Mazda tuned the acceleration of their EV to feel like a conventional car. That's probably good UX if your market target is first-time EV buyer's who aren't especially keen on zipping around. The author of the article criticizes the decision because it makes the car less fun, apparently unaware that many people aren't looking for fun in a car, and aren't interested in aggressive driving.
Not to mention, the acceleration profile of conventional cars is tuned to the characteristics the designers want, too, and they aren't all tuned for "fun".
It's about the missed metaphor. Before Tesla EV = not a car. Tesla proved EV can have a Ferrari like acceleration and hence EV = car. It isn't always about UX. Sometimes you have to prove another point which Tesla did. Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla so consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla. That was a major point in the buying decision of average consumers and probably is why the cybertruck looks as safe as a tank.
Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla so consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla.
Eight years of Nissan Leaf ownership, and the only comments I’ve ever gotten at lights were positive. Used to be my friend hated to go with me in the Leaf because every time I parked it, someone would chat me up for five minutes. Not so much anymore now that EVs are more common. Now, no one even looks at me. Fellow Leaf drivers don’t even wave anymore.
So I don’t know where that massive insecurity is coming from.
Years ago my dad was shopping around for a used car and was looking at a Cadillac sedan on a lot. The salesman knew him and came out and told dad that he couldn't afford a Cadillac. Dad told him that a $6000 Cadillac costs just as much as a $6000 Ford and then went and bought a Cadillac at another dealership.
It’s not that much of a racket to say that the 2nd most expensive thing a person will likely buy in their lives outside of a home should match the personality of the buyer. I mean, cmon.
This is also why Musk sent a team with a Model S (tri motor Plaid mode) to the Nurburgring track and built a Supercharger there. Appearance, status, and signaling matter to consumers. It’s not good enough to be good enough. Tesla has to show they can be the best choice (and arguably, they have shown that).
Exactly. Its also why Elon comes up with lines like a car driver is an elevator operator and owning a traditional ICE car is like owning a horse. This gives everybody the tools to effectually spread the word via word of mouth. It is an under appreciated part of technology marketing that is extremely important to make a product succeed. Hence that is the part Docker was got right.
Are you in a place where you can buy a hybrid Yaris? What is the difference between that and a Prius C? I used to think it was regrettable that Toyota wouldn't hybridize their cheapest most practical car in the US, but then I learned that the Prius C was the best selling car in Japan for a while, so I'm not sure whether we're missing out or not.
> Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla so consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla
Certain psychological profile of consumers. I personally couldn't care less about it and would never pay more to impress random strangers on traffic lights... and while I'm sure I'm a minority in this, I like to believe there's still a significant market niche occupied by people who're closer to my view than insecure 16 year olds'... so in my eyes this Mazda's move makes a lot of sense, they just don't target the same people as Elon Musk
Try driving an (electric) Smart in the US. At least in the Bay Area everyone looks at us like we're crazy and inevitably there's at least one person a week commenting something in the parking lot.
I generally, in my daily life, have more things to worry about than a couple of random people expressing their dislike of something myself or the people I live with, own. If you spend most of your time worrying about whether other people like your car you must have an extremely easy life and should absolutely donate a large percentage of your money to charities that help those who are not as well off as you.
I'm not. I'm supplementing my main point to address things that you have brought up. The actual goalpost hasn't moved. See:
- Why would you care about other people not liking it, if you like it.
- If you don't like it (i.e. it's someone else's), surely you have better things to care about with your time than what someone else thinks of a car that you didn't buy?
- Most people don't have the time or money to give a crap about what people think of their car, more than they do about things like fuel-efficiency and repair costs, so if your main concern is that other people don't like your car, you're very likely well-off enough to stand to donate that money to people who are actually worse off.
The first two are just two parts of the same argument, the third point was used to augment the second. You're the one who was moving the goalposts. See:
- The initial discussion was about the person buying the car (Your claim was originally "People buy Teslas because they get harassed less at traffic lights")
- I responded to that and you moved the goalposts to "People drive cars that they didn't buy" (Which is a valid point, hence why I responded, but not the subject of the original argument, because we were talking about the owner of the car).
Please don't move the goalposts and then accuse me of doing that?
> Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla
> consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla
That's a bit of a stretch. First of all, why would anybody in a supercar make fun of a Tesla, they're not aimed at the same market. Consumers feel perfectly safe to buy a Prius or Leaf and neither of those have Tesla like acceleration, and don't need it either.
