• Mothra
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    8 hours ago

    Am I understanding you correctly? There is a standard somewhere that says you can’t have tires of a certain width on a car unless the car is also broad?

    Why is that even a requirement? I thought broad tires were safer, why would the width of the car have anything to do with it?

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      6 hours ago

      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.

      • Mothra
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        2 hours ago

        Thanks for the explanation. It’s just infuriating

    • Alex@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      To be brief, some boneheads ages past decided to class vehicles based on footprint rather than simply weight.

      • Mothra
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        2 hours ago

        I get it now. Not a chance that’s changing anytime soon I suppose, I can see how it’s not convenient for manufacturers