Horsepower Wars vs Electric Cars

In My Humble Opinion
1

The musclecar and horsepower wars are alive and well in American cars, and also in supercars from here and abroad.

Heck, modern supercars like the Porsche 918, Ferrari LaFerrari and the McClaren P1 all use hybrid tech to increase power of their already numbingly powerful V-8 or larger engines.

I read a lot of Car And Driver, Motor Trend, etc and all signs according to them (and general trends) point to this being the last gasp of things like the Dodge Hellcat/Demon, and yet…the auto makers keep upping the power ante ad infinitum.

So the question becomes: where does it really and truly end? We’ve seen cars like the Tesla S smoke the shit out of gas powered cars from 0-60 (but not yet quite through the quarter mile and certainly not on top end yet), but they are super expensive. I can buy a gloriously hellacious Hellcat Challenger with 707hp that’s almost as fast as that for 30-40k less than a Tesla S.

Will the end of the musclecar era be ushered in by government, like in ever-increasing CAFE standards, or by local government like in London where you now have to pay the equivalent of $28 just to enter the city at all if your car is older or somehow doesn’t meet some air quality standard? Heck, London is saying no gasoline or diesel cars will be sold or welcome by 2040, and that’s not that far away.

Are musclecars inherently more polluting than regular gas powered cars in terms of emissions? I don’t think the modern ones are.

It’s just amazing to me, I spoke with an older guy today at work and he was telling me about his 1967 GTO with the 389 and tri-carb setup, and as he waxed nostalgic over the alleged bygone musclecar era, I had to remind him that that era is right now. Cars have never been more powerful, capable or robust than they are right now.

But when does this end? And does this mean America’s love for fast, powerful cars will just carry on with electric cars that will have ever-increasing horsepower and torque levels, along with increased range?

It’s madness. Jeep just introduced the Hellcat powered Grand Cherokee Trailhawk with 707hp…starting at $86,000! Wow.

2

Of course more powerful cars are inherently more polluting. A larger engine has more moving mass. A larger engine is almost always operating at a tiny fraction of full throttle, at much lower RPM than where the engine is most efficient. And it takes power just turn the engine and compress the fuel/gas mixture. The Dodge Challenger SRT gets 13 mpg city / 21 mpg hwy. The Camaro with a 6.2 liter supercharged engine gets 12 mpg city / 20 mpg hwy.

I’m not sure if there’s any other General Question in the OP?

3

Sooner than that.

Volvo has announced that they won’t produce gas or diesel vehicles after 2019.

GM has said they are planning for an “all-electric future”, and are introducing 20 new electric models by 2023 (and probably dropping 6 current models).

Governments may not have to do much regulation on this; automakers (steered by their customers) seem to be doing it themselves.

4

OP is better suited to IMHO. Moved from General Questions.

samclem

5

Until they are forced off the road by legislation, and as long as there is a profit to be made, I bet someone will keep producing low volume high powered cars as rich people’s toys, even if it is a tiny workshop making a car a month, or, more likely, an offshoot of race/rally car manufacture like Mclaren.

6

Bold mine

Problem with Governments may not have to do much as automakers are doing this because of customers is that although all electric would work for many, presently doesn’t work for everyone - and automakers know this. Electric cars is a idealized dream for many, but when the realities of ownership of one hits home, people start to realize it’s limitations too. So it is a honeymoon time for electric cars, but we all know the honeymoon does not go on forever. But for now the automakers are riding the honeymoon phase with making unrealistic claims about going full electric, most I would WAG have no intentions of doing that, just saying that beacause 1: that’s what people like to hear 2: it forestalls government requirements.

Unless the limitations of electric are overcome, it will take government help to convince them to go electric But due to this honeymoon period effect presently going on that is not being required now.

7

I moved this from Thread Games to IMHO as was intended.

[/moderating]

8

Watching the self-reported power on my Bolt’s dashboard, it easily goes over 150kW, something like 200hp. That’s no muscle car, but respectable enough for a small car.

I’m not sure how true that holds for electric cars. Greater mass does mean greater power demands and so any losses due to inefficiencies will be greater as well. But working against that is 1) the electric motor is not where most of the mass is (batteries are) so changing the motor size has less of an effect on the overall mass than changing the engine size does on a combustion vehicle. 2) the electric motor does not suffer disproportionate losses at lower power levels. 3) larger mass means more kinetic energy available for recharging via regenerative braking–the vehicle’s mass is part of its energy recovery system.

