INGENUITY RULES

October 12, 2011 Vol. 7, No. 21

The world, it seems, likes this e-newsletter. Proof perhaps that there’s no accounting for taste. Lame irony aside, that means we’re going weekly, as some of you suggested when I asked you about optimum frequency last winter.

But there’s a twist. The extra installment, the first of which you’ll see on Oct. 19, will not go quite so deeply into things as I usually do. Instead it will focus for the most part on specific new products rather than issues and trends and such.

That’ll be a help come show time next year. With TMC, the Work Truck Show, Mid-America, and our own Truck World affair, I’ve never had enough time or space to cover everything adequately through that stretch. Even with twice the opportunity, I’ll still be challenged.

For now, at least, call the extra edition Product Watch Lite. That’s how we’ll proceed but who knows how things will evolve. I sure don’t, but then I’m a slave to flexibility.

VOLVO’S XE13 POWERTRAIN OPTION got short shrift in Vol. 7, No. 21 two weeks ago, when in fact I think it’s very, very cool. Not just because it’s a wonderfully neat and tidy — call it elegant — way to improve fuel economy, but because it supports a point I’ve been making over the last few months. Namely, that there was utterly no need for Washington to regulate greenhouse-gas and fuel-efficiency standards for heavy trucks.

This industry is perfectly capable of achieving a 20% fuel-economy gain by 2018 on its own, using its native ingenuity and capacity to innovate. Without the questionable help contained in a constricting mandate that needs 900-plus pages of explanation. Spare me.