Love this post. Sure, we will all continue to get off on vibration, fumes and exhaust rumbles - but will our grandchildren?SchmidtMotorWorks wrote: ↑Sat Feb 16, 2019 8:44 pm In the past 2 years I have been employed working on some projects developing new parts and systems for new model American V8 performance cars
The best performing configurations were supercharged and could get in the range of 800 RWHP on a chassis dyno and still pass smog.
The effort to accomplish that was extraordinary, several highly motivated, OEM experienced, calibrators spent months to make it run well.
Not "hotrod well", "OEM well".
All the time on the dyno, everyone was pushing to get more power, it just seemed like the obvious thing to do.
Finally it was drivable enough to test on the road.
1. Way too much power, even with as good of tires as could be fit in the body, they were useless past 1/2 throttle at any speed. Put a teenager in that car and it would be crashed in a week. Eben an experienced driver could only keep it together I he had the restraint to keep it below about 0.6 throttle. I was told by those that had tried; better tires will just break the drive-train with this power level.
2. The tone of the exhaust sound was not pleasant, at an idle and low speeds it was fine, maybe even a little racy for a street driven car.
But under power, that much power going through a full CA legal exhaust system sounds choked like a pulsing air hose.
3. Frankly, all things considered, I think the car was made worse than it was stock. Once the novelty wore off and you want to get from point A to B in LA traffic, I would rather drive just about anything else.
Then it occurred to me, a Tesla (that a grandmother could pleasantly drive to play bingo) would beat it in a drag race.
I changed jobs, I don't see any point to the work I was doing anymore.
There are 3 main factors at work here.
1. Electric motors can make max torque at zero rpm and maintain fairly constant torque across a very wide band . Exactly what you need for launch and acceleration. A combustion engine needs a lot of transmission smarts to replicate that power delivery.
2. A system to apply the maximum torque to the tyre without wheelspin (traction control, launch control) is much easier to implement in an electric drive system.
3. Driving all four wheels gives a massive launch advantage. Implementing AWD with a big combustion engine is difficult and requires a bulky, heavy transmission system. An EV can simply be built with two or four smaller motors. As an added benefit the torque can be controlled to each tyre individually.