5 ms·

"cornering performance is atrocious" Weight in corners hurts you in terms of acceleration out (which is not a problem for Tesla) and by the turning force requi

by elif 5y ago

"cornering performance is atrocious" Weight in corners hurts you in terms of acceleration out (which is not a problem for Tesla) and by the turning force required to change the momentum direction. BUT that weight also gets you increased downforce and traction, regardless of aero performance at the time. You can essentially treat your car like it has an F1 wing that never stalls. The result is 5000lb which breaks the four-door nurburgring record.

TacticalCoder 5y ago
Indeed. And one of the reason EVs like Teslas and the Porsche Taycan corner so well even though they're incredibly heavy is also that their center of gravity is so low, due to the batteries being at the bottom of the car.
- quantumsolace 5y ago
  Indeed not. We've been putting engines mid-bay since at least the 60s. If you want to compare this Tesla or the Taycan fairly, you have to compare it to a mid-engined car. Like the Corvette C8 (The C7 vette's record's better than either EV anyway, but I digress) Low center of gravity is good, but no one would add dead weight just to lower the CoM. Stiffen up the springs and the lighter car is ahead by a lot. [EDIT] Also, we've had boxer engines in race cars since at least the 40s.
Thev00d00 5y ago
Ah, this explains why they put that lead weight into F1 cars!
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  These days they don't use lead, but mostly tungsten[1] or more exotic materials. [1]: https://www.auto123.com/en/racing-news/f1-technique-the-secrets-of-ballast-in-a-formula-1-car https://www.auto123.com/en/racing-news/f1-technique-the-secr...
- quantumsolace 5y ago
  No. OP is completely wrong and has zero understanding of car dynamics. They put weights in F1 cars to get them to the regulated minimum weight. Car (dry weight I believe) + driver + weight > minimum. There is no advantage to adding dead weight in a car. The disadvantage can be minimized by using very dense metals that minimize their impact on the car's moment of inertia.
  - elif 5y ago
    I'm wrong? I said "Weight in corners hurts you in terms of acceleration out and by the turning force required to change the momentum direction." You are twisting my words to say that i'm arguing weight is a benefit, which is an easier argument for you to attack.... My point is that a low center of gravity and higher downforces are positive influences on a car. The increased weight can be OVERCOME in race duration by using this downforce and by the exceptional performance of motors over engines. Oh look... I made my point without resorting to a reddit attack on your character.
    - sbakzbsmx 5y ago
      “My point is that a low center of gravity and higher downforces are positive influences on a car.“ You dont add mass just to lower CoM. And downforce from added mass sucks: the downforce, Fn = mg, from weight cancels out Slam on the breaks. Traction is F = u m g. acceleration is F/m = a M cancels out so weight doesnt help you. It appears to come out even though. Except it doesnt cancel out. Traction scales sub linearly. So your stopping times go up. Same thing for every part of the track. Corner? Turning torque is proportional to mass. Traction is sub linear to mass. Acceleration in a straight? Power is constant wrt mass so accel is inverse proportional to mass. And to all of this you have to add the aero effect which add to mass downforce and aren’t proportional to mass. So traction becomes: Ff = u(Fn) = u(mg + kv^2) For high speeds v^2 dominates so Ff is constant with m so: A = Ff/m. Or acceleration is inversely proportional to mass for any driver action.
      - elif 5y ago
