Detroit Diesel Corp. wants the trucking industry to know that the negative fuel economy impact predicted for ’02 engines isn't turning out to be as bad as expected. The company also maintains that driver behavior is the one factor that can truly keep fuel economy losses to a minimum.
“We said all along that we expected our ’02 EGR engines to experience 3% to 5% worse fuel economy,” Tom Diefenbacker, director of electronic products for DDC, told Fleet Owner. “But now we’ve found that the fuel loss has been less than 3% on average.”
Diefenbacker stressed, however, that the real key to keeping fuel economy losses down resides mainly with how the truck is driven. He explained that technology improvements won’t be able to offset the impact poor driving practices could have on fuel economy with ’02 engines.
“The two main issues with fuel economy are idle time and how you drive the truck,” he said. “Those are management issues, not engine design issues."
