Re:China’s $4k electric cars tap huge market Tesla can’t reach
by sgt on Saturday March 13, 2021 @02:07PM
(#26449016)
It's certainly a new way of thinking about minimum viable cars. Nowadays you sort of expect 200hp from a normal family car, most often closer to 300hp. My car has a 4L that produces 286hp, and it's guzzling fuel. Most of the time is spent in towns and cities going slowly. I could easily move to electric, but sometimes I also need range and cruising speeds of 70-90 mph.
Re:China’s $4k electric cars tap huge market Tesla can’t reach
by sitkack on Saturday March 13, 2021 @02:17PM
(#26449097)
You are arguing past each other, hp has little bearing on the performance of a vehicle in the regimes we are talking about. Torque is what should be measured for in town performance and that is relative to weight. It only takes 10-30hp to maintain a vehicle at highway speeds.
It's as much power as a Honda Rebel 250, a CBF250, an MT125, a Yamaha Vixion, an ST250, etc..., and those are gas engines that will generally only provide like 50-70% of their power.
Electric golf carts generally use 3-5hp engines. That's because for small engines, the electric advantage of always delivering the same amount of power is a huge deal.
18hp was enough for many cars. It is fine for city driving. It goes up to 100km/h, it's fine.
Also, the peak power of the motor is actually 20kW, 13kW is the sustained power, which again is more than enough for city driving.