People making fun of other people because of the vehicles they drive are just insecure.
If you really think that the acceleration characteristics of a vehicle is what sells your average car then you're mistaken, most people simply need transportation and don't want to do drag races in traffic.
> most people simply need transportation and don't want to do drag races in traffic.
It's true that most people need transportation, don't want to drag race, and a really just need simple A to B stuff.
BUUUUUT that's not how America works. See - most people in America don't buy things based on what they need. They buy based on what they want and what they want their image to represent. Ever heard the term mall crawler? It's the term used for vehicles that have a ton of off-road gear/capability but never see anything but a mall. What percentage do you think of off road capable vehicles (like a Jeep Wrangler) see off road duty? How many trucks do you think regularly tow anywhere near their max? How many use the bed? How often do people fill up their giant SUV with stuff/people? Same with sports cars. Same with a bunch of vehicles.
People almost never utilize their cars to their built potential. They use them as A to B. It's almost completely about image and desire.
The original Tesla roadsters are expensive. People buying at that price point are doing so for features beyond mere transportation.
Maybe you don’t want a drag race but all the luxury spending 80k new can give you. However Tesla isn’t very luxurious, so they better be fast in comparison.
Quick acceleration has safety benefits. Not all, but some consumers look for that.
I don’t know about the “average car”, I think the market is pretty segmented actually and different buyers make their choice based on different things.
But the opposite is true, too: They can't, because their vehicle is not capable of it. You don't need to be doing 60 MPH in 3 seconds, but being able to it in 5-6 is much better (for everyone) when merging onto highways.
Have you ever accurately measured the time it takes you to get to ~60mph "briskly" and "aggressively", and compared it to the theoretical capability of your car according to say Car & Driver? I suspect people of generally having an unrealistic idea of how much of the performance of their car they do and can use.
Also, you know, there are a lot of vehicles that are much slower than 10 seconds 0-60 on the roads, even though 10 seconds has become pretty much the maximum for late model cars in the US. Commercial vehicles aren't going to disappear or do 0-60 in 5 seconds even if they had the power.
Au contraire, I'd say there is an issue here (as someone who's both owned and raced BMWs and Mazdas in various series)
Mazda specifically markets themselves as fun to drive - the whole "zoom-zoom" thing
They put huge effort into making the driving dynamics both feel good and work well. Even the SUVs have a [Sport] mode toggle switch next to the shift lever that changes various shifting, suspension, and engine parameters for a different feel and performance profile.
It is no surprise that Mazda thought about this in depth and decided that the default should be to feel like a regular combustion engine/gearbox.
What is surprising, especially since it's available in other cars, is that that they do not seem to have included a Sport Mode, whereby a driver could access all the available performance.
Having both the default and sport mode would definitely make me more likely to consider the car, vs. the ICE-like mode only.
(also a bit surprising that the article never mentions asking Mazda about this option)
Agree on this one. This is probably more about Mazda's wanting to optimize the driving experience than about talking down EV's or pushing fuel cell as the author implies.
FTA: I know that Mazda likes to tune their cars for a specific driving feel, but I refuse to believe they couldn’t work the fun acceleration of EVs into their driving feeling.
Seems like they did exactly what the author is asking. Looking at Mazda's lineup, their core philosophy revolves around driver experience and feel (zoom-zoom) so it makes a lot of sense that they tune (down in this case) their EV's to match what they feel is the best experience for a car.
I don't know why that other post is dead. Having a "sport" mode that changes the acceleration profile for those few times when people really want it seems like a no-brainer solution here. It's entirely a software fix, and something people are already familiar with in cars.
True that software upgrades are a new paradigm exemplified by Tesla, but potentially also monetized (appified), so a skeptical person might think these add-on "features" will increasingly become ongoing revenue streams, as with our driving data, or privacy thereof.
Exactly. If someone is buying a compact CUV, they are probably looking for 4 doors, a hatchback, and a high ride height. Not really a vehicle that most people look to for fun.
Not to mention, reducing the torque output probably also saves a few electrons and extends the range a bit.
No. And the people looking to buy a compact crossover from Mazda are not looking for a fun car. In fact, no person looking for a fun car is looking at compact crossovers.