        Throwaways are rampant on arguing against strawmen... Hmmm... No one has argued that a heavier car will go faster. I am arguing that because the weight is low it handles better than a car of the same mass with ICE distribution of weight. I'm arguing that because the weight is not 'just to lower CoM' but instead 'to allow insane amounts of rapid energy release' the NET RESULT is something ICE can not accomplish. Another throwaway account mentioned the Panamera turbo S beat the plaid by 5.7 seconds on the nordschliefe... Ignoring the fact that the plaid was carrying 90% too much battery for the circuit, the ICE was not carrying excess fuel, and that the 'ICE' is actually a hybrid and the identical car (Panamera turbo) without electric power was another 5 seconds slower than plaid /despite/ fueling down. Also your friction force purism ignores that the behaviour of a car at it's limits has a huge effect on how the driver can drive the circuit. A heavy EV with low CoM can be driven at or near the limit of traction without risking an F1 style spinout when tires chirp. If you've driven a Tesla you know how difficult it is to get off it's turning line.
- elif 5y ago
  I know you're being sarcastic but they used to put the added weights in downforce-benefiting places such as the nose but they are now required to have 80kg in the seat + driver so the weight was forced to move there for regulation practicality.
shartacct 5y ago
> Weight in corners hurts you in terms of acceleration out (which is not a problem for Tesla) and by the turning force required to change the momentum direction. The acceleration is drastically degraded once the battery is hot. > The result is 5000lb which breaks the four-door nurburgring record. They broke the record for production EVs, not for all four door cars. In a test that was also officiated by Tesla themselves, so not very credible. In 2017 a Civic type R could do a faster lap time than Plaid does in 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YSjItQneNM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YSjItQneNM&feature=youtu.be
- elif 5y ago
  Check the times they got 7:30 bone stock beating the 7:40 of heavily modified and weight reduced Renault Mégane RS Trophy-R You might be confusing 4-door with 4WD? Also yes performance is lower when the battery isn't topped up, but "degraded" is a bit dramatic. It's less significant than, say, tire-wear. In formula E practice sessions they gradually adjust how much charge is available, only enabling 250kW at the end of the session. In NY P1 this year, the best time on "low power" was 1m08.988s, and the best time on full power was 1'08.472 Half of the grid ended below 'the low power' fast lap
  - shartacct 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N%C3%BCrburgring_Nordschleife_lap_times#Production/street-legal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N%C3%BCrburgring_Nords... Plaid gets beat by unmodified ICEs that are 1/5th the price.
    - elif 5y ago
      And which of these 2 DOOR vehicles are you claiming is cheaper than plaid, let alone 1/5?
      - shartacct 5y ago
        Every corvette and camaro on that list, for starters. There's several 4 door cars faster than plaid on there too, not sure why you'd bother trying to move that goalpost.
foepys 5y ago
> The result is 5000lb which breaks the four-door nurburgring record. Tesla, again, twisted everything into their favor here, so they could market themselves better than they are. According to the official Nürburgring Record Database, Tesla only beat SUVs and compact cars (Audi RS3). All other ICEs were a lot faster than the Plaid. Even a Porsche Panamera Turbo S, which is a 4-door sedan. 1: https://www.nuerburgring.de/info/nuerburgring/records https://www.nuerburgring.de/info/nuerburgring/records
quantumsolace 5y ago
