Bikes don't tend to have high torque in general, but their light weight and gearing are designed to maximise what torque they do produce. This means there are quite a few that will do sub 3 seconds to 60, and sub 5 seconds is practically the norm.
What this means is that you can more easily get past, and through, traffic because you can safely take advantage of gaps that no car can. Also, that sense of having your arms ripped out of their sockets and hanging on for dear life is fun.
Still, there's something to be said for going really fast as well: the feeling of the world blurring past you, and the road or track flowing and snaking underneath you like mercury, is hard to beat (if sometimes a little terrifying).
There are some fun youtube videos demoing bike performance, e.g. Ninja H2's doing 0-250MPH in 26s [0], outdragging a Bugatti [1] and outpacing an F1 car and an F16 fighter at the same time.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_n7ru1e-rg [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5_GQ78wM8 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ESq00zi7bU
As another commenter said, you rev a Ninja (just like a sports car) and launch it using the clutch.
In fact bicycles are fastest off the line, since they produce max. torque at 0rpm (just keep weight on a pedal, release the brakes to go). But acceleration is modest, so motorbikes and cars will soon go past.
And of course electrically-driven vehicles are also capable of producing torque at 0rpm, hence their acceleration advantage.
I doubt a bicycle would actually cross the starting line before a high end bike or car would surpass it. A 180lb rider would produce about 90lb of torque at most (assuming 6” crank) and that’s only for the instant that the crank is parallel with the ground.
A high end car would deliver significantly more than 90lb of torque instantaneously by dumping the clutch (or using launch control).
I can get off the line faster then automobiles, they aren't racing / clutch dumping at the lights. Traffic is so heavy and with so many intersections, it's typically pointless for automobiles to race off the line anyways.
As I filter past daily the same Pagani and Bugatti and LFA and Tesla S and NSX. :D
Having said that, I am very used to riding bicycles and (large) motorbikes around town, and from waiting for lights to change if I'm on a bicycle I'm generally first away even when motorbike riders are getting competitive (never mind cars).
The advantage of the bicycle is generally only a few feet, of course.
The Veyron might weight 20x as much as you and your bike, but has over 300x the power output of the best sprinters in the world.
Given equal reaction time and equal interest in racing, I am doubtful your cycling advantage would last for more than inches against a high end sports car.
In a racing start, a well-driven torquey car (like the Veyron) will also launch faster than a motorbike - at least to start with. Once the speed increases, the acceleration drops and the motorbike can then use its superior power-to-weight ratio (which it can't fully use off the line). Eventually - once speeds are well into triple digits - a fast-enough car starts to catch up with the motorbike again (due to better aerodynamics).
If you aren’t standing up sprinting, you’re definitely not going to be getting anything close to your “body weight torque”.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7528120_Torque_and_...
Once you are in third though displacement takes the lead, and my smaller engine bike is at a disadvantage!
Of course, for touring there's now the H2 SX Ninja(!)
Rev engine, slip clutch to launch, versus slip clutch and immediately begin putting on the power.. no matter what, you need to engage the clutch and add throttle. The motor has so little mass it's not like it takes a long time to get it spinning before dumping the clutch on a low-torque motorcycle, and you can rev before the green.
And regardless of what you're riding, you'll be across the intersection before most cars have even begun moving.
ZX9: lights change, rev engine, dump clutch.
None we're talking about general around-time riding, waiting for the lights to change here. The point is big torque means less delay between seeing the signals change and starting to move.
No disagreement that if the ZX9 is sitting on the line with the revs already in hand that it's going to be away first.
> This means there are quite a few that will do sub 3 seconds to 60, and sub 5 seconds is practically the norm.
This was the give-away - pretty sure very few humans can do 60 mph on a bicycle, unless they're drafting.
Frankly my favorite is the European “moto”
‘Bike’ is short for bicycle. Motorcycles are also bicycles so they’re also bikes.
My daily driver FN2 Civic Type-R (stock, except for brake lines and pads) and whatever preconceptions are had about Honda, this is an engineering marvel. Torque is mostly linear, slightly going up on the top half, with a slight drop just before the 8300rpm limiter, giving the feeling that the car keeps on giving - wanting to give, even -you more and more. As for the numbers, it does 0-100kph in 6.2-6.4s but that’s because there’s a 2-3 gearshift at 95 (it’s well under 6 to that): it’s just such a “screw the numbers game” mentality, “let’s get the most out of this in every possible way, whatever the benchmarks. Only fun matters.”, which I fully subscribe to.