Last year when we were looking for a new car we considered a Mazda and were told by our salesman that Mazda didn’t have an EV because EVs were not fun to drive. And they would not sell an EV until it was fun. Their commitment to this idea was very awkward. I’m honestly not not bothered as much by their decision to tune the feel of t he e car: we do this in tech all the time, but I’m confused by the spin put on their decisions as in the name of “fun”: whose definition of fun? What metrics do they use to decide what’s fun? In this case it seems fun is “same as it already is,”
One of the big selling points of the Miata is it's light weight. Mazda has gone to pretty extreme lengths (for such a low priced car) to keep the weight down. A heavy battery wouldn't fit with that at all.
A battery is a range-weight tradeoff, so it is possible to get a light EV car; it'll just have shit range is all. While not ideal for the Miata as it still has to vaguely work like a commuter car, it's still a viable idea for a RX-derivative that leans more heavily into enthusiast territory like the Lotus Elise
I'd consider a range of about a hundred miles or so to be pretty good for a commuter car, and that should be a reasonably light battery (especially if the rest of the car is light). You'd need a large battery for road trips, and it seems reasonable that most people who would buy a Miata probably aren't using it for that.
I'm currently on my second one. The Miata is not a commuter car. It's is a weekend road trip car. It's easy to find one a few years old with low mileage. My first one was 5 years old with 27k.
Miata culture is a thing. Being a convertible is one aspect of it, but other attractions are the handling and how common manuals are. In every area I've lived, there's at least one active Miata club where members take group road trips on weekends. These trips are typically 150-250 miles up and down hills and curves. A 100 mile range on a Miata definitely would not sell.
Its funny you mention the RX series. I think an RX-8 like car with an electric drivetrain would actually be a lot of fun. It would weigh a few hundred pounds more, but the increase in torque and the low CG would mostly make up for it.
I'm actually working on an RX-8 conversion right now. AC motor (netgain hyper9), I'm keeping the transmission and clutch, lithium iron phosphate batteries under the car where the gas tank was and in the engine compartment.
I agree that it would be great if Mazda revived the RX-8 as an electric vehicle. Especially if they kept the stickshift.
Oh, that is an interesting project. I've been tempted to do something similar with an older Miata, especially after seeing a pretty decent conversion of one using Leaf packs.
The RX-8 would be much more complex, IMO, but I bet it would be a lot of fun to drive as an electric.
Are you blogging about your efforts somewhere? I'd love to follow them.
No, I'm not blogging about it. I might write something up eventually.
A Miata would likely have been an easier conversion, and it's probably what I should have done, though a convertible is kind of a tough sell when you live in Oregon and with RX-8s you can get a pretty recent car for not much money. (RX-8s with engine problems that no one wants to spend the money to fix are quite common.)
One thing to be careful of is weight balance. I'm told that if you have too much weight in the back, it makes the car a lot less safe in corners because it's easier to recover from front-wheel slip, whereas if the rear wheels break loose first you'll probably spin out.
So far, making battery boxes seems to be the biggest/most awkward task. I've never done welding before, and so I'm learning aluminum TIG welding. It took awhile to get the hang of it, but it's going alright now.
The selling point of the Miata is the handling. If they can re-create the agility (cornering) of the internal combustion Miata, the weight is secondary.
The agility can only be done with a fine tunning of weight vs power. Mazda Miata sacrifices pure power, and thus max speed, to get "fun". If you add weight to a car you get more inertia, killing the handling and the fun.
This is know since forever. Read the history of Karajan and his Porsche. He wanted a fun and sporty car tailored to him, but he didn't ask for more power. He requested less weight, and they even removed the radio, the back seats and the door handlers to get there.
The only way to get the cornering and fun of the ICE Miata is to get a EV Miata that weights about the same. Then get the 50%/50% weight distribution (this is easy with EV) and there you go.
I'm waiting for it... hopefully when it does arrive it doesn't have all the touchscreen and autonomous/surveillance b.s. that seems to have become prevalent in EVs.
I think surveillance either via passive black box logging or active cellular reporting is the new normal going forward.
From a liability perspective it's a no brainier for companies. It also affords them a lot of valuable data from an actuarial perspective with regards to supply chain, warranty, and maintenance.
For the consumer the benefits are negligible, especially when that information is held private to the manufacturer.
Most EVs have at least 2 modes you can configure. Many ICE vehicles have similar modes.
The Nissan Leaf has an "Eco" button that changes the acceleration curve and some models have a Hill Mode toggle on the Shifter that affects the regenerative braking characteristics.
