I know, I know, “gentleman’s agreement” is a gendered term, but it’s a reference to a “bubble era” understanding between Japanese automakers that they would not sell cars with more than 276 advertised horsepower. The point was to avoid a competition in which automakers went back-and-forth trying to one-up one another; “horsepower wars” were a bad thing, some thought. Meanwhile in the U.S., horsepower wars have been raging since day 1, but there has always been a limiting element that has kept figures from getting out of control in a regular consumer vehicle. Now, with electric cars, that element is gone, leading me to wonder if a “gentleman’s agreement” makes sense now more than ever.
Here’s a little background on Japan’s “gentleman’s agreement,” per Car and Driver‘s 2004 article “Japan Dumps 276-hp Pact”:
Since 1989, Japanese automakers have all endorsed—at least on paper—a kind of gentlemen’s agreement that limited their advertised horsepower to 276 on domestically produced vehicles. Their primary goal was to avoid a horsepower war in a country where the maximum speed limit is 62 mph. But in October, Honda officially broke the agreement at its Legend (Acura RL in the U.S.) press conference when it unveiled the model’s 300-hp, 3.5-liter V-6.
For years, it’s been presumed that once an automaker stuck out its neck and ignored the 276-hp mark, the rest would quickly follow. And judging by what’s in the Japanese production pipeline, it looks as if the conventional wisdom was correct.
So the agreement between Japanese automakers didn’t last forever, but the intent was good. Why keep cramming power into cars when 276 is more than enough? Well, cars grew heavier, and safety advancements like stability control and traction control entered the mainstream, making a 300 horsepower Camry safe in the hands of pretty much any Uber driver. So in this case, relaxing that agreement made sense.
Yes, There’s A Horsepower War Already Raging, But Mostly Among Sports Cars
Of course, horsepower wars have continued in the muscle car segment, with Ford Mustang GTs now making 470 horsepower, wreaking havoc on Cars & Coffees everywhere. Also wreaking havoc on every major street in America (especially Detroit)? Dodge Chargers and Challengers. Seriously, Hellcats and Scat Packs and Demons are out of control; I hear them all the time tearing through America’s streets. They’re cheap horsepower, and cheap horsepower yields silliness.
During the research for this article, I found that the State of Texas seized a 1000 horsepower Dodge Challenger Hellcat that had allegedly been “evading law enforcement.” Now the car is being used to catch the badguys:
Anyway, the Mustang and Challenger are not really my concern. They’re sports cars, so them being ridiculously powerful is less of a problem than, say, a Toyota Camry being ridiculously powerful. At least in the case of the Challenger and Mustang, the person behind the wheel consciously chose to drive a sports car, and they hopefully have some level of understanding of what that entails re: their responsibility/the risk involved.
No, the thing I’m worried about is the average car being absurdly fast.
The Technical Obstacles Preventing Powerful ‘Normal Cars’ Is Gone
With internal combustion engines, the risk of this happening has always been fairly low, as there are significant technical obstacles in the way. With ICEs, power and efficiency are, in large part, inversely proportional, meaning throwing a high-horsepower motor into pretty much anything will punish you at the pump. There will never be a 500 horsepower supercharged V6 Honda CR-V, because Honda CR-V owners want at least 30 MPG and long-term durability.
What’s more, making power costs money, especially given modern CO2 regulations. If Honda did decide to jam a 500 horsepower engine into a CR-V, a competitor would offer a vehicle with improved fuel economy for less money, and CR-V sales would tank. A more powerful internal combustion engine requires advanced technology to meet emissions regulations, and it requires increased robustness to handle the stresses. And that all means one thing: $.
But with EVs, these two obstacles don’t exist. A more powerful electric motor doesn’t yield as significant a decrease in overall efficiency, and what’s more, a more powerful motor doesn’t add that much cost, either.
There are inefficiencies associated with a larger motor size, and there are inefficiencies associated with wiring/electronics needs that go along with higher-current output from the battery to a motor, but the cost isn’t as noticeable to the driver as it is with an internal combustion engine vehicle.
It’s for this reason that you see Kia SUVs with 576 horsepower, “hot-hatch” mid-size Hyundai SUVs with 601 horsepower, a Chevy Blazer EV with 557 horsepower, a Tesla Model 3 sedan with 510 horsepower, and I could go on and on. Just this week we said the new 429 horsepower Nissan Ariya Nismo wasn’t powerful enough when compared to the competitive set — and that’s just a midsize crossover! Since when is a 429 horsepower Nissan midsize SUV not powerful enough?