Anyway, even acceleration is overrated, nice turns is what matters and gives Gs much more quickly than any acceleration, and this one delivers, with fantastic fast cornering and good tight cornering (if you set the car up correctly on entry to avoid understeer). As a tire manufacturer as said (I think it was Bridgestone), “fun is not a straight line”.
And although imperfect in many ways, this car is so much fun (and practical, to boot) I have than big stupid grin in minutes, on every ride. I’ve driven so many powerful cars on occasion yet after the initial oomph effect, none ever came close to that. On the lower power end I did enjoy that ‘06 Suzuki Swift, and the latest MX-5 is solid gold :)
I might argue that there is no such thing as an engine (assuming reasonably modern and N/A) that has "a lot of low end torque"; rather that kind of engine should be described as "lacking high end torque".
Mr. Tom put a V8 into a Miata while keeping it as close to the original in terms of handling as possible (I think the end result only weighs a couple hundred lb more)
Mr. Tom is a maniac of precision, so the videos are a joy to see how clean everything is (he’a a bit of a nerd though)
I wonder if anyone has studied that.
I did some calculations once to relate sportbike performance to cars. People usually think about performance in terms of peak power on paper, which is not where you are most of the time on the street.
I estimated that if you are riding a 600cc bike at roughly car-like rpms, then the power to weight ratio is comparable to a car with a 3.5L V-6. But if you are using the upper range, then it's more comparable to a Ferrari.
With a literbike, if you are at car-like rpms, the power to weight is like a street car with a fairly large V-8, but if you are using it at high speeds, then it's comparable to a F1 car.
Never mind the Tesla is smaller, has a lower center of gravity, and costs 15x less and has more range.
And it's probably worth noting that the Tesla is almost certainly software limited.
Also, I haven't test-driven a Bugatti, but I've tested a Tesla. My wife compared the acceleration to a launched roller coaster. I entered the turn onto an onramp at 20 mph, exited the 90-ish degree turn at 60 in the same lane, and hit 80 by the time I realized I needed to take my foot off the pedal. We weren't halfway down the ramp. What was really impressive about that was the turn: plastered into the back and the side of seat at the same time, traction like it was on rails to whole time. It is quite possible the car was outperforming my nervous system's ability to orient.
The Bugattis and Aston Martins alike are engineered to lap tracks or do speed runs over and over again in comfort and luxury without any reduction in acceleration or braking performance while Tesla's drive-train reaches its thermal limits really fast if you push it and reduces its performance accordingly.
Tesla, due to how economics factor in engineering, was not designed to deliver it's peak performance in a sustained fashion but in short bursts when you need it. The Bugattis and Porsches can deliver their peak performance all day long, that's why they cost x-times more. And let's not talk about luxury or comfort.
a problem the Porsche Taycan solves (to some extent).
Well, I don't doubt they are more capable than a Tesla, but I don't think any ultra-high performance car can sustain high speeds indefinitely. The Bugatti Veyron has tires that last for about 15 minutes at top speed, but then again, the fuel will run out in 12.
It also seems like you see supercars on fire a lot, also hinting that they are not that durable when you push them.
>And it's probably worth noting that the Tesla is almost certainly software limited. Most things are software limited in modern cars. The question is, if you improved the battery pack so it could deliver more power, would the motors handle it?
The torque curve on the Bugatti starts out lower for the first 1-2k RPM and then sticks at a significantly higher torque that seems artificially flat, likely limited by the rest of the drivetrain to save on weight (or ripping itself apart as opposed to the Tesla which would light on fire if the limiters were removed).
The interesting torque is the one at the wheels, after the transmission and adjusted for wheel size.
Comparing to CPUs it would be similar to obsessing over IPC, but not caring about that performance = IPC * Frequency.
Regardless, I understand your point. Having all the power from the start makes more sense for daily driving.
