28 September

I often call combustion engines puny and gutless. It’s not just slander, it’s engineering. Combustion engines only provide significant power or torque at one tiny place on the rev curve, at the black arrow. At higher revs. Why I say you have to rev the guts out of them to get any power. (Also why combustion cars have gears, to keep the engine revving at every speed.) Once you know that, working your way through the gears, which many drivers love, actually seems almost embarrassing. You’re making the engine rev like crazy, just to have any power available at all. That revving sound, which we equate with ‘grunt’, is the exact opposite, the symptom of the engine having NO grunt. Try starting from a red light in third gear. The engine will give you nothing, you’d be better off with a donkey. (Also, that revving sound people love is literally the engine farting. Exhaust gases. Only made to sound nicer by a muffler. Also the sound of 80% of the energy in the fuel going straight out the exhaust, because combustion engines are so hopelessly inefficient.) Electric motors on the other hand, the blue line, give you maximum power/torque even at zero revs. In that critical green circle zone. It’s why they take off like a rocket from a standing start. No gears needed, just a continuous flow of power. It makes them beautiful to drive too, power titrated exactly to need, at every moment.