What other companies is RMI helping to find innovative ways to save energy?
Wal-Mart, for example, is leading the national-and indeed global-transition to doubling the efficiency of heavy trucks, eighteen-wheelers. They are highly motivated, because they are going to make billions of dollars in cost reduction out of those trucks. Every mile per gallon by which they improve their heavy-truck fleet drops $42 million a year to their bottom line. Just for starters, they have announced that they require of their suppliers double-efficiency trucks. That means going from six and a half miles per gallon to 13. So six and a half times $42 million a year adds up to billions of dollars over time. What’s a double-efficiency truck? It looks roughly the same, but it has better aerodynamics. It might have skirts over the wheels, it will have more efficient tires, it has certain other sculpted devices for streamlining airflow, over and around the truck, and it may use some modestly lighter construction so that you can haul more payload in the same truck if it’s weight-limited
