6 ms·

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 jus

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.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago
> The talk about being more powerful than gas is just a clever marketing ploy. You're saying horsepower and torque are just numbers used for marketing?
- majormajor 7y ago
  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.
  - OnlineGladiator 7y 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.
    - majormajor 7y ago
      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.
- lm28469 7y 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.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    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.
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      > higher max speeds are not useful on public roads. Not legal=/=not useful, unless you mean higher than what most nice cars can currently do.
      - filoleg 7y ago
        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.
      - toast0 7y ago
        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.
forwhomst 7y ago
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.
filoleg 7y ago
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.
- barrkel 7y ago
  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.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    >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.
davescrabs 7y ago
Not really. That's ICE-thinking where more powerful engines tend to be inherently less efficient for the application. A 5.0L V8 takes more power to spin the engine. It weighs a lot more. It requires a heaver transmission, etc. So having the ability to go very fast costs a lot in terms of efficiency. Electric doesn't work that way. A more powerful electric motor has a very similar efficiency to weaker one. It might be marginally heavier, but the weight impact is nothing compared to ICE. Having more available torque has almost no impact on efficiency / range. What does have an impact, which applies to both ICE and electric, is how the driver chooses to drive. When given the opportunity to use more power, the driver may choose to do so. However, then the question becomes: Should you sell what buyer's want? I think the main issue is a fast EV would make Mazda's ICE cars feel slow. When customers can't afford the EV, and are disappointed with the cars they can afford, Mazda is afraid they'll walk off the lot. By keeping the cars more similar they can make the ICE cars seem better.

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.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago

> The talk about being more powerful than gas is just a clever marketing ploy. You're saying horsepower and torque are just numbers used for marketing?

majormajor 7y ago
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.
- OnlineGladiator 7y 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.
  - majormajor 7y ago
    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.
lm28469 7y 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.
- filoleg 7y ago
  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.
  - ryanlol 7y ago
    > higher max speeds are not useful on public roads. Not legal=/=not useful, unless you mean higher than what most nice cars can currently do.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      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.
    - toast0 7y ago
      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.

forwhomst 7y ago

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.

filoleg 7y ago

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.

barrkel 7y ago
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.
- filoleg 7y ago
  >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.

davescrabs 7y ago

Not really. That's ICE-thinking where more powerful engines tend to be inherently less efficient for the application. A 5.0L V8 takes more power to spin the engine. It weighs a lot more. It requires a heaver transmission, etc. So having the ability to go very fast costs a lot in terms of efficiency. Electric doesn't work that way. A more powerful electric motor has a very similar efficiency to weaker one. It might be marginally heavier, but the weight impact is nothing compared to ICE. Having more available torque has almost no impact on efficiency / range. What does have an impact, which applies to both ICE and electric, is how the driver chooses to drive. When given the opportunity to use more power, the driver may choose to do so. However, then the question becomes: Should you sell what buyer's want? I think the main issue is a fast EV would make Mazda's ICE cars feel slow. When customers can't afford the EV, and are disappointed with the cars they can afford, Mazda is afraid they'll walk off the lot. By keeping the cars more similar they can make the ICE cars seem better.