Let me quote my Math Phys professor: "You're utterly and completely wrong." Let's assume we're talking about acceleration due to change of direction, or braking (since for increasing speed weight is obviously a disadvantage you simply decided to disregard) The force required to change car's direction due to change of direction or braking is proportional to weight. F = m*a Therefore (1) a = F/m The expression for the turning torque is similar To a first order approximation the maximum traction force available to a car is proportional to the normal force (2) Ff = u Fg = u m g Where Fg is force of gravity, and Ff is maximum force of traction. So, it appears that the mass cancels out. It doesn't: 1. there's the fact that Coloum's law of friction is incorrect, especially for rubber. That's why race cars have wide tyres. 2. aerodynamic downforce is independent of weight. So my expression (2) is wrong. Ff = u* (m*g + k*v^2) Where k has all the information about lift. As you can see mass no longer cancels out. As mass increases the force required to change direction increases proportionally, but the traction force available stays roughly the same. But it gets worse. Let's say we ignore aerodynamics and assume Coloumb's law of friction (hahahahaha), largely your scenario In comparing two cars, one double in mass than the other, the heavier car will wear out tires more quickly (since they're subject to double the loads). The heavier car will run the breaks hotter and be more prone to fading. There is nothing good about added mass for the dynamics of a car. Nothing.*
- elif 5y ago
  No... the forces required to change a car's direction are friction forces on the tires reaching their limits.... your space calculations dont really mean much unless you are trying to build a rocketship.
  - sbakzbsmx 5y ago
    … he literally wrote Columb’s expression for frictional forces. Then pointed out that that expression overstates the amount of traction that weight gives you What rules of physics do you propose we use? Ones where dead weight makes you faster? In the ideal case weight cancels out. But it doesn't, it forces you to take corners slower. But hey, if you don't believe the math, watch an F1 race how the lap times drop and tyre life extends as they use up their fuel.
quantumsolace 5y ago
Can't edit my original answer any more, but I just wanted to state that: - I think every proposition (not just sentence) of this comment is wrong. - Tesla, not only didn't break the lap record (they only broke the EV record) which is ridiculous, but the Ring is probably the best suited lap for an EV: large track with mostly long straights or gentle curves. Try breaking the lap record at Suzuka.[1] - Even if Tesla had the record, a single lap is hardly a fair comparison to a Ferrari or a McLaren. The Tesla couldn't do 30 laps before taking 4 hours to recharge. Those ICE cars are raced in LeMans 24. That's 24 hr. straight of driving. I'd love to see a Tesla compete in that. [1] Full respect to the Ring - see Rush's explanation for it in the link bellow. But the Ring Niki did in under 7 minutes [2] in the 1970s is not the ring of today, and the prime difficulty of the Ring is that it's so long that a. Weather conditions are different around the track b. No driver can really learn the track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyIrLKgbbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyIrLKgbbA [2] Niki's record still stands today because the original, much longer, ring is no longer.
- elif 5y ago
  "No driver can really learn the track" you cannot be serious... I've done nordschliffe over a hundred times in simulator... every corner is memorized... i'm not even amateur let alone professional I'm also waiting for someone to find a faster 4 door time, my original comment that everyone is ignoring to teardown a strawman "fastest car ever" argument no one made
  - foepys 5y ago
    > I'm also waiting for someone to find a faster 4 door time, my original comment that everyone is ignoring to teardown a strawman "fastest car ever" argument no one made Didn't you read my previous comment? Porsche Panamera Turbo S is the answer, just look at the official Nordschleife Records Database. Tesla Plaid: 7:35.579 Porsche Panamera Turbo S: 7:29.81 The Porsche did it in 2020, Tesla in 2021. The Porsche is also a 4 door car.
    - elif 5y ago

