Diesel truck fuel economy is one of those tricky parts of life that just sort of vanishes if you don’t keep a good hold on it. The misconceptions of diesel trucks begin at the car lot, where federal regulations don’t require that automakers label the diesel truck fuel economy numbers, when in reality, the new generation of diesel engines and diesel fuels are providing some better-than-hybrid gas mileage right now. While the main “for instance” in this case is the Jetta TDI, making diesel truck fuel economy match or even surpass the fuel economy of a hybrid is really just a matter of tuning. Some companies have got this down. In particular, the companies which specifically cater to the big three- Dodge, Ford, and Chevrolet, all claim to boost diesel truck fuel economy with the same ploys that companies hawking gasoline fuel savers are using-claiming big diesel truck fuel economy numbers in the hopes that consumers will fork over their hard-earned to give it a shot.
From the factory, Diesel truck fuel economy really isn’t too bad considering the size of the vehicles that the engines are pushing. Whether the engine is Duramax, Cummins, or Powerstroke, the numbers are all more or less the same when it comes to diesel truck fuel economy. Upping that can be achieved, but there’s a price.
Diesel truck fuel economy can be increased by three main ways, each of which will cost you, one of which will have tree huggers tossing range-fed eggs at your paint. Yea, the smokestacks, you guessed it. There are, however, two roads to go with this. All that belching smoke rumbling from your stacks (or tailpipe) is caused by the removal of the part of the exhaust that filters out the soot. Left on in a high-quality (read: expensive) exhaust system, the additional power will be largely the same, but the truck’s going to definitely going to have some additional bark to it. You’ll get used to it. Step two on your quest to increase your diesel truck fuel economy is to also install a cold-air induction kit. This is going to be considerably less expensive, and can work well without the exhaust system, but for the ultimate diesel truck fuel economy and power, the two work best in tandem. Step three: you’re going to need a programmer for the computer. Diesel trucks come from the factory generally de-tuned to some extent for safety purposes and compliance with small-truck highway classification guidelines, blah, blah, blah. All you need to know is that a simple plug-in unit can bump your diesel engine fuel economy beyond your expectations. Put the three systems together, exhaust, air, and computer, and you’ve pretty much got a hybrid you can take off-road as far as fuel economy goes. The drawback is that all this is going to cost you. Even purchasing yourself rather than from a shop is going to be prohibitive to accomplish all at once, so plan to do the work yourself, if you can. Otherwise, the key to getting great diesel truck fuel economy is to save up and have someone put the stuff on for you.
