The U.S. Military's Diesel-Powered Pickups Don't Bother with Emissions Equipment | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. Military's Diesel-Powered Pickups Don't Bother with Emissions Equipment

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19 pointsjosephcsible14 comments

Should mandate EVs with swappable battery packs.

Also, the US mil is notorious for wreaking ecological havoc and environmental disasters, and poisoning enlisted personnel. (Ask my dad how that Agent Orange exposure was on the flight line.) This is par for the course.

> This is par for the course

While I won't disagree (lost an Uncle to Agent Orange related cancer), it makes sense that the military won't run these vehicles with extra emissions equipment on them. Besides not being suited to running JP8 fuel, the mechanisms just aren't mature yet. The reliability isn't up to par and it wouldn't do to have vehicles hit a regen cycle or enter limp mode at a bad time.

I predict a huge premium on these vehicles once they reach the used civilian market.

There is non-trivial chance that once these enter the civilian market (say, via a government auction), there will be a requirement for the buyer to add the emissions control components back.

There is a 100% chance that either they will never enter the civilian market, or the deleted emissions parts will be un-deleted.

They will never be street legal in the USA (non DOT-approved), emissions controls or no.

When people buy these things they normally never leave the farm.

Vehicles over 25 years old are approved, no emissions requirement.

(Though some states are stopping it)

They usually have to remove the weapon systems and electronic counter-measures. usually.

Just like whole state of Oklahoma and many more.

This is game theoretic inevitable, as the first one to implement is at a disadvantage in battle.

Tl;dr: The military requires that its diesel vehicles be able to run on jet fuel to simplify logistics.

The US military is a logistics organization that occasionally happens to project power.

Yup coming to post this. JP-8 is the primary fuel used in military vehicles and is kerosene based.

But, the military does maintain stocks of DF-2 (the diesel you get at the station) for many COTS vehicles.

If I remember correctly, most commercial diesels can run on JP-8. But you can’t mix-and-match.

You can run normal diesel engines on kerosene (which is what jet fuel mostly is); the issue is that kerosene is less lubricating to the mechanical parts in the fuel-delivery system than pump diesel. This was a bigger issue back when mechanical injection was the rule. The solution is to pour a pint or two of automatic transmission fluid into the tank with every thirty gallon fill up.

Of course, the EGR, SCR & particulate filter were never designed for this setup, so when you convert a modern pickup to run on kerosene, those systems are blocked off, removed (w/ a sawzall for the dpf), a new exhaust is fitted and the ECU can be remapped with more appropriate settings.

This will also about double your mpg.

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