Saturday, September 07, 2019
Pit time matters more than 0-60 time
The Tesla skeptics are eaten up with Porsche's latest EV offering, which apparently has 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 teraterahorsepower and can accelerate from 0 to twice the speed of light in negative 99999999 megaseconds tachyon time. Or something like that.
Car guys have always been obsessed with maximum acceleration. For them the only thing that counts is wiggling a few miniature bits of gravel in the posterior semicircular canal.
Carmakers often cater to this bizarre obsession, but it's not what sells real quantities of real cars.
Acceleration isn't even what wins real races. Back when NASCAR involved actual cars instead of superspecialized billion-dollar rocket ships disguised as cars, the best racers understood this point. Richard Petty won with '49 Plymouths, which were emphatically not the fastest cars on the track. The Plymouths were the most reliable cars, using less gas and tires than the others, and failing less often. Spending less time in the pit made a larger difference than a few MPH in top speed.
And this is why electric cars are still not ready for normal usage. They intrinsically spend too much time in the pit. When a fillup takes 3 hours instead of 3 minutes, your 3 second 0-60 time is totally irrelevant.
¶ 1:39 AM 
