There was a discussion the other day about this on another forum. One of the posters posted a spreadsheet that did some calculations to determine the HP needed to do a certain grade at a certain speed with a specified mass.  Being the geek that I am, I converted that spreadsheet into a little web application to make it easy to play with some numbers. The web calculator is located here - Horsepower Worksheet

I can not attest as to the accuracy of the computations, as I took them directly from the spreadsheet. It is, however, cool to see how the different factors determine how much energy is needed.


--kev

Check the CAT RV web site and you find a very interesting article for download. It covers many of the same details and provides several good examples of what might be enough horse power.

CAT paper on understanding Coach/RV needs

Mike

-- Edited by mikeway at 17:37, 2007-10-01