But that’s the world we live in. Power has never been cheaper or more attainable or coupled with as few compromises. And when you pair that power with a lack of a traditional transmission, it can overcome an EV’s curb weight to yield zero to 60mph times that blows the doors off of ICE cars. And that’s a problem.
Just watch how fast that Lotus Eletre in the video above accelerates when I hit the pedal to the floor. It’s absolutely absurd, and the reality is that, if you’re doing 0-60 in 2.95 seconds, your ability to navigate the vehicle with precision, and to react to obstacles, is going to be diminished. It’s just reality.
I’m Not The Only One Concerned
I’m not the only one with concerns about democratized horsepower.
[UPDATE: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety just responded to my inquiry on the subject at hand. Here’s what they sent me:
Yes, the amount of power packed into many new EVs raises safety concerns because we know that higher horsepower often means higher travel speeds. Our past research has found that vehicles with more power are more likely to exceed the speed limit, and this is concerning because higher speeds make a crash more likely and make that crash more severe if it happens. In fact, speed is one of the biggest traffic safety issues in the U.S., implicated in more than 12,000 deaths in 2022.
Concerns about speed are compounded by the extra weight of these EVs, which often weigh hundreds or thousands of pounds more than similar internal combustion engine vehicles. In a crash, that means the vehicle itself or its crash partner will have to manage that extra energy.
IIHS sent me this link to explore the aforementioned concerns in more depth -DT]
NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy has voiced her concerns about powerful, heavy EVs, with Arstechnica quoting her in its piece “EVs are getting too heavy and too powerful, safety chief says.” From that article:
On Wednesday, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy raised the alarm during her keynote speech at this year’s Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting in Washington, DC.
“I’m concerned about the increased risk of severe injury and death for all road users from heavier curb weights and [the] increasing size, power, and performance of vehicles on our roads, including electric vehicles,” she told attendees.
Newsweek also wrote about this topic in its story “Electric Vehicles May Be Too Hazardous for Teen Drivers.” From that piece, which cites a AAA representative:
Even the slowest EVs out-accelerated 43 percent of internal combustion engine (ICE) performance cars.
“Fast-accelerating cars are indeed a risk for novice drivers; they may be more tempted to explore such vehicles’ performance capabilities. This is why AAA recommends for novice drivers a traditional passenger sedan with moderate power, such as a four-cylinder engine or similar,” Dr. William Van Tassel, manager of driver’s training programs at AAA told Newsweek.
“Plus, controlling the throttle of a high-power vehicle can be difficult for drivers of any age; they can end up going much faster than they intended, way beyond a safe speed. One result of the availability of EVs is that we are now also having to teach that if drivers do a lot of fast accelerating they will be out of power soon–don’t want that,” he said.
Even our Stephen Rivers wrote on Carscoops a while back “Are Electric Cars Getting Too Fast For Your Average Driver?” Hop on Reddit, and you’ll see that it’s not just journalists and safety advocates who worry about EVs offering too much speed to the layperson. Here’s a post from Independent_Win_4187:
I think there needs to be some regulation for how fast EVs can go because regular consumers have access to sub 5 second cars and that is scary.
The average Joe wouldn’t even think of getting proper training on how to handle heavy bullets, I predict that over the coming years EV caused vehicular fatalities will rise due to people not being able to control their 3 ton weapons. The F150 lightning can reach 0-60 in 4.0 seconds. That is way too much for a regular person to handle, and it’s a truck.
When the IONIQ 5 and ev6 released. They were piling up in junk yards because people obviously couldn’t control them. That kind of power on the road is not needed for your regular suburban family.
Point is, I think the manufacturers are overconfident in the competence of the average driver. It’s only a matter of time until regulations step in, and I’m all for it.
Another solution would be to retrain the population to handle these cars, but that would be more expensive than just stopping at the source. Thing is, they’ve already started rolling out quick.
I love the idea of EVs, I just don’t like the idea of a incompetent user running over innocent people.
There are plenty of folks who completely disagree, with some saying that, historically, performance cost money, and now that it doesn’t, to punish the layperson by limiting their vehicle would be classist.