Yes, charges last longer and the battery degrades slower with lower peak discharges. The same with charging too, though, but most people want to charge as fast as possible.
Agree. Also, if you click through to the underlying article where the quote comes from you find that Mazda engineers were being very conscious of the total environmental impact when designing their EV. (Let's set aside their claim about the EV vs. diesels for now). Keeping people from spending an enormous number of electrons to accelerate a bit quicker falls within this design philosophy. Even that that isn't the reason quoted in the article, I bet it was a factor.
It would be mistaken for these engineers to think that something that leads people to pass on their offering and instead choose an ICE car would be better for environmental impact.
Better acceleration may use more power, but if it means people buy EVs instead of ICE cars, then it is helping the goal.
I am surprised no one has mentioned it yet. The mostly likely reason for doing so is insurance.
By modelling it after some very good "Zoom Zoom" Mazda driving characteristic, there is a higher probability it might fall into similar profile for insurance.
One of the problem with Tesla is its fast acceleration dramatically increases its rate of accident. To the point where some insurance company are no longer accepting it and Tesla had to insure it on their own.
Crazy talk. Cars can have software controlled settings? Maybe you could start a car company and name it after a famous inventor or something. This seems like a real idea.
Yeah. I don't understand why this article was written with a negative tone.
There's been a number of high-end EV crashes documented where they've rammed into homes and businesses, while it's unknown if they're sudden unintended acceleration issues I think it's great to hear other manufacturers are likely considering the human factors issues.
Well, if average human reaction time is a significant portion of the time it take for a car to get to 60 mph, then it would be hard to see why accidents wouldn't increase. Your foot slips and at least the car is totalled. It's not like high powered gas cars and motorcycles don't have this problem, with people who are not 80 and senile. People make jokes about Mustangs crashing at Cars & Coffee. People make videos of idiots in Lamborghinis crashing because they tried to do a burnout.
Make it a simple setting users can activate... Tesla's default is full power acceleration, but you can toggle it to be really sedate. Mazda could have easily done that. More proof how far traditional auto manufacturers are behind Tesla. Tesla is a software company that happens to make cars. Mazda is a car company that has to write software.
> That's probably good UX if your market target is first-time EV buyer's
The F-150 FX4 truck I'm driving lately has a "sport mode" that completely changes the character of the acceleration and the "pedal feel" when driving. Why couldn't Mazda do the same thing?
> many people aren't looking for fun in a car, and aren't interested in aggressive driving.
I feel like those two factors aren't actually mutually inclusive.
> cars is tuned to the characteristics the designers want,
Why does that have to be the case? We allow customization and control of every other device in our lives, why not EV cars?
0-60 in 9 seconds is not only terrible, it is dangerous. Despite what state rules are regarding merging onto freeways/highways/tollways/etc., a car really should be doing the speed of the other cars on the road at the merge point, otherwise all kinds of bad things can and do happen. I drive a lot, and the pokey cars merging are terrible for everyone involved at the point of merging.
>0-60 in 9 seconds is not only terrible, it is dangerous.
This is a downright laughable statement.
My car does 0-100 km/h in about 8-9 seconds. Plenty fast. In fact, I'm not really encountering any road users that accelerate faster than I do. No issues with merging, no issues with overtakes, nothing.
Here's someone joining the Autobahn with the same engine and gearbox as me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUiXwbbITGQ Please watch and observe at how undramatic this whole thing is.
No issues you're aware of. I see a lot of blithely self-unaware tailgaters who seem to fear hanging back because (I guess, from personal experience not as a tailgater but as someone who has driven ICE cars) that they'll have trouble catching up again if they give a little space.
Nobody accelerates at the rate their car is theoretically capable of in normal driving, except maybe passing at high speed. I don't like it when somebody merges on the highway at 45 mph, but it has absolutely nothing to do with their ability to accelerate. Any car that can do 0-60 in ten seconds can go over 100 mph.
Yeah, no issues with my speed. Again, if I'm accelerating faster than pretty much anyone on the road, the problem isn't my car's acceleration.
Also, no one on the roads has any trouble catching up. The reason why people tailgate is because they're annoyed by people driving slowly (while possible still at the speed limit) in front of them.
I get annoyed by people driving slowly, but tailgating does not help in any way, shape, or form. Because I can jump forward and pass them considerately, leaving ample space, when there is a chance, even from 10 car lengths back. Because of fast acceleration that is available even at speed.
