4 ms·
And if you have 20% less weight on the wheels, you now have 20% less traction and thus 20% (or more?) longer braking distance. You still need the same engine o
by the_pwner224 5y ago
And if you have 20% less weight on the wheels, you now have 20% less traction and thus 20% (or more?) longer braking distance.
You still need the same engine output to accelerate 100 tons, but you only have the traction you would get from an 80 ton load. That's a bad thing. Meanwhile, you save a miniscule amount of energy by having less-loaded tires.
Anyway, you need to compress hydrogen to store any meaningful amount, which increases the density and makes it like a normal gas/liquid instead of making you more buoyant. So it's not even possible.
- barrkel 5y agoNo, under ideal friction the reduced traction is cancelled out by the reduced mass that needs decelerating, so that braking distance remains constant. But actually, braking distance vs mass is more like a bathtub curve. With very little weight (talking toy cars here) it's hard to grip a surface, meanwhile very large masses like trucks have huge amounts of kinetic energy to disperse through their contact patches, leading rubber to melt, which reduces its stickiness beyond a certain point. Trucks end up with longer braking distances in practice.
- the_pwner224 5y agoThe point is that there is not reduced mass. You have the same weight, but less traction. That is not the same as reducing weight, in which case the two cancel out as you said.