The average horsepower of a new American car has more than doubled since 1980. You probably haven’t noticed, and most of this additional horsepower goes to waste. In fact, our cars represent a vast reservoir of untapped energy producing potential — more than 38,000 gigawatts in total. That’s 35 times the combined output of every coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydroelectric power plant in the country. Alexis Madrigal does the math. What are we doing with all this extra muscle under the hood? Couldn’t it be put to better use? [%comments]
Why Do Our Cars Have So Much Wasted Muscle?
TAGS: cars
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We use the extra horsepower in only two situations.
First (very unusual for all but a handful) – pulling a very heavy load.
Second (almost everyone, sometime) – fast acceleration to merge onto the highway.
If you don’t have the excess horsepower, and if the guy behind does, you may be at serious risk of injury!
So, this is all a result of an uncontrolled arms race. Tiime for disarmament.
High HP is a complete marketing ploy. HP does not determine how quickly a vehicle accelerates, no matter how heavy or light it may be (look to torque for increased acceleration). HP is related to top speed potential, and in a land where 80mph is considered to be quick, it’s hard to argue that a lot of potential HP is not going unused. Feel sorry for the guy who bought into the Porsche marketing. He spent a lot of money to buy into the image that he thinks a 450HP care will bring, yet he’s not getting to the office any quicker than the guy sitting next to him in traffic in the Fit (and the Fit driver’s left leg probably isn’t sore).
I once read somewhere that it only takes ~80 HP for a car to travel ~60 MPH. The numbers may be be off by 10, but the point is, a car doesn’t need 300HP to drive around town and even on the freeway. The reason for the extra 220HP? The first 6 seconds you are on the onramp, getting up to 60MPH.
I know it helps to be able to speed around a hazard or pass a slow truck but it’s an awful lot of wasted energy and money.
#10…HP is a calculation of torque and RPM. Smaller engines do not create a significant amount of torque until they reach a higher RPM. When they do, that small amount torque is producing the same amount of power potential as an engine with more torque at a lower RPM. You compensate this by using something called a gear box with a little stick on it where you can choose gears. Although, I do agree that torque is often overlooked in performance meters and makes for a fun street car when you have lots of low end.
TM -
While it’s true that higher max torque numbers usually go hand in hand with faster exceleration, that doesn’t mean that it should be considered as a seperate, unrelated value from horsepower. Or that torque makes a car accelerate and horsepower is for top speed.
Horsepower is the product of the amount of torque times the RPM at which it’s created (torgue is an angular force, horsepower is that force over a distance in a certain amount of time).
Unfortuently, cars being the complicated machines they are, some of the most important variables in determining how fast a car will accelerate are also the most boring / least sexy, and so never end up in a brochure; things like gear ratios, and torque curves.
That all just means that the best way to figure out which car accelerates better is to drive them.
The extra horsepower IS going to waste, but it’s being wasted in terms of excessive fuel consumption. There is little need for so much HP these days. I’ve packed my entire life into a 1986 Honda Civic (40+ MPG, < 100 hp) and driven cross-country (over the cascades and rockies, natch) at highway reasonable speeds. 75% of Americans don’t need more than 90 hp to do what they need to do at currently acceptable speeds, especially on a day-to-day basis. The only people who need real HP regularly are tow trucks, construction workers, long-distance drivers et al; but for the rest of that, it just burns more gas so you can drive even further beyond the speed limit.
“(and the Fit driver’s left leg probably isn’t sore)”
From personal experience, my left leg gets sore only when I’m driving for long periods of time without having to use the clutch (on the freeway). Rowing my own gears at least gives my left leg something to do beyond just sitting there.
#11- basically any aircooled VW ever? It takes nowhere near 80hp to go 60mph, actually!
Of course, going 60mph is one thing, getting there…