The biggest problem with this is having too much torque. If the car isn't designed for it, you'll just spin the tires at full throttle, and you'll have to settle for mid-2nd and 3rd gear pulls. I knew someone with a boosted awd Toyota Camry that could spin all the tires in 3rd.
That's with a 2.0 litre straight-four engine, in the 1980s.
Optimizing for ludicrous acceleration has always been possible. But it is at odds with race track performance, which is what Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on. At the track, if you are going below 80 mph at any point after the first 4 seconds, you're doing it wrong.
I've been wondering about that for some time. What type(s) of competitions do cars like that enter? I'm not exactly knowledgeable in the racing world, so my view is very limited; the few times a see something about racing (excluding F1 and rally which are obviously different beasts), I mainly see BMWs, Porches, Corvettes (I think) and so on. Maybe my limited exposure just covered the wrong competition?
now there are certain racing series like FIA GT3 where manufacturers are required to make a certain number of street-legal vehicles to qualify that car for the competition. a Porsche 911 GT3 RS is an example of this type of car. make a couple small modifications and your street-legal car is a GT3 racecar. homologated cars like this tend to push the limits of what's tolerable to drive on the street; they're not really setup to be comfortable.
But how does that work for Bugati, Ferrari, Lamborghini (and McLaren, Pagani, Koenigsegg)? Are the street cars (more or less) the same as the ones in races? Do they even race?
And in conclusion, how accurate is the statement that (production models of) Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on race track performance?
The word for "road car exactly like a race car" is "homologated". It's done in some racing series, basically forcing manufacturers to build 200 copies of the car, making it road legal, and putting at least some of those on the market.
> But how does that work for Bugati, Ferrari, Lamborghini (and McLaren, Pagani, Koenigsegg)? Are the street cars (more or less) the same as the ones in races? Do they even race?
it's hard to give a simple answer to this question because the manufacturers you listed make a pretty wide range of cars. they try to hit a lot of different points on the luxury vs track performance, but they're all oriented much more towards repeatable track performance than a model s.
if by "race" you mean the local track, sure, all of these cars are going to perform very well. even the most luxury focused models are going to totally outclass my hot hatch and keep going for a lot longer. if you're talking about a serious race, no you cannot just show up with your street-legal ferrari and start racing. for one thing, safety regs for these races will usually be incompatible with local laws for street cars (eg, roll cages are illegal in many jurisdictions, but required for races), and you would want to strip out a lot more weight anyway (passenger seat, floormats, etc) to be competitive. you can get really close with certain homologated models though. I believe most of the manufacturers you listed participate in GT2/GT3, but I'm not familiar with the specific cars from every brand.
> And in conclusion, how accurate is the statement that (production models of) Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on race track performance?
it's true that any car from any of those manufacturers is going to be much more focused on repeatable track performance than mass market hondas, VWs, etc. the extent to which comfort and practicality is compromised varies a lot between specific models.
I hope this answers your question. I'm certainly not an authoritative source, just an enthusiast.
Roads don't like torque. If high-torque becomes a trend, expect to pay more vehicle-tax. Tires also don't like torque.
This is a bit off-topic, but this isn't really accurate. (Not the fact that high torque causes more surface damage thing, that's probably defensible - though gross loading does much more damage to roads in most conditions). But the source of funding for road construction and maintenance.
Depending where you live, your vehicle tax doesn't do much of anything for the roads anyway. They're maintained and repaved using general funds, usually taken from property taxes and income taxes.
Yes, and remember that batteries are quite heavy so torque + electric vehicle = bad news for roads.
See also: https://www.inverse.com/article/53612-electric-cars-cause-cr...
So called "hypothecated" taxes (supposedly dedicated to a specific purpose) are rarely actually restricted to that usage.
In Australia, even if the tax is supposedly restricted in what it can be applied to, I believe that the parliament can legislate otherwise at any time.
In terms of a daily driver, I think the fun comes from the acceleration, and thus the torque a car can produce.
My daily driver is a Mazda 3 / Mazda Axela, which comes with 200 Newtonmeter torque at 6400 rpm. It's ok, it's fun, but yeah.
So the other day I drove a 2013 Nissan Leaf (BEV), which gives you ~250 Nm torque right at the beginning. This was so much fun to drive.
So for me, a car doesn't need to have a ridiculosly max speed - I need max torque from the start.