Here are the reasons that some of the quickest-accelerating cars on the planet are electric.
EVs are quick. Our testing has revealed that multiple mainstream EVs—including various sedans and SUVs that make no claim of being high-performance vehicles—can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in less than 5.0 seconds. Of 16 vehicles we’ve tested in the past decade that blasted to 60 mph in less than 3.0 seconds—supercar territory in the gasoline world—three of them were EVs.
Why are many of the latest EVs so quick? It’s down to the basic differences between electric motors and internal-combustion engines. When it comes to delivering their peak output, gasoline engines are surprisingly finicky things, and they tend to have far narrower horsepower and torque peaks than do electric motors.
To get a gas engine to deliver as much power to the drive wheels as possible, it needs the help of a transmission to match varying road speeds to the engine’s most powerful operating range. These days, high-volume passenger vehicles can have six to 10 gears in their transmissions. Even so, there’s lag off the line as the engine spools up from idle to, say, 2000 rpm or more, and that lag is a lot more noticeable with smaller turbocharged engines that increasingly populate today’s vehicles than it is with large naturally aspirated ones.
Big Torque Instantly
Suppose you had a vehicle with a powerplant that offered an almost flat torque curve, with close
to maximum output at zero rpm—and no need for a transmission to optimize its acceleration from zero to 100 mph? That would solve most of the performance shortcomings associated with gas and diesel engines, wouldn’t it?
Read more: CarandDriver
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