I kinda get the argument, but at the same time, there’s value in there being some limiting factor — something that prevented insane horsepower from getting into the majority of folks’ hands. It’s a volume thing. As I mentioned before, this limiting factor on ICEs was cost and fuel economy (and also, typically, maintenance costs). If you want lots of power from a gas car in 2024, you have to pay a good amount of money, and you’re going to be punished at the fuel pump. Not so with an EV.
You may wonder why an automaker would even bother with a 600 horsepower commuter car like a Camry, and if I’m honest: It’s possible such a thing will never exist, and this whole article is just me worrying about nothing. But with horsepower costing so little to build and creating so few compromises for a driver, I could see an automaker deciding to make sure its average family sedan has a few more ponies than the Nissan Altima at the dealership across town. Before you know it, it’s possible an 89 year-old is confused, and taps their pedal against the ground, shooting their 5000 pound EV from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds right toward your rear bumper on a Saturday morning. That’s a scary thought.
Two more things before I conclude here: First, there’s software that can probably alleviate my concerns; you can offer 600 horsepower, but perhaps require one to dig through the menus to get to that particular “max power” setting. Second, I have to mention insurance companies, because even if cost and fuel economy are no longer the regulators of horsepower, and even if there is no “gentleman’s agreement,” the insurance companies are there to be the horsepower regulators, should there be a need. You can bet that, if it’s established that high horsepower EVs in the hands of laypeople are creating a more dangerous roadway, it’s almost a certainty that insurance companies will make it harder for folks to insure 600 horsepower camrys than, say, 300 horsepower ones.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
“I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.”
I think a solution to the problem is with insurance… get discounts for different power-to-weight ratios.
I propose that anything with more than 25lbs per unit of HP should be in the lowest bracket
And of course anything with less than 5lbs per hp would be nailed with surcharges./
And in between these, have insurance brackets with 5lb spans per HP.
Also limit the power-to-weight for new drivers.
I recall there are two countries where variations of this are already being done.
https://insideevs.com/news/721286/low-power-teslas/
the problem here is that you’d end up incentivising people to drive heavier cars, which is yet another safety concern.
We can mitigate that with road/registration fees that go up as the vehicle gets bigger and heavier.
If we did this alone in any meaningful way, it would reduce the power of EVs.
It would affect all vehicles. Plenty of overpowered ICE vehicles out there.
The insurance premium already has the likelihood the car and driver will be in an accident, and how bad that accident will be. That’s the entire liability part. All these things – how much power, how heavy is the car, how easy to control – are all factors in likelihood or cost of the accident.
Penalizing things beyond their actual impact on accidents is just fear-based penalties. What are people asking for, a “you scare me, so you should pay money” tax?
If you want to see an industry agreement on power, it’ll come from insurance agencies saying “anything over X HP in this class will have higher premiums.” And they’ll likely base it on actual data instead of fear-mongering.
LOL like those JDM cars with “276 hp” (wink wink) didn’t already have over 300 hp in real life even before the agreement was “broken” 😉
Exactly. No matter what the marketing says, the truth will be known the first time someone does a 0-60 run.
You know what’s even better than a “Gentleman’s Agreement”? Laws and regulations!
The last thing that I want, and that the rest of this gearhead community should want, is more government regulation of the automotive industry, particularly with the aim of limiting performance.
You just know that this will end with a regulation stating that cars are only permitted to have 100hp/1000lb unladen weight except for vehicles over 6000lb GVWR, and it will have the effect of limiting the performance of 0 fast EVs but making Miatas and Lotuses less fun.
Are you arguing that the US legislative aim is dumb, or that regulations period will kill fun cars?
Fast EVs have now been around in decent numbers and for enough years that there should be some data on accidents and fatalities relative to slower cars. If so, that would be helpful information to have when weighing in.
Quoting myself from the Ariya article:
Agreement, limit, smaller motors, smaller cars. I don’t do the math, but I do a lot of thinking about how a now-midsize SUV or pretty much any given EV have an order of magnitude more force to impart than I do on my bike. If I’m 700 pounds bike and rider, and an SUV is 5200 lbs vehicle and driver, I’d have to something like 450 miles an hour to impart as much force as that SUV at 50 miles an hour (feel free to pick apart my math, I’m in a slight hurry).
