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Comment by mavhc | Hacker News Reader

Not if they all go faster. The human induced delay is the problem. Plus it causes accidents, which really slows down the system.

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Ever since driving an electric car, I have come to believe that a gas-throttle car’s laggy response during stop and go traffic may be responsible for the elasticity of the delay propagation. From zero, a piston pumper goes through a complicated series of windups which seems like days compared to an electric motor.

Throttles have only become drive by wire over the last 15 years, prior to that it was cable actuated and was instantaneous. Like a lawnmower. One could argue carburetor cars were even (a fraction of a second) more responsive.

Also if you WOT a modern car you get the instant response without the ecu calculating pedal angle, comparing to accelerator history, humidity factors etc etc but kiss fuel efficiency bye bye. There are mods and tunes that reprogram the fuel map to cut out this processing time

I also drive a big turbo family sedan and am used to saying 2 Mississippi before the engine pulls at full boar

Though drive-by-wire throttles absolutely do modify and potentially hold back your throttle input for reasons of both economy, comfort and enforced driveline sympathy, there is also an inherent response difference between petrol and electric engines and also slop in the driveline system. That difference varies on the engine and transmission type.

Unfortunately I cannot find an easy good reference on what exactly that difference is quantifiably. Also many of the Electric cars right now are higher end even sporty vehicles, and more likely to have a throttle mapping that is more direct.

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