BITPORTERS ltd.

I just got back from a mini road trip this weekend. While driving I had the idle thought of drafting transport trucks - how close would you have to be for a real energy savings. Found this after a quick Google search after I got home.

The daredevils on Discovery’s Mythbusters demonstrated that if you followed a big rig by 100 feet, you could decrease your fuel consumption by 11 percent. The intrepid duo pushed the envelope further by following a truck at only 10 feet–a dangerous maneuver we don’t recommend viewers try at home!–and managed to decreased their gas consumption by 40 percent.

40%? That’s huge! I would have saved 40$ on my trip this weekend! However there are problems to doing this - it’s not co-ordinated. Truck drivers probably hate when people do this and to get the ideal %40 savings you have to do something stupid/unsafe.

So is there a business model here? Could truck drivers / shipping companies offer drafting as a service to cars passing by as a way to make extra profit to combat the fuel costs? Could people who drive cars that don’t get the best MPG (such as kick ass 04 WRX’s) use this as a way to lower their long haul costs? What if you were to somehow build a system that allows truck drivers to profit from their slipstream and create a safety system to protect both parties?

How about this idea - build a mechanical system that can be installed on top of the rear of big rig trailers. When a paying drafter approaches the rear of the truck - the system will lift and extend the drafting shield out. With the right materials you could build a very large cover that could create a draft shield for the following car. It could extend pretty far out so that a car could stay a safe distance. Or even because there would be some kind of wireless communication - an emergency tandem breaking system could be developed. Hell truckers could link a convoy together and make a draft chain. The guy out front could earn most of the money for being the wind breaker (heh-heh).

Obviously there would need to be some serious research into how the communication / payment system would work. Security would be paramount if it could interface with the drafting cars breaking system.

What needs to be researched / tweaked

1) Figure out how much fuel having the physical shield could save and tie that in with how much extra fuel cost would this add to a truck to carry the equipment. I.e. would it not even be worth doing this because the price charged to make it worthwhile be more than the potential energy savings for the end user.

2) How would the systems communicate / verify valid payers of the system. Would it be a on-demand fee? a Monthly subscription? Would there be a real-time communication between the two vehicles and a server? or just a valid token key on a daily/weekly basis?

So I don’t know - I don’t have the time/resources to work on something like this but it’s an idea - what do you think? Good business model / bad business model? It would be cool if this existed - I would use it for sure.