by elif 5y ago

TacticalCoder 5y ago

Indeed. And one of the reason EVs like Teslas and the Porsche Taycan corner so well even though they're incredibly heavy is also that their center of gravity is so low, due to the batteries being at the bottom of the car.

quantumsolace 5y ago
Indeed not. We've been putting engines mid-bay since at least the 60s. If you want to compare this Tesla or the Taycan fairly, you have to compare it to a mid-engined car. Like the Corvette C8 (The C7 vette's record's better than either EV anyway, but I digress) Low center of gravity is good, but no one would add dead weight just to lower the CoM. Stiffen up the springs and the lighter car is ahead by a lot. [EDIT] Also, we've had boxer engines in race cars since at least the 40s.

Thev00d00 5y ago

Ah, this explains why they put that lead weight into F1 cars!

magicalhippo 5y ago
These days they don't use lead, but mostly tungsten[1] or more exotic materials. [1]: https://www.auto123.com/en/racing-news/f1-technique-the-secrets-of-ballast-in-a-formula-1-car https://www.auto123.com/en/racing-news/f1-technique-the-secr...
quantumsolace 5y ago
No. OP is completely wrong and has zero understanding of car dynamics. They put weights in F1 cars to get them to the regulated minimum weight. Car (dry weight I believe) + driver + weight > minimum. There is no advantage to adding dead weight in a car. The disadvantage can be minimized by using very dense metals that minimize their impact on the car's moment of inertia.
- elif 5y ago
  I'm wrong? I said "Weight in corners hurts you in terms of acceleration out and by the turning force required to change the momentum direction." You are twisting my words to say that i'm arguing weight is a benefit, which is an easier argument for you to attack.... My point is that a low center of gravity and higher downforces are positive influences on a car. The increased weight can be OVERCOME in race duration by using this downforce and by the exceptional performance of motors over engines. Oh look... I made my point without resorting to a reddit attack on your character.
  - sbakzbsmx 5y ago
    “My point is that a low center of gravity and higher downforces are positive influences on a car.“ You dont add mass just to lower CoM. And downforce from added mass sucks: the downforce, Fn = mg, from weight cancels out Slam on the breaks. Traction is F = u m g. acceleration is F/m = a M cancels out so weight doesnt help you. It appears to come out even though. Except it doesnt cancel out. Traction scales sub linearly. So your stopping times go up. Same thing for every part of the track. Corner? Turning torque is proportional to mass. Traction is sub linear to mass. Acceleration in a straight? Power is constant wrt mass so accel is inverse proportional to mass. And to all of this you have to add the aero effect which add to mass downforce and aren’t proportional to mass. So traction becomes: Ff = u(Fn) = u(mg + kv^2) For high speeds v^2 dominates so Ff is constant with m so: A = Ff/m. Or acceleration is inversely proportional to mass for any driver action.
    - elif 5y ago
      Throwaways are rampant on arguing against strawmen... Hmmm... No one has argued that a heavier car will go faster. I am arguing that because the weight is low it handles better than a car of the same mass with ICE distribution of weight. I'm arguing that because the weight is not 'just to lower CoM' but instead 'to allow insane amounts of rapid energy release' the NET RESULT is something ICE can not accomplish. Another throwaway account mentioned the Panamera turbo S beat the plaid by 5.7 seconds on the nordschliefe... Ignoring the fact that the plaid was carrying 90% too much battery for the circuit, the ICE was not carrying excess fuel, and that the 'ICE' is actually a hybrid and the identical car (Panamera turbo) without electric power was another 5 seconds slower than plaid /despite/ fueling down. Also your friction force purism ignores that the behaviour of a car at it's limits has a huge effect on how the driver can drive the circuit. A heavy EV with low CoM can be driven at or near the limit of traction without risking an F1 style spinout when tires chirp. If you've driven a Tesla you know how difficult it is to get off it's turning line.
elif 5y ago
I know you're being sarcastic but they used to put the added weights in downforce-benefiting places such as the nose but they are now required to have 80kg in the seat + driver so the weight was forced to move there for regulation practicality.

shartacct 5y ago

> Weight in corners hurts you in terms of acceleration out (which is not a problem for Tesla) and by the turning force required to change the momentum direction. The acceleration is drastically degraded once the battery is hot. > The result is 5000lb which breaks the four-door nurburgring record. They broke the record for production EVs, not for all four door cars. In a test that was also officiated by Tesla themselves, so not very credible. In 2017 a Civic type R could do a faster lap time than Plaid does in 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YSjItQneNM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YSjItQneNM&feature=youtu.be

elif 5y ago
Check the times they got 7:30 bone stock beating the 7:40 of heavily modified and weight reduced Renault Mégane RS Trophy-R You might be confusing 4-door with 4WD? Also yes performance is lower when the battery isn't topped up, but "degraded" is a bit dramatic. It's less significant than, say, tire-wear. In formula E practice sessions they gradually adjust how much charge is available, only enabling 250kW at the end of the session. In NY P1 this year, the best time on "low power" was 1m08.988s, and the best time on full power was 1'08.472 Half of the grid ended below 'the low power' fast lap
- shartacct 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N%C3%BCrburgring_Nordschleife_lap_times#Production/street-legal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N%C3%BCrburgring_Nords... Plaid gets beat by unmodified ICEs that are 1/5th the price.
  - elif 5y ago
    And which of these 2 DOOR vehicles are you claiming is cheaper than plaid, let alone 1/5?
    - shartacct 5y ago
      Every corvette and camaro on that list, for starters. There's several 4 door cars faster than plaid on there too, not sure why you'd bother trying to move that goalpost.