So while larger electric vehicles will be less efficient, I think the inefficiency does not increase with size as quickly as it does with combustion vehicles.

9

that is not what they said. They are planning for all of their cars to be electrified after 2019; they just won’t have any ICE-only offerings. They’ll still be making hybrids and PHEVs.

10

I’d say the Dodge Hellcat engine probably weighs 700+ lbs, but has a little over 700 hp. The Tesla S base model only has the equilavlent of 362 HP but does it with an engine that only weighs 70 lbs. Imagine what kind of horsepower they could produce if the motor weighed the same as the Hell Cat. Enough to blow the Hell Cat to Hell. But EV’s need a lot of batteries, over a half a tons worth on the Tesla S, while a typical car having say, 16 gallons of petrol, would only weigh about 100 lbs.

11

Those are some interesting numbers - the ICE engine+fuel is 800 pounds, and it sounds like the Tesla+batteries is about 1070? That is closer than I would have thought.

12

For carbon dioxide emissions, you need only look at the MPG, and that tells you that yes, anything with shitty fuel economy puts out more CO2 per mile. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to reduce CO2 output other than improving fuel economy.

For criteria pollutants - carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, unburned hydrocarbons, and particulates - muscle cars are subject to the same regulations as econoboxes. There’s a lot that can be done to clean up criteria pollutants in the exhaust, but manufacturers will only do what is necessary to comply with regulations. Here are the Bugatti Veyron and Honda Fit side-by-side. At the bottom of the page, pick a state to see how the smog ratings compare. Most of the time you’ll see a designation of “Bin 5,” which refers to how much noxious pollution comes out of the tailpipe in grams per mile. See Table 2 at this link for the description of bins. Hard to believe that the 8-liter Veyron is as clean as a 1.5-liter Fit, but again, that’s down to what manufacturers are doing to clean up the emissions; it’s mostly about exhaust gas recirculation and how big a cat you put in the exhaust.

If you’re going to do a fair comparison (admittedly difficult), the weight of the entire propulsion system should be used.

For the Hellcat, this means:
-engine
-transmission
-full fuel tank

For the Tesla Model S P85D, this means:
-both electric motors
-both single-speed gear reduction units
-battery pack

I suspect the Hellcat’s automatic transmission will add 200-300 pounds to that figure, while the Tesla’s single-speed gear reduction units will add much less than that.

13

Maybe I’m missing a car gene, but other than on a track, what is the use of all that horse power? I like a car with a little get up and go, but I don’t need to power a Sherman tank. (apologies if this is threadshitting, but the OP did say “it’s madness.”)

14

Block-long smoky burnouts on Main Street, for one thing.

Traction limits generally mean that kind of power is difficult to put to ground at low speeds; it’s why supercars and hypercars generally don’t have 0-60 times much below 3 seconds, in spite of having 1000+ horsepower. However, that extra power does make a difference in the 30-60 times, or the 0-100 times.

For street use, beyond a certain point, more power isn’t about being “useful;” it’s about being fun. IMHO, a 0-60 time of six seconds is useful; anything better than that is just fun.

15

Just don’t have time for an in-depth of power-to-weight comparison, if I did, it would have involved about 10 pages. I also left off the weight of the invertors. And some Tesla models also have 3 electric motors.

I believe the overall winner for power-to-weight would go to the turbo-pump engines. These are easily capable of 10,000 hp, and about 150 lbs or so. Just forget efficiency.

16

Overcompensating. :wink:

17

I’m not sure what you’re referring to - All of the production Teslas have either one motor(roadster, Model 3 so far Model S RWD), or dual motors (Model S-“D” , Model X, future Model 3), unless you’re counting something that’s not driving the wheels.

18

You got me! Yeah, I wouldn’t count the p/s. My confusion, not yours, it’s actually a Tesla S converted to 3 electric engines by a company called Magna Powertrain and it’s merely a demonstrator that I read about a week ago. Sorry, have went through a hundred cites over the last week involving another similar thread. Thanks for correcting me.

https://www.motor1.com/news/179674/tesla-model-s-handles-better-three-motors/

19

I don’t have a feel for how much the inverter(s) might weigh. Got a ballpark figure?

20

350 lbs for engine and invertor. This cite breaks it down on the Tesla S model.