Re:America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
by mikeash on Friday May 19, 2017 @10:07PM
(#14380673)
> and the 0-60 numbers on most/all cars are like MegaPixels on digital cameras.
I think you're telling the same story from the other side. And it's a good one!
I see two major problems to overcome before EVs can start to really intrude on this particular part of the world.
First is weight. A Tesla battery is somewhere around 1,000-1,500lbs. Putting it under the floor helps a lot, but that's a lot of weight to carry around. You can overcome that in straight-line acceleration by suppling lots of power, but other aspects of handling can't help but suffer. I'm not very experienced with this stuff, but I hear that the Tesla handles reasonably well for its size but at the end of the day it's huge and heavy.
Second is heat. The electric drivetrain is efficient, so it doesn't produce a lot of waste heat, but it still produces some. And it's a lot harder to remove. You'll never run into this in normal driving, but with the sort of activities you were getting up to, an EV would start to limit your power output pretty quickly.
I think you're telling the same story from the other side. And it's a good one!
I see two major problems to overcome before EVs can start to really intrude on this particular part of the world.
First is weight. A Tesla battery is somewhere around 1,000-1,500lbs. Putting it under the floor helps a lot, but that's a lot of weight to carry around. You can overcome that in straight-line acceleration by suppling lots of power, but other aspects of handling can't help but suffer. I'm not very experienced with this stuff, but I hear that the Tesla handles reasonably well for its size but at the end of the day it's huge and heavy.
Second is heat. The electric drivetrain is efficient, so it doesn't produce a lot of waste heat, but it still produces some. And it's a lot harder to remove. You'll never run into this in normal driving, but with the sort of activities you were getting up to, an EV would start to limit your power output pretty quickly.