That does not mean that everything needs to be pulled down to motorcycle levels of mass and force, but it should give us a little pause about what it means to control – or not to control – that much mass, force, weight, potential.
Force and energy are not the same thing, the difference sometimes matters.
5000lb is a really low limit. My Ford Expedition weighs ~6500lb, and(this shouldn’t surprise you) it drives exactly like a 2500lb car in every regard except physical footprint. It wallows in corners less, and stops better than, my Cavalier. If a person is legally permitted to operate a Cavalier, I see no reason why they wouldn’t be permitted to drive the Expedition.
But the same thing can be said of many newer medium-duty trucks: usually, the only part of driving it which really requires different technique from a small car is wheelbase and turning radius considerations. There is a reason why we have the CDL cutoff at 26,000lb GVWR in most states.
If our drivers are too stupid to operate large vehicles, the solution is not to prevent them from operating large vehicles. Because if you can’t operate a large vehicle safely, you can’t operate a small vehicle safely either. If our drivers are too stupid to operate a car safely, the only logical solution is improved driver education and testing.
I think it’s a little inevitable when for most cases the only way to scale range is making them more powerful
You would maximize range by limiting power delivery, to the contrary. Just because the battery is bigger doesn’t mean you have to increase the max power draw.
whut. Please explain. Conventional wisdom has been that you get more range out of the same battery if you use less torque, so where did this come from?
You can’t have a “gentleman’s agreement” any more. The FTC is dragging companies to court for talking to their competitors about pretty much anything. Sure, they always lose, but litigation is expensive, so who wants to invite that?
We all said this about the German horsepower wars of the 2000s and again when the Hellcat released with 707hp. Roads are safer than ever in the rich world (notable exception: the USA, for reasons unique to our wonderful market).
This would just curb choice for people in the market for a car. We should be focusing on improving road safety by redesigning our roads to match the speed we want, but that’s much harder than a blanket “agreement”.
Weight is another big issue but that is inherent in any modern EV, whether 200hp or 600hp.
Plus, as you mention, I’m not even sure this is a concern. Sure, a Kia and a Hyundai now have 500hp+. They’re still novelty cars. Most of the “sensible” EVs don’t have crazy hp numbers because those buyers don’t care.
I’m actually a little dismayed this isn’t happening a little more. Look at all the small EVs currently on sale in Europe — it’s the same underpowered stuff they’ve been selling for years, except now electric. Could have been a chance to move up a bit.
I think most of the rich world has way less hp available than US, and even less hp than you would think by looking at foreign cars sold in your market. Hellcats, AMG’s, M-cars and V8’s in general have always been marginal products outside of NA. Dacia Sandero is the most sold car in EU, Honda N-box in Japan.. There are 50 base Golfs for every Gti, A 300+ hp daily driver has only now become a thing with phev’s and EV’s. So we will see what happens with the insurance rates. Although… in the recent years, 15-20 year old rwd MB’s and BMW’s with semi-modern turbodiesels have become cheap enough for young drivers. As they are quite robust engines, you can easily tune them to relatively insane hp, especially if you gut the dpf etc. As you would expect, even if the cars have esp and abs, inevitably some of them end up in hedges or around lamp posts and trees. In the old days this would happen with corollas or 316i’s, now the airbags are offset with higher speeds. So, give us the tools and we will provide.
I am not sure what you mean by underpowered? Practically all small EV’s are more powerful than their fossil counterparts. Current small turbo cars have 50% more power and 100% more torque than the NA engines had. 60-75 hp in the not that old days, now 100+ hp easily. The old ones were slow, but manageable. Now they reach 60 in around 10s or so, and sub 8s is plenty fast enough in modern traffic – small EV’s achieve that easily with 150 hp. If I would have to choose, I would rather have more battery capacity than a faster and more expensive powertrain.
Regarding the fast EV’s: the sad future may well be some sort of undefeatable and location based electronic nannies, if this becomes a widespread problem. Industry wide agreements may be difficult to achieve, esp. with the perceived threat of the chinese cars.
“We should be focusing on improving road safety by redesigning our roads to match the speed we want, but that’s much harder than a blanket “agreement”.”
I dunno about it where you live but for the past few years my city has been doing just that.
I believe there used to be a “gentleman’s agreement” among the German and European marques to govern their vehicles to 155 mph as well.
