alt Hacker NewsThey absolutely do design trucks for aerodynamics. Fuel economy is a huge avenue of competition for semi trucks.
The reality is just that with the drive cycles and costs and tradeoffs of implementing all this it's not worth it to go this far.
Second, this sort of "round the whole thing" approach has mostly been replaced with "the simulation says we can do a 90/10 if we just do X, someone print up a block and toss it in the wind tunnel and see how it does" type approach so the result tends to be more surgical modifications and use of dead air and less "smooth out the whole thing with fairings".
> They absolutely do design trucks for aerodynamics
I know next to nothing about trucks, and vehicles in general, but something I've noticed, and probably everyone else, is that trucks in the US looks very different from trucks in Europe, it's very easy to identify which one is a US-like truck vs a Europe-like one, because of the shape of the "cab" or whatever that part is called.
So one design has to be clearly better than the alternative, given that aerodynamics works the same all around the world, but still the designs are uniquely... unique.
But why is it like this? If trucks were designed for aerodynamics, shouldn't one of the designs have "won" by now, or are they truly equal in terms of aerodynamics?