georgerobinson

> However unlike a traditional ICE, an EV has 100% torque with almost zero latency.

Insignificant I'm afraid. A good track driver never has the engine outside the power band, even on the slowest corners. In race mode almost all automatic gearboxes do this for you. However, some auto gearboxes shift down on full throttle, even in manual mode, which is frustrating if not infuriating, so direct-drive is a welcome change.

> And the overheating problem is negated by virtue of the fact that it's an EV and can take advantage of regenerative braking.

If you're using regenerative braking on track then you're most probably losing time, unless it can capture the kinetic-to-heat transfer from the pads and discs. You should be maximum throttle right up until the braking zone, by which point you're mostly using full pedal travel to get the car down to the ideal entry speed and maybe even trail braking into the corner to improve rotation.

However, now that I think about it, regenerative braking makes a lot more sense on tracks such as the Nordschleife where for some corners you don't have braking zones as such, but minor taps of the pedal to set up the weight distribution of the car for the corner to improve turn in. This could be a valid use case of regenerative braking.

Sure!

So an example is the old Renault Sport Clios. These had the 2.0 NA F4R 830 motor with cable actuated throttles. The combination of this and no turbo means the throttle response is immediate, much better than newer turbo cars with drive-by-wire throttles. In fact it's so much better than I went out and purchased one.

Power has no real correlation with throttle response. Auto boxes often make throttle response worse - in fact even the latest ZF8 gearboxes tend to have noticeable lag between applying throttle and the power to the wheels. If you want to experience this for yourself I would recommend driving a manual M235i and an auto M235i back to back.

Sure there is! The performance is just one feature of the engine. It has immense character, sound and response - possibly one of the best engines ever made. You don't need to drive it fast or irresponsibly on the road to enjoy it. It's like cycling with a carbon fiber race bicycle on the road. Just because you're not exploiting it to it's full potential on a velodrome doesn't mean you can't enjoy it sensibly in other situations.

Ferrari have built their brand on road cars with high revving, naturally aspirated V8 and V12s - primarily designed as Gran Tourers rather than track cars.

More evidence of this can be seen in the consumer demand for 911 Speedster, of which only 1948 cars will be built - and is looking to be one of the best Gran Tourers ever made.

That is more or less correct, look at the Aston Martin Vulcan, Ferrari 599XX, P1 GTR, or just about any street-legal car someone has turned into a non street legal race car.

There is an argument to be made whether a feature should be banned from the road or not. I'm not sure having an EV that can accelerate from 0-60mph in 3 seconds is good for road safety either. How are these two any different?

I agree! I have no issue with better safety regulations, stricter emissions regulations, drive by wire, crash zones, etc - to make cars better for people to use everyday.

What is frustrating is that we are now unable to offer features in high performance vehicles that we were previously able to because they're considered too bad for the environment. A perfect example is the 4.0 engine in the 911 GT3. It's likely that this engine will never be offered again, despite itself being a masterpiece of engineering, sound and character; produced in such few numbers and driven so infrequently to have an insignificant effect on pollution when you consider all cars on the road.

I'm curious where you got the 23KG figure? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just interested to see what kind of cars they looked at. If you consider a Golf GTI from 1980 to a Golf GTI of 2019 then you'll find that in 30 years the car has gained over 500KG. If we continue this trend then by 2050 the expected average weight for a hatchback should be somewhere around 2000KG.

I agree with the cheap, 1980s/90s sports car - and did something like that just a couple months ago. But, if we are no longer capable of manufacturing cheap, light-weight cars in 2020 and onwards because of regulations, then these cars will have no choice but to die out leaving track days and motorsport inaccessible to everyone but the rich, like air travel in the 1950 and 60s.

I live in the U.K, I pay $1.75 per litre.

I would quite like to own an EV, but are still too expensive for me! I also read that the batteries do not like repeated full-throttle accelerations as it causes excessive heat build-up and accelerated degradation on the cells. To reduce this the car will often enter limp-mode before then, so it might not even be appropriate for sports/track use.

Yes and no. Cars are less responsive than ever as manufacturers insert artificial latency into electric throttle-by-wire to reduce emissions.

However, at the same time cars continue to become heavier and heavier with each new model or generation. This in itself is poor for environment because heavier vehicles must burn more fuel to accelerate at the same rate, more fuel to maintain the same speed, use more pad material to brake (and thus release more particulates) while also having increased tire wear.

But for some reason the latter issue is ignored while the former is front and center.

It doesn't make sense to me

I think one of the issues is that the Prius starts from $30,000 here - which is quite a lot - and a lot of cheaper, but still economical cars are available for much less.

Toyota Prius do not exist in Western Europe outside Uber. They are synonymous with Uber driver and rarely ever bought for private use.

Yes. I'm not saying that people in the market for a Ford Fiesta are instead going out and buying a 3 series. People who want a hatchback and going out and buying hatchbacks.

But people who want saloons and estate cars are largely buying from the three Germans, and not Japanese or Korean.

It's the same in Western Europe, the difference is that cheap lease deals and finance have made them affordable for a significant amount of people and so these cars are extremely common. You see more 3 series than Toyota's or Hyundai's.

> Let me introduce you to the transverse mounted V6...

Fair point! V6s were never really suitable for transverse layouts, but it did at least give us some wonderful sounding cars from the likes of Alfa Romeo and others.

As I replied in another comment:

> Oil changes color as it captures contaminates such as soot, carbon deposits, etc. It can operate effectively while brown-ish, but if the oil is carrying too much it will blacken and start to thicken at which point it will be much less effective at lubricating your engine.