foepys 5y ago

> The result is 5000lb which breaks the four-door nurburgring record. Tesla, again, twisted everything into their favor here, so they could market themselves better than they are. According to the official Nürburgring Record Database, Tesla only beat SUVs and compact cars (Audi RS3). All other ICEs were a lot faster than the Plaid. Even a Porsche Panamera Turbo S, which is a 4-door sedan. 1: https://www.nuerburgring.de/info/nuerburgring/records https://www.nuerburgring.de/info/nuerburgring/records

quantumsolace 5y ago

Let me quote my Math Phys professor: "You're utterly and completely wrong." Let's assume we're talking about acceleration due to change of direction, or braking (since for increasing speed weight is obviously a disadvantage you simply decided to disregard) The force required to change car's direction due to change of direction or braking is proportional to weight. F = m*a Therefore (1) a = F/m The expression for the turning torque is similar To a first order approximation the maximum traction force available to a car is proportional to the normal force (2) Ff = u Fg = u m g Where Fg is force of gravity, and Ff is maximum force of traction. So, it appears that the mass cancels out. It doesn't: 1. there's the fact that Coloum's law of friction is incorrect, especially for rubber. That's why race cars have wide tyres. 2. aerodynamic downforce is independent of weight. So my expression (2) is wrong. Ff = u* (m*g + k*v^2) Where k has all the information about lift. As you can see mass no longer cancels out. As mass increases the force required to change direction increases proportionally, but the traction force available stays roughly the same. But it gets worse. Let's say we ignore aerodynamics and assume Coloumb's law of friction (hahahahaha), largely your scenario In comparing two cars, one double in mass than the other, the heavier car will wear out tires more quickly (since they're subject to double the loads). The heavier car will run the breaks hotter and be more prone to fading. There is nothing good about added mass for the dynamics of a car. Nothing.*

elif 5y ago
No... the forces required to change a car's direction are friction forces on the tires reaching their limits.... your space calculations dont really mean much unless you are trying to build a rocketship.
- sbakzbsmx 5y ago
  … he literally wrote Columb’s expression for frictional forces. Then pointed out that that expression overstates the amount of traction that weight gives you What rules of physics do you propose we use? Ones where dead weight makes you faster? In the ideal case weight cancels out. But it doesn't, it forces you to take corners slower. But hey, if you don't believe the math, watch an F1 race how the lap times drop and tyre life extends as they use up their fuel.

quantumsolace 5y ago

Can't edit my original answer any more, but I just wanted to state that: - I think every proposition (not just sentence) of this comment is wrong. - Tesla, not only didn't break the lap record (they only broke the EV record) which is ridiculous, but the Ring is probably the best suited lap for an EV: large track with mostly long straights or gentle curves. Try breaking the lap record at Suzuka.[1] - Even if Tesla had the record, a single lap is hardly a fair comparison to a Ferrari or a McLaren. The Tesla couldn't do 30 laps before taking 4 hours to recharge. Those ICE cars are raced in LeMans 24. That's 24 hr. straight of driving. I'd love to see a Tesla compete in that. [1] Full respect to the Ring - see Rush's explanation for it in the link bellow. But the Ring Niki did in under 7 minutes [2] in the 1970s is not the ring of today, and the prime difficulty of the Ring is that it's so long that a. Weather conditions are different around the track b. No driver can really learn the track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyIrLKgbbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyIrLKgbbA [2] Niki's record still stands today because the original, much longer, ring is no longer.

elif 5y ago
"No driver can really learn the track" you cannot be serious... I've done nordschliffe over a hundred times in simulator... every corner is memorized... i'm not even amateur let alone professional I'm also waiting for someone to find a faster 4 door time, my original comment that everyone is ignoring to teardown a strawman "fastest car ever" argument no one made
- foepys 5y ago
  > I'm also waiting for someone to find a faster 4 door time, my original comment that everyone is ignoring to teardown a strawman "fastest car ever" argument no one made Didn't you read my previous comment? Porsche Panamera Turbo S is the answer, just look at the official Nordschleife Records Database. Tesla Plaid: 7:35.579 Porsche Panamera Turbo S: 7:29.81 The Porsche did it in 2020, Tesla in 2021. The Porsche is also a 4 door car.
  - elif 5y ago