannon on hand would be the ones we deployed with, the remaining life in the tubes was critical data.

See Field Artillery Cannon Weapons Systems And Ammunition Handbook, page 1-7 (I was on an M-198 Howitzer, mounting an M-199 tube (the same tube as on an M-109 SP)).
Tube life (equivalent full charge) M-199 tube, 1,750 rounds
Charge 8s = 1.00
Charge 8 = 0.33
Charge 7 = 0.10
Charge 6-3= 0.05
Charge 5-3= 0.05

The lesson from the military is that the more force you apply to something, the more damage you get. And as the force increases, the damage increases even more greatly. My Fit's curb weight is 2,496#, less than half a 2013 Suburban's weight, and is rated 27/33mpg, while a 2013 Suburban is rated 15/21mpg. So I'm pounding the pavement with less than half the weight (0.05 EFC) while getting 1.5 to 2 times the gas mileage (even before hypermiling; try doing that in a Suburban). Using Field Artillery math, the federal gas tax should be multiplied by 20 to bring equiblibrium to the damage being caused to the roads by Murrincans in SUVs. Wave the flag all you want, b!+¢#3$, Army math (you know, those troops you pretend to support?) says your SUV is killing this country's infrastructure. I drive on roads that have never seen an 18 wheeler that are going to pot. Murricans apparently hate Murrica.

If your liberty requires you to not wear a mask in the grocery store, if your liberty requires you to piss in the municipal swimming pool, if your liberty requires you to haul your ass to work in an SUV, you apparently use your liberty to hate this country. That's not a political position, that's just the math I had to do as an NCO in the army. If you disagree, give me math to support your position.

[JSH]

Load Equivalency Factor works just like your artillery equivalent full load charge. (Both courtesy of the US Federal Government)

The number on the left is the single axle load and the number on the right is the equivalent damage factor

. 2,000 0.0003
10,000 0.118
14,000 0.399
18,000 1.000
20,000 1.400
30,000 7.900

Do Suburbans do more road damage than Fits? Yes they do. However, since the damage done buy all light duty vehicles combined makes up 1% of total vehicle road damage the difference between them is trivial.

[Piotrsko]

Cool: my F250 @10k lbs isn't tearing roads up as much as I thought.

Jsh: do you have wheel ditch grooves caused by chains on the roads you drive? The Golf auto steers most of the way back from Sacramento

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Cool: my F250 @10k lbs isn't tearing roads up as much as I thought.

Jsh: do you have wheel ditch grooves caused by chains on the roads you drive? The Golf auto steers most of the way back from Sacramento

Yes, we have grooves or ruts on the roads I drive. Some of that is studded tires (and a little bit of chain damage) and some of it is heavy truck traffic.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by JSH

Automatics get better mileage today than a manual (the way most people drive not hypermiling).

This is the oft-repeated line that bugs me most in these stories about how modern automatics are supposedly superior. (Though, to be fair, you never see anyone else qualify the statement as it relates to driving style.)

But I wonder: do we know quantitatively how "most people drive" manuals?

Because the EPA test methodology handicaps manuals to the point that a driver does not need to be a "hypermiler" to beat the EPA rating by a significant margin. They just have to select a higher gear than the EPA test prescribes for a given speed once they've finished accelerating. That alone will return significantly better MPG than the rating.


Anything beyond that is gravy: coasting (where appropriate, either in N or clutch-in); strategic use of deceleration fuel cut-off, etc.

What we needed was two EPA tests for the manual: use the same acceleration/deceleration profiles, but employ different shift points. That would put the lie to today's received wisdom that automatics are more efficient, period.

Originally Posted by aerohead

2)Hundreds of clutch depressions and engagements over a few miles will destroy any fondness for the efficiency potential of a manual.

Not all clutches are the same. The Mirage has the most ridiculously light clutch I have ever driven. I routinely tell people who are considering the CVT because of an urban commute to at least TRY the manual first.

Also: "Hundreds of clutch depressions and engagements over a few miles" makes the former driving instructor in me want to suggest an alternative approach to the situation.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by jcp123

Manuals are dying off in big trucks too. The automated manuals are taking a big portion of the market. My company has a large national fleet and has only bought automated manuals for a few years now - I’d be surprised if there’s more than a few dozen actual manual trucks left in our fleet - but trucks get some advantages from an auto which cars really don’t, so it’s a bit of a different situation.

What's the rationale - is it fuel economy or maintenance costs (clutches)?


We used to have a long-haul driver here on the forum who told me he was recognized and financially rewarded by his company for the amount of fuel he saved compared to other drivers.



Would he still be better off with the automated manual?

[JSH]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

What's the rationale - is it fuel economy or maintenance costs (clutches)?

Fuel economy and driver retention.

The automated manual take rate is above 90% for new On-Highway trucks today. Fleets are all about cost per mile and they would not be paying extra for an automated manual if it was costing them fuel economy.

You mention real world vs testing. For a manufacturer the test is reality - that is all we get credit for. Compliance and avoiding millions (USA) and billions (Europe) in fuel economy fines are based on what the testing shows.

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

We used to have a long-haul driver here on the forum who told me he was recognized and financially rewarded by his company for the amount of fuel he saved compared to other drivers.

Would he still be better off with the automated manual?

JCP is a long-haul driver driving an automated manual. He gives some feedback in post #45. He said he is averaging 8.1 mpg.