I don't drive an electric car but my first thought was that, wouldn't this extend the battery range as well? The talk about being more powerful than gas is just a clever marketing ploy.
It does, yes. I always drive my electric Honda in its "eco mode", which only changes the response to throttle position. I get noticeably more range in that mode. In the "sport mode" it will just about rip the axles off at the slightest provocation, and the range is much worse.
I am not sure if I understood your comment correctly, in case not, feel free to correct.
A torque in an electric car is imo “a marketing ploy” only until a person thinking that actually tries one of those cars. I can assure you that even the cheapest model 3 has acceleration and torque that feels insane compared to any gas car I have ever tried (including stuff like a new Mustang GT with a V8).
You dont need to be into cars at all to feel the massive difference, it isn’t like an audiophile thing where you have to be into it to be able to tell the small differences. The best comparison i can give you is that if you press the pedal all the way, your head jerks back and your stomach gets that exact same physical feeling you would get on a dropping rollercoaster.
Sidenote: same thing with electric motorcycles btw. Even gas motorcycles already have really fast acceleration comparable to some electric cars, but an electric motorcycle is something else. Test drove a Zero recently, and the difference between it and a gas bike felt just as massive as going from a gas car to an electric car. Almost like a personal low-speed teleportation device.
That's probably just an illusion with respect to electric motorcycles. All high-performance motorcycles have way more than enough torque to overwhelm the traction of their one little tire. They are _all_ "artificially slower" because the launch controls are trying to keep the rubber on the road. You'll note that the fastest production electric motorcycle is near the bottom of this list:
Have you ridden aggressively tuned bikes like MV Agusta's Brutale?
I ask because I used to own a Brutale (I recently switched to an S1000R), and I noticed a guy on a Zero at a traffic light one day on my commute; he was fast enough off the line, but his shoulders got no more than 50cm or so ahead of me before he was behind me - I never saw the back of his bike.
My Brutale 920 had ~40hp less than my S1000R, but it felt faster in some ways because it had more jerk - the acceleration kicked in sooner. I kept doing accidental wheelies off the line the first week I owned it.
The S1000R is faster overall, but due to its smoothness, ride by wire throttle etc. it needs to be treated harshly with bigger throttle inputs to get the same feeling of responsiveness. I write this because it's not just a gas bike's power, but design choices that affect how fast it feels.
>Have you ridden aggressively tuned bikes like MV Agusta's Brutale?
No, I should've specified that the bikes I usually ride are all around 600cc and below. I am totally aware that the discrepancy between top tier ICE motorcycles and electric ones isn't as massive as between top tier ICE cars and electric ones.
I have a CB600F Hornet too, for commuting in less pleasant weather, and smaller engines need handfuls of clutch slip and screaming in lower gears to be responsive. Which of course I apply since I'm used to more shove.
And thus I'm thinking about trading it in for something with more torque, as the screaming is less interesting to me and exposes more vibrations especially in older bikes. Could go either way with that (big engine or electric); though I have an inkling it might be worthwhile seeing what plug in scooters are available. Or if the cycle lane assault on road space continues in London, the fastest electric bike I can find.
Most high-spec IC motorcycles are already twitchy enough to turn most people into organ donors. I can't imagine riding one with the instant torque of a motor, that's just insane
Right, I've experienced being a passenger in a Tesla. It's impressive but completely unnecessary to go get some groceries.
Doing jackrabbit starts and stops on normal roads is going to have an impact to your mileage, just as if it was a regular ICE vehicle. Limiting the motor will lead to better mileage/range which then leads to a better customer impression when evaluating cars for purchase.
Casually dropping "It's so awesomely powerful, we had to put in restrictions for comfort" is straight up marketing speak to cover the tradeoff of 0-60 and battery range.
It's been that way for a while. Horsepower and torque numbers on mainstream vehicles - let alone "performance" cars regularly pushing out 500+hp now - lost much practical relevance to 99% of road driving situations even for "sporty" drivers about a decade ago.
> lost much practical relevance to 99% of road driving situations
You don't buy a sports car to drive to the grocery store unless it's a status symbol (which is likely the great majority of sports car owners). But there are plenty of people that still like to actually take their cars to the track. I know because I'm one of them.
The majority of people that want a nicer car to drive around the suburbs will opt for luxury over sporty, because the Porsche GT2 RS is really not comfortable for daily driving. However, the Audi A8 is incredibly luxurious and very enjoyable for anyone that isn't in a hurry.
If you really think nobody buys a Tesla because of the acceleration, then you don't know that many Tesla drivers. I personally know at least 3 people who bought a Tesla because it was cheaper than buying a supercar for the same 0-60 time.
They're taking their Teslas (or hypothetical supercars) to the track?
> You don't buy a sports car to drive to the grocery store unless it's a status symbol (which is likely the great majority of sports car owners).
You seem to agree on the core thing there: status symbol. Marketing. Gotta pump out bigger numbers to protect the status. Look at M or AMG cars now vs 30 years ago.
No one in the world _needs_ to do 0-60 in less than 5 seconds in a family car/public roads. These perfs aren't even sustainable more than a few times in a row so it 100% is a marketing thing.
It isnt about max speed, in which case i would agree with you, higher max speeds are not useful on public roads.
More acceleration is always beneficial in cases where you have to perform a safety maneuver or evade something.
Imagine, you are going in the leftmost lane, there is a car a bit too close to you behind (but still fine), in front of you there are no cars, but you aren’t speeding up because speed limits (and you just want to go at a comfortable pace). Someone in the lane to the right isn’t paying attention and trying to merge right into you, you honk, but it will be too late to react for the offending driver. Your only escape here in a slow acceleration car is to break and cause the car behind you to rear-end you, causing a collision and tons of potential injuries. In a car with fast acceleration, you can quickly speed up and that car will (recklessly) merge, all while avoiding an accident.
And that’s not even talking about stuff like avoiding something on the road or stuff falling out of a truck bed in front of you or just absolutely any kind of an avoidance safety maneuver.
> More acceleration is always beneficial in cases where you have to perform a safety maneuver or evade something.
That's what people want to believe but unless you have been trained by professional chances are more acceleration = more risks 99.9% of the time. In your example you can very easily go from being victim of an accident to being at fault in an accident you caused.
> And that’s not even talking about stuff like avoiding something on the road or stuff falling out of a truck bed in front of you or just absolutely any kind of an avoidance safety maneuver.
If something is in front of you acceleration is not really a concern. You either need good brakes or very agile car coupled with extremely good reaction time.
It's as simple as asking yourself if roads would be a safer place if everyone had a Nissan gtr.
Isnt left lane for overtaking usually? Just speed up a bit and merge to right.
And safe driving style (keep your distance) would save you from falling stuff much better than car that does 0-60 in 4 seconds.
Ok, fine, let me tune my example to be a bit more specific. You are not in the leftmost lane, you are in the middle one, but there is someone directly to the left of you, so you cannot safely swerve to the left.
Most of my vehicles have been able to do more than 100 mph on the highway, but I don't know how useful that actually is. There's just very few times it is reasonable and prudent to drive that fast in California.
At least in Europe we’ve got a plenty of highways where you can reasonably go past 120mph as long as you use the GPS to preemptively slow down for merging traffic.
Of course, this will certainly not be viable during the typical commute hours.
oh no, I agree with you. I was just responding to the parent, cause they seemed to imply that the max speed hype is of very limited use on the roads, with which I agree, as opposed to acceleration.
