When you ride a bike on your own you need to overcome wind resistance it accounts for about 80% of your effort @ 32kmh (20Mph). If you ride behind something that has already disturbed the air, then most of the air that you pass through is moving closer to your speed. The larger the object/s that you are following, the more air is disturbed and the less effort you will need to put in.
If over the road trucks had cruse control which would measure the distance and apply breaks and throttle to keep them safely 25 feet apart they should be able to achieve close to 40% decrease in fuel costs.
Once a highway vehicle has convoy-drafting capacity, trucks could safely take advantage of drafting. A new Interstate protocol could be needed to allow convoys to build in the left lane. The right lane for everything else. Entry, exit, brake downs etc. would all be in the right lane. To form a convoy vehicles would just dive up behind the vehicle ahead and lock on. To exit the convoy the driver would just move to the right lane and drop out.
Studies suggest upwards of 40 percent energy can be saved by drafting. This type of savings could translate into $16,000 per truck fuel savings.
The average 100-truck fleet consumes about 1666600 gallons every year. According to 1997 US ... 59% of all ground transportation diesel fuel consumed in the US. ...
16666 Fuel used per truck per year
40% Convoy Drafting fuel savings
6666.4 Total fuel gallons saved per year
3,000,000 US over the road truck fleet
19,999,200,000 Total US Fuel gallons saved
$2.50 Diesel cost per gallon
$49,998,000,000 Total Fuel cost savings per year
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