Notably different in that those cars actually were governed to 250kph. The 296hp was what went into the literature, but several cars noticeably outperformed that in testing.
How much of that was a tire limitation?
Acceleration on many of these EVs is astounding. It encourages a driving style that likely is causing a lot of additional crashes. There’s nothing on the road that more frequently dives for an opening in traffic than a Tesla. And it’s not like Talladega where everybody has a roll cage, helmet, and head/neck restraint.
100% agree there needs to be something. I’m seeing way more hummer ev’s around metro Detroit, and the size/speed of those things is scary.
Another thing to worry about with high-powered EVs is the sheer mass of these beasts. If the driver of a Hummer (you brought ‘er!) EV screws up at speed, anyone driving a smaller car is going to be a stain on their slotted grill.
This might end up being like a Hellcat where the third owner is going to be able to buy it, but not be able to afford the upkeep that makes it semi-safe.
I’m all for low horsepower BEVs. Realistically unless I’m towing (which currently is impractical for BEVs due to towing unfriendly chargers) I could easily get by with 75 Horsepower.
I’d rather have less torque than more, less likely to break the wheels loose in slick conditions.
I assume you have only one other family member and no large possessions?
Weird how humanity managed to get by just fine with families and large possessions for centuries with only a few literal horsepower, if that.
OTA TV has a show called Beverly Hillbillies on some retro channel. The intro has a 1920s era pickup hauling 4 people, a dog and all the junk props with them.
They manage this on a stunning 41 hp.
People got by with a LOT less.
WW2 was fought using trucks which hauled troops and cargo through Russian mud and winter on 90 hp or less. So I’m pretty sure 75 hp will get little Billy and Jane to soccer practice while also hauling home a new table from IKEA.
IIRC, the hot version Willys Jeep only had something like 46bhp during the war.
a bit more at 60HP
Still even the Bantam Jeep could achieve “total lift-off, loaded with 3-man crew, and towing a 37mm anti-tank gun”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willys_MB#/media/File:Bantam_jeep_flying_37mm_sm_(cropped).jpg
Dogs really. However a consistent 75 horsepower no matter the altitude, temp, etc. is a lot different than 75 HP on paper for an Internal Combustion Engine.
75hp is a bit low, but I did 25 years with 100hp as my daily driver and it was fine in 99% of situations.
That was a small car, but 150hp is probably enough for anyone in a modern bloated appliance car.
Agreed, that being said I can get by with less. As other commenters have pointed out most of the trucks that we used during WWII to haul our shit had very low amounts of horsepower.
I drive an old BMW (120hp), NA Miata (116hp), and an early Corvair (110hp). None are fast but all are fast enough. That said, I sure wouldn’t want to lose 45hp from any of them!
The other piece that’s overlooked here is the effect that acceleration has on the human body. The instant torque whips heads back on a powerful EV. It’s a bit disorienting if it’s not expected. Meanwhile the EV is rapidly building speed. That’s bad. All the nannies in the world won’t help a disoriented driver.
There’s little immediate cost penalty to speed. A kWh is $0.35-0.50 around me at a public charger. An extra 35 cents won’t be noticed. Not like the extra $3.20 a gallon of regular costs. Of course there’s the tire wear, but that’s tomorrow’s problem!
Think so?
Look at PHEVs to find out. A 2021 Porsche Cayenne Turbo S e-Hybrid Coupe gets 42 MPGe and 18 mpg on premium. To take that car 25 miles on premium that costs $3.50 would cost you 4.72. On electricity that costs $0.35-$0.50/kWh that same 25 miles will cost $6.19 to $8.04.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=43778
These costs scale with more efficient cars. People tend to grossly underestimate the impact of electricity prices on EV running costs.
Where is premium $3.50? It’s significantly more expensive around me.
My Tesla at an average of 4 miles/kWh would take 6.25 kWh to go 25 miles. That’s $3.13 at $0.50/kWh or $1.88 at $0.30/kWh.
I have no idea. The Cayenne turbo was simply the most convenient performance PHEV I could think of and it drinks premium.
The math still works for your Tesla. A 2022 Model 3 RWD has an EPA rating of 132 MPGe, much better than the Porsche and very similar to a 2022 Prius Prime. That Prime is a PHEV that can also get 54 MPG on regular.