It's not the catching up that's a problem. The problem is being to catch up while the dynamic, temporary, window in traffic is still open.
Were I to be driving a slow ICE car, that option of passing would not be available at all in many traffic windows that appear, because I wouldn't be able to close the n-car-length distance. This leads some people to tailgate, or follow more closely than they otherwise would, for various values of closely, because they are clinging to that hope of getting through a temporary window in traffic at some point.
(Setting aside the other less practical reason for tailgating, simple aggression / macho signaling).
You sound like you're talking about passing on a rural two lane highway, but it's not clear. That's when acceleration seems like an advantage, but it's pretty hazardous no matter what. You might hit a deer regardless.
9 seconds is plenty. The issue is that most drivers in those cars don't floor it to get onto onramps. So, 0-60 goes from 9 seconds to 20-30 seconds because they just refuse to push the pedal down further.
> 0-60 in 9 seconds is not only terrible, it is dangerous.
No. I drive a 2001 Ford focus automatic. It's only 4 gears, has a torque converter and driven by a 100BHP engine. On paper, it's a sluggish car.
The gearbox has two kickdown modes. Give throttle a gentle push and it shifts down (interpreting we need to go faster) but, if you floor it, the gearbox quickly kickdowns until engine near-redlines, engine program changes to beast mode and the acceleration becomes unbelievable. I had used the feature a couple of times involuntarily and it literally saved my life.
0-60 in 9 seconds is not terrible. Not adding required emergency features is.
I don't think people generally understand horsepower, even a lot of people who think they know about cars and maybe think they know the basic math and equations.
It's a bit simplistic, but if your engine puts out a reasonably constant amount of torque over different RPMs, then horsepower is proportional to RPM. If you have 100 peak HP, and a similar figure for torque it implies you have that horsepower at over 5000 rpm. So if you are accelerating moderately and your engine is turning maybe 2000 rpm, then it's only making 40% of the peak power, which in this case is 40 hp.
Say you had 300 hp, but you don't rev to 5K - you'd be aware of how it feels and think 100 hp is nothing - but you are getting barely more than that at 2K.
I actually have a newish car with 300 hp and an old one with about 150, and so from experience, the difference in power is very misleading, because the low powered car is usually running at twice the RPM on the highway, whereas the high powered one has an automatic transmission that really doesn't like to downshift. So it doesn't feel especially powerful unless you force it to rev.
Now and then I read an article about a car from roughly the late 70s, early 80s, when it appeared most cars made a ridiculously low amount of power. People say "wow, that big V-8 only made 200 hp" (or something like that). But comparing it with the torque figure should make it clear that if you compare it to a modern engine at a given, low RPM it's going to be much closer. They simply didn't produce torque and power at high RPMs. People like to talk about engines with low end torque, but in my opinion, there's no such thing - only engines that don't have high end torque.
This is easily possible with a 9 second 0-60 if the on ramps are built properly. I have a Ford Fiesta, and it's lucky to hit 0-60 in 9 seconds. I always make sure I'm at highway speed before I merge.
If you're driving fast enough (or are inattentive enough) that you can't stop (or even slow down) for any reasonably expected obstacle then that's completely on you, and you need to slow down.
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted so much. Acceleration that is too slow can be very dangerous (my old girlfriend had a junker that couldn't get up to speed quickly and almost got rear ended a few times) and also disruptive to the flow of traffic. The more efficiently a car can flow through lanes (i.e. merging farther left on the highway without having the next car have to brake for you) can reduce traffic.
What do you do about the delivery trucks? The tour buses? The semi trailers hauling backhoes? Are you looking forward to a brave new world in which all of them do 0-60 in 5 seconds?
When I was a kid Porsche made a car that did 0-60 in ten seconds. And Suzuki I think bragged about how their hatchback could do it in 8 or 9 and compared themselves to Porsche.
Mazda tuned the acceleration of their EV to feel like a conventional car. That's probably good UX if your market target is first-time EV buyer's who aren't especially keen on zipping around. The author of the article criticizes the decision because it makes the car less fun, apparently unaware that many people aren't looking for fun in a car, and aren't interested in aggressive driving.
Not to mention, the acceleration profile of conventional cars is tuned to the characteristics the designers want, too, and they aren't all tuned for "fun".