Weight Reduction for better FE

[Blue Bomber Man]

Adding weight for increasing gas mileage is foolishness I am sorry to say.

Yes it may increase your coasting distance, but there is no free lunch. You invested energy into your car earlier when you accelerated, and since nothing in a car even comes close to 100% efficient you MUST be losing energy.

Additionally, someone mentioned rolling resistance. Rolling resistance is a unitless value and this becomes obvious when calculating the force caused by this. To calculate force due to rolling resistance you do this: Rolling resistance X weight. So if you increase weight, you must be increasing the force of resistance related to rolling resistance.


It is ALWAYs beneficial to reduce weight in vehicle for performance. Only reason weight is useful at all is for downforce so your tires stick, which coincedently the less mass your car has, the less downforce you need.