3 ms·
> it's in the range of the sort of power that a high-end electric car motor might draw ... for a very brief period of time. Please don't use horsepower as a
by octoberfranklin 6y ago
> it's in the range of the sort of power that a high-end electric car motor might draw
... for a very brief period of time.
Please don't use horsepower as a measure of electrical power, it's misleading. All the stuff around us that is commonly measured in horsepower is fossil-fuel-burning equipment with fossil-fuel-levels of energy density at any given cost point. They make hard things seem easy because they don't have to be rechargeable.
- elihu 6y agoWhy not? One horsepower is about 746 watts. That's a useful way to compare things sometimes. (Though with the caveat that gas engines generally have horsepower ratings that reflect maximum power, often in an RPM range that you don't normally use in everyday use. Thus an 200 horsepower electric motor might often out-perform a 300 horsepower gas engine, because the former generally has maximum torque from zero RPM whereas the latter has to be in an optimal RPM band. Also the gas engine at the same time produces about 2x or 3x its mechanical power in heat.) With electric motors it seems to be at least fairly common to refer to an electric motor's mechanical power output in kilowatts rather than horsepower. In a lot of ways that makes sense, but horsepower is a unit that more people are familiar with.