Using the EPA figures at $0.35-$0.50/kWh that Tesla will cost $2.23 to $3.19 to do 25 miles and the slightly more efficient Prius a few pennies less. On gas though that Prius will cost $1.57 to go those same 25 miles.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=44362&id=45013
Appreciate the receipts.
I left out home charging since that can wildly vary from free with solar to expensive on-peak. My personal case is cheap thanks to solar and utility off-peak charging rebates.
No doubt. There are several charging situations which would make EVs a slam dunk as far as energy costs go, especially free power from your employer and/or auto manufacturer.
Unfortunately too many folks simply buy into the EVs are cheaper to operate without doing any math using the prices they pay (or don’t pay) for energy.
Agreed, people don’t do the math and go all Pikachu face when it’s expensive.
The problem with insurence keeping performance in check is insurance costs are to some extent agrigated across all drivers, thus raising the cost for everyone.
Screw that “Gentlemen’s agreement”. I vote the opposite. A “Hell Yeah Brother Agreement” that henceforth, no vehicle shall be produced in the USA whose horsepower figure doesn’t contain a comma!
Careful what you ask for. Regulators might say fine but now we’re using European numbering conventions!
(e.g. commas are used as decimal points so your 1,000 hp whip puts out a very precise single horsepower. Have fun with your Amish buggy hot rod!)
I’m pretty sure I’m alive today because my high school car had 73 hp. A big part of the problem is the power in EVs pretty much comes with the long range battery everyone “needs”. Artificially reducing it through hardware is probably the best way as software will be defeatable (though, a defeat would have to be sought out, so that certainly reduces the number of people doing so), but I think it would be more effective with intentionally undersized motors, maybe even engineering them into a space that wouldn’t readily allow a larger one to be changed out. They could probably still be overpowered, but then the lifespan is reduced and the (greater) possibility of fire comes into play. I know everyone thinks they’re a good driver, but I know I’m better than average and the level of power of many EVs is of absolutely no interest to me—I know I can’t properly control it, it’s at such a level that there’s no practical way to get familiar with it enough to have any chance of controlling it, and that level would never be appropriate for the streets. It really gives me pause to think of all the other people out there, the ones not paying attention, the ones you wonder how they can walk and chew gum at the same time, or the young kid with poor decision making skills driving things like this. Had I something like this as a
kideven well into my 20s, I’d be dead for sure. I mean, OK, NBD for me, but who would I possibly have taken with me? And I’m just one idiot, we are legion!As Mercedes will gladly tell ya I bet, this is a big thing in the motorcycle world.
Through the ’70s at least, motorcycles were fairly reasonably powered vis a vis other traffic on the road. Back then, a 500cc bike was considered to have a big engine. But then the horsepower wars erupted as the Japanese manufacturers really got going and were able to offer more and more power for not much more money, esp. with by moving to engine configurations beyond singles or twins (the 4cyls).
I can’t recall when it was exactly, but I want to sometime in the ’90s (maybe earlier?) when the big companies realized that at the rate things were heading, they’d face possibly crippling regulation from governments as they were mass-producing exotic car-fast machines that could be had on the used market for 4 digits. So I think they did just that, agreed to voluntarily limit power.
As it is, literbikes and hyperbikes produce more power than is useful for pretty much anything in the real world. And that power produces results faster than the human brain can process. It’s awesome and scary at the same time.
Yeah the Motorcycle Gentleman’s Agreement was 300 kph for years, it is still there kinda. That’s whole separate story though. Various European manufactures have inched above this limit, even the signatory BMW. To quiet them down a Kawasaki H2R managed 400 kmh in unregulated trim, the off the dealers floor street bike still “only” does 300 kph.
Both my bikes will hit 200 kph and do 0 to 100 kph in under 4 seconds and really that is enough for me at my age. I’ve become self regulating. (-;
Was a big thing, anyway! Some manufacturers have been playing loose with the motorcycle gentlemen’s agreement since about the late 2000s or so. The MV Agusta 312 broke the gentlemen’s agreement with its top speed of 193 mph, then came stuff like the BMW S1000RR, the Kawasaki H2R, and so on. Supposedly the MTT Turbine is another bike that gives the middle finger to the gentlemen’s agreement, but nobody has been brave enough to find its top speed.
