If all cars had trailer hitches, could you move more cars with less fuel?
If cars hitched up to each other (say 4 cars) and only the lead car was turned on, how many fewer gallons of gas would it take to move the 4 cars 100 miles than if they drove themselves. Assume each car gets 30mpg on their own.
Yes you would use less fuel over all. Assuming that one vehicle was able to tow three times its own weight without serious damage.
How much saving would be determined by the shape of the vehicles used.
Crash course
The energy used by any vehicle is to overcome three factors (in order of significance at highway speeds) wind resistance, rolling resistance and drive train inefficiencies. If it did not have air to push through or rolling friction, it would continue at a given speed indefinitely.
In this case
Four cars (joined nose to tail) would have the frontal area of one. But the drag coefficient would be higher. The wind would not flow as smoothly over all four vehicles. (Though a lot better than four separate vehicles)
The rolling resistance would be about the same (weight of hitches negligible).
All the energy saving would be from reduced wind resistance overall and loses in one vehicles drive train only. It would be worthwhile noting that if the energy where supplied from all four vehicles the drive train losses would wind up about the same.
I recall a precision driving team doing a nose to tail experiment with four cars, some time ago the average consumption improvement was 50%
i.e. all vehicles would have averaged about 45 mpg if 30 on there own.
Of course the first vehicles consumption was about the same (a little less tail drag). Then continually improved consumption to the last.
With the absence of data for rolling resistance, wind resistance and frontal area this is as good an answer as I can give you.
These links will give the info required to calculate reasonably accurately.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_resistance
How to Hitch a Trailer to a Car or Truck : How to Stop when Pulling a Trailer
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