Tue Jul 01, 2014 7:33 am by corleone1928
Killrob wrote:Hey guys!
I did go on a little explanatory rant in the beta forum some time ago... and now that its clean-up time there, I'd like to post it here instead:
The only thing you feel while driving a car (affecting acceleration) is power at the wheels. Torque is convertible, power is not and can only be lost while finding it's way to the wheels. Thus, for measuring performance, torque is a useless, insanely overrated stat which almost everyone gets wrong - including car magazines and people who should know better. Hell, we got some of the most well car-educated people here on these forums and even most of them don't get it right, being brainwashed by the torque-nonsense.
My normal example for showing the point is the following example: which engine makes a car accelerate faster?
A: An engine that makes 800 Nm at 2000 RPM
B: An engine that makes 200 Nm at 8000 RPM
It is a triple trick question of course! First you say: hell, I'm not stupid, they are the same of course. But you are still not quite right if you say that...
How much capacity do you need to make 800 Nm of torque? Well, say 8L. How much for 200 Nm? In this analogy, probably 2L.
Which engine would weigh more? Probably the 8L engine. So which engine would make a car accelerate faster? The lighter one with the same performance...
or would it? No, definitely not in the hands of an unskilled or even average driver.
If you put your foot down while cruising with engine A, hell breaks loose. If you do the same with engine B, basically nothing happens.
It is a question of how accessible the engine's power is, which doesn't matter if you are Michael Schumacher, but does for the average, torque-brainwashed Joe.
In the car designer we will have a stat related to "ease of driving", and this whole thing above will affect that stat. Should the engine be held responsible for the lack of driver skill? No, at least I don't think so - which also explains why I don't really want to see torque matter in the engine designer scenarios. Should it matter once you design the car? Absolutely!
With a gearbox being an additional layer of abstraction and most people not understanding the underlying principles, I can see why people equate torque with power... although it does make as much sense as equating Mussolini with porridge.
Cheers guys!
/Killrob
anyway, both are 300HP-producing banger, no?