Oil changes color as it captures contaminates such as soot, carbon deposits, etc. It can operate effectively while brown-ish, but if the oil is carrying too much it will blacken and start to thicken at which point it will be much less effective at lubricating your engine.

It's interesting that a lot of readers here and websites in the U.S are saying oil changes every 3,000 or 5,000 miles. This is absolutely not the case in Europe where most cars are on 10,000 or 20,000 mile intervals. I wonder if this is due to much more diverse weather and temperatures you see in the U.S throughout the year and so different grades of oil are required that degrade much faster.

It's the same organization, Jaguar Land Rover / JLR.

Clutches will last 80,000 miles on most cars unless driven unsympathetically by either dumping the clutch or riding it frequently. Fluid and spark plugs are some of the cheapest maintenance you can do on ICE cars. Timing belts, aux belts, water pumps, bearings are much more expensive wear items and I'd be much more concerned about those personally.

You should however be changing your brake fluid every 2 years regardless of whether or not you have regenerative braking. Brake fluid degrades over time as water gets absorbed.

It is true that a lot of synthetic oils are approved for 10, 15 and even 20,000 miles in some cases.

However, if you actually look at the oil after 10,000 miles it's usually very dark brown despite the high mileage rating so I personally get mine changed more frequently than recommended.

I don't have any data to back this up but I would think that most cars going into the dealership network for maintenance are still under warranty; are less than 5 years old and not going in for expensive or time consuming engine work such as replacing head gaskets, belts, bearings, etc.

Instead, I would think most cars going into the dealership network are either:

1. Having a part replaced under warranty because it is faulty or there is a recall

2. Having a service under a service pack or because the car is still in warranty

3. Having some kind of interior defect fixed (rattling in the cabin, infotainment issue, etc)

and that these issues are still common enough in EVs that I don't expect the dealership network to change much.

It's also possible to purchase cars that are extraordinarily expensive that the average person walking in the street wouldn't think twice about:

- Renault 5 Turbo: now worth anywhere between £60,000 and £120,000

- Peugeot 205 GTI: £15,000 to £20,000

- Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500: one recently sold for £113,000 (https://www.evo.co.uk/ford/ford-sierra/20210/ford-sierra-cos...)

More fun compared to what? A 911 GT3? Challenger Hellcat? Toyota Corolla?

Of course, but an enthusiast doesn't purchase a sports car for the 90% case, it's purchased for the 10% case - road trips to some of the best driving roads in the world.

If you just want a flash car to get to work and back well that's different. And if you just want to go fast between the lights then a Tesla is genuinely the best car for you.

This is for renting sports cars (fun cars) for weekend use. Enterprise and the like don't have such cars available in the U.K, it's more of a specialist market.

It sounds like you're just not driving on the right public roads.

In the US, to name just a couple, there are:

    - Hells Canyon, Idaho
    - Saddle Road, Hawaii
    - Mulholland Highway, California
    - Route 9W to Storm King Highway, New York
    - Route 348, Helen, Georgia 
    - M119, Harbor Springs, Michigan
    - Highway 1, Big Sur, California

In the UK:

    - Horncastle to Louth
    - Cat and Fiddle
    - Evo Triangle
    - Forres to Alford
    - Black Mountain Pass
    - St Ives To St Just

I looked at this for a fun car to use at the weekends twice a month but it wasn't cost effective.

To rent for a weekend:

    - Rental: £300 (dependent on the car, but £300 was the cheapest)
    - Fuel: £100

To do it twice a month, between April and October would cost £5,600. Instead I picked up a fantastic car for just under £10,000 with less than 50,000 miles on it.

Man Maths has me at (over 12 months):

   - Depreciation: £500
   - Maintenance: £1500 (includ. tires)
   - Insurance and tax: £750
   - Fuel: £1000

which is £3,750 v.s. £5,600.

It would be a pain. Take that 35KWh car on track, do a 15 minute session and then have to wait another 45-60 minutes for it to charge back up?

This is a common misconception. Mass is still mass, no matter how optimally it is placed in the chassis.

A Lotus Exige already has near perfect weight distribution and low center of gravity. Since it is mid-engined it also has 160KG of engine over the rear axle which improves traction.

Adding an extra 500KG and putting it lower in the vehicle will not improve braking performance, handling or agility.

What we're now describing is more or less the power and torque curve as you rightly mentioned. My worry here is that we're kind of categorizing all internal combustion engines as having the same kind of power/torque curves when in fact a lot of internal combustion engines are very different from each other.

Some engines are capable of delivering 100% of torque the second (within a couple 100ms) of hitting the throttle. To name a couple:

1. The Mercedes M278 twin-turbo V8 makes 700NM of torque between 1,800 and 3,500RPM. In other words, 700NM of torque is available from little above idle.

2. BMW B58 single-scroll turbo i6 makes 500NM between 1,600 and 4,500RPM.

Other turbo charged engines, such as those in supercars, have different kind of turbos turned for a more linear torque and power curve to better replicate their N/A predecessors, such as the McLaren M838TE which makes 620NM between 5,500 and 6,500RPM.

Lots of different engines out there with all kinds of different characteristics and power/torque curves.

One of the largest challenges with high performance EVs is cooling and weight. Both of these affect performance.

A Lotus Exige 380 Cup, with the 2GR-FE 3.5 supercharged V6 from the Toyota Camry weights just 1105KG, of which 163KG is the engine, excluding the supercharger. The 85KWh cells in the Model S weighs 540KG in comparison and is almost 50% of the Exige's total weight.

I'm not sure how far off we are from solving this but I'm quite looking forward to improved cooling and lightweight cells that will make electric viable for ultra high performance sports cars.