F*ck faster acceleration though. The 0 to 100 kph in 2 seconds trend is absurd and dangerous. We should lock all that behind a regulatory wall.
Rimac is about to ship a car with a top speed lower than the 412kph (258mph) its capable of. It has a speed governor which employees unlock after ensuring safe condition of vehicle and track.
Traction control prevents this these days.
It still happens, of course, because idiots WANT to spin their tires and so turn off the traction control. But spinning tires != going fast. Usually sports cars flooring from a stop are interested in speed, not tire smoke, so the TC is still on.
That said, I know in my Model 3 Performance, I've floored it from a traffic light in the rain and had very little spin. It's insane how effective traction control is in an EV.
Joking aside, acceleration can be a real problem. I ride a lot my motorcycle to work, shopping etc. I am closing to an intersection, I see a car that has to yield and when I am close enough, I am pretty sure I will not be hit even if the car is not yielding, which happens quite often (many drivers don't see motorcycles or ignore their rights). With a very high acceleration, the risk of getting hit is a lot higher.
But yeah - I don’t necessarily agree with regulating it away for safety - people need to have personal responsibility. But regulations could make car companies optimize for other variables though (like distance and economy) which could be good.
No it doesn't.
Re-reading that, I didn’t write very clearly - and thankfully my car doesn’t require braking to stop accelerating indefinitely.
What I meant was, in a combustion engine, there is still some acceleration that occurs as the engine drops from 6-7k RPM down to idle. If you’re running acceleration from 0-60 in 2 seconds, that continued acceleration after you take your foot off the gas and the engine runs down to idle may be another 10 mph. In my experience, acceleration for a combustion engine to hit its best time is usually pedal to the metal and isn’t a smooth stop at that exact top speed (which would require letting off the gas ahead of reaching the top speed so you don’t overshoot).
In context of the parent and regulating speed vs acceleration, my point was that fast acceleration can lead to people overshooting the intended speed / speed limit.
That said, power delivery for electric motors (that would be in the 2-3 second 0-60 range) may not have this ramp-down period, so acceleration would stop immediately (and maybe slow down aggressively with regenerative braking).
Not in any vehicle I've operated. The moment I pull off the throttle completely, it stops flowing any more than idle speed fuel mixture into the motor. Without that combustion power, it starts to act more like an air compressor almost immediately, causing negative force output. It is taking energy from the crank to try and compress a mixture which, when combusted (if even combustable, most likely not), results in less expansive force than the force it took to compress. This is even more pronounced at high RPMs as that action happens more times every second.
If I let go of the throttle on my motorcycle at 9krpms and like 70mph or whatever it feels like I pressed hard on my rear brake instantly, for all intents and purposes. You'll feel your weight get thrown forwards immediately.
If your car continues to accelerate after you've taken your foot off the gas something is wrong with your car.
Bonus points for maximum performance acceleration without overshoot to the speed limit if I am the first one stopped at a red light when it turns green.
Adaptive cruise control is awesome, but the implementations I've used are unaware of the road's speed limit.
1. Low speeds, the car will accelerate a bit to where it moves at idle speed. (Usually very slow. Like 2-3 MPH.)
2. High speeds: If you lift off the accelerator, the car will slow down. In a manual transmission car, this slowdown is much more pronounced, and can often be used instead of the brakes in non-emergency slow deceleration conditions. In an automatic the slowdown is less, but still there.
Unless you're going downhill this defies our known understanding of physics.
Probably not what they meant in that comment though.
Why can't I burn my garbage in downtown San Francisco, instead of having to pay The Man? And if my homebrew wiring job torches down the neighborhood, well, my house, my rules, bucko.
It was actually the acceleration causing the back and forth (threw me off the seat before I let go causing it to stop).