Hmmm…I might need to fire off an email. How dangerous could it be? 🙂
This same thing was addressed with the late 1960s muscle cars.
The insurance cos had as much impact on killing the high performance cars as did the smog regs back then.
The average American then could not handle 400 hp back then.
Little has changed in the last 50+ years when it comes to average driver competence.
I believe it has actually become much worse tbh.
It’s a good point, a lot of people forget about the insurance impact for sure.
Now, thanks to a huge increase in credit products (for better or worse), there are consumers out there who can afford to pay premiums on cars that they’d never have been able to afford if they back in the ’70s.
Tech bros don’t like rules / agreement that limit them. I just can’t see it happening.. and the Japanese? Don’t they prefer hybrids?
The way I can see to limit power is insurance companies.. low power = low risk, then the rate should reflect that. In my neck of the woods, Model 3 is pretty expensive now due to how common they are and how many accidents they cause.
Yeah, the key word there is “gentlemen”. There are none of those in tech brodom.
This is unfortunately not related to the topic at hand, but in what possible world would a 1000hp challenger engaging in police chases and pit maneuvering make the road at all safer for anyone
Hey, they have special training, don’t you know?! Texas, IDK, but here in the Northeast, they’d most likely use it as a publicity thing. Do they still have the DARE program (of which most of the kids who were involved in my high school were the biggest partiers)? If so, that’s what they’d use it for.
I’m in NC, of the last two famous car chases I’m aware of, one guy in an altima (OF COURSE) somehow outran 6 explorers and got away and in the other, two state troopers ran into each other’s chargers chasing one guy on an offramp. None of these idiots need a Demon
1 HP is about 745 watts. Setting aside system losses, producing 500 HP takes about 372,500 watts of electricity. If the battery is 800 volts, that’s a 465 amp draw. A load that high seems like it would be hell on a battery, and require 6/0 cable from the battery to the motor. Boggles my mind.
In most of these cars you can only pull that kind of juice for a few seconds before things start overheating. Best known example is Tesla launch control only working once or twice as advertised before you have to let everything cool down for a while.
Porsche seems to be able to make the Taycon capable of more continuous performance than Tesla. But the point of DT’s rant is that the average driver is incapable of handling even one 3 second blast to 60 mph. So, the fact that Tesla can only manage 2 such blasts is not exactly reassuring.
Right. Once or twice is more than enough for braggadocio and general Cars and Coffee destruction.
Yup. I see Teslas blasting away from the stoplights in my town at a rate that none of my decently quick cars can manage. I feel like they are driving over their heads and don’t even realize it. Thing happen quicker, the faster you go.
Needs moar “atomic batteries to power” with a few “turbines to speed” for good measure.
As others have pointed out, short bursts of power are available. That means they could probably use a little smaller wire. In addition, the high power EVs tend to have more than one motor. So your 465 A would be divided by 2-4, giving slightly more reasonable current draw.
But your point is quite valid. On the other side of the battery, when I hear about some of these EVs charging at 250 kW… *that* seems like quite a feat. Those charging cables must be massive. I have used chargers with max output of 150 kW, and that cable is pretty fat already.
I’d also cosign on burying performance in a submenu, 0-60 in 7 or so should be the default, and if you want to go faster, go unlock it each time you start.
agreed. make it a conscience decision for the driver to enable the extra power.
Or even go so far as to make it a conscious decision.
Either one could work. /s (sorry)
I think that the insurance market has already spoken on the costs with the totalling of cars due to battery pack damage and the elaborate sensors on the vehicle (especially in the bumpers).
The worst kind of people on the road will and can pay any premium.
“The worst kind of people on the road will and can pay no premium at all”
FIFY
What $ premium for insurance? Insurance has so many variables which makes it hard to compare but as someone who just moved from a ’21 Sonata N Line to a ’24 Model Y Performance, my insurance costs went down about $100 over the year and the difference for me to drive off the lot in a lower powered Y Long Range AWD vs a Performance AWD was a whopping $1 per year difference. I would think the lack of sensors in the bumpers or anywhere in the Y make it cheaper to repair in the most common simple bumper related accidents.
Insurance and tax levies on the HP and an electronic neutering on the HP for street use. Want to track the thing, log into a site enter details and track and it gets unlocked when you arrive at the track for the requested duration or you leave the track.