a neutral question (honest question): Isen't the best part of a race show the sounds? I honestly don't know how a race sounds with electric cars but I imagine it to be quite different.
I feel the thermal engine motor noises so wasteful and disgusting. Going to wild nature and watching all animals flee because of stupid kids with their quads making unnecessary noise over 100 decibels makes me desire to punch those guys in the face.
The only time I went to F1 when I was a kid the sound was so high that you could feel it even with your hands on your ears. I found it painful and tacky.
I am engineer myself, and I see all this sound as waste energy that does not go to move the car. Barking dog never bites. All talk, no action.
I don't know if this would be more ridiculous on a pure electric.
It's rather useless in racing situation. You want 4-wheel braking then, this may throw off your balance. I believe regenerative braking is not very effective when compared to full-blown racing brakes as well. It's great when you're stopping at traffic light from far away, but not when you brake hard.
On top of that, this is not limited to electric cars. Some regular cars have it too. For example non-e Golfs got it.
That said, there are many practical limitations that may apply.
As you brake, car dives in, taking force off rear wheels. With linear braking, it may be too easy to lock them up. Which is especially dangerous if you're still braking when entering the corner.
The "linear braking torque" you are talking about seems to be a completely unrelated concept referring to how the brakes react to inputs from the pedal. A braking system can have both of those, none, or any single one.
The problem with the Tesla is that the suspension, steering, breaks etc. aren’t exactly sport class and that it weighs more than a Ford F-150 pickup.....
After all, front brakes do need more power. Otherwise rear wheels are easy to lock out. ABS would kick in reducing regenerative braking. I guess they'd need much stronger front brakes and have regenerative braking kick in progressively with how the brake pedal is applied?
Of course, they could do 4-wheel regenerative braking even with one driving axle.. But that'd be another can of worms.
I'd love to read full paper [0]. Looks like they're looking into this exact problem.
[0] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4077342/?tp=&arnumber=40...
I would say that racing in a Tesla is like racing in a Ford F-150 hauling a working jet engine in the back with the breaks and suspension of a Ford Mondeo.
A Tesla weighs about 50-75% more than a BMW M3/Alpina or a Maclaren 650 and the suspension, breaking and handling on those is much much better.