The higher gear ratios allow lower fuel consumption, less vibration, lower cabin noise, and plenty of reserve power for overtaking or towing.
Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
51–60 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#52Eleanor Lily. Welcome to the war on cars.
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#53Disclaimer: IANAL, but also asked that question once in my youth, and went digging for the answer. They technically don't in a meaningful sense. What they do is make a car that has high torque and can accelerate 0-60 mph as quickly as possible. This has the unwanted side effect of also being able to still continue accelerating quickly past the target zone ( The acceleration in cars are designed around pretty much one…
A bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but it is the power that makes the car accelerate, not torque. With gearing, any value of torque is possible at the wheels, but not for any given speed. A car with 300 Nm of torque but 100 kW of power will never accelerate faster than the same car, but with less Nm and say 150 kW of power. Gearing is suitably chosen according to power production, not torque. The answer to the question "A…
Exactly. E.g. Diesel engines have a much lower maximum rpm limit (4.5-5.5k rpms) so they need to deliver that amount of power by delivering more torque at lower RPMs when compared to comparably powered petrol engines.
And electric car motors can draw almost maximum Amperes at very low rpms, hence the insane numbers of torque for electric cars
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially Autobahn in Germany is interesting. Generally there is no speed limit, but something called "Richtgeschwindigkeit" (the advised speed you should go, which is 130km/h). But there ARE speed limits on most parts of the Autobahn (construction sites are generally limited to 60 or 80km/h, dangerous sections, etc. so it's often limited to 100-140 km/h). Sections without speed limit are a lot of fun and created a…
As someone living near a luxury car rental place (but in a country with a national speed limit), I want to point out that the main target audience for renting Lamborghinis and Ferraris isn't passionate drivers. It's 28 year old males with money and no sense of self-worth. There are regularly reports of people doing nothing but driving up and down a nice street downtown. Flooring it from red light to red light, droppi…
Woah it's a crime to flip someone off in a car in Germany? TIL
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#55I think lot of people here are going to disagree with me but seems to me there's a case for putting limiters on cars.
Drivers sometimes hit other vehicles. Airbags go a long way here. Sadly, drivers will often hit less fortunate road users such as pedestrians and cyclists.
We already know that pedestrians hit at 30 km/h vs. 50 km/h stand a much better chance to survive. Sadly, cities are rarely designed for 30, and usually more 50+, depending on the city.
Changing cities is, well, possible, but also kind of difficult and unpopular. You know what's easier? Making car manufacturers limit cars' speeds in cities.
It's not technologically difficult. Lots of new cars already read speed signs. Almost all of them have some sort of GPS component.
Geofencing speed limits seems like a pretty easy fix compared to the infrastructure changes of traffic calming (which we should do anyway). You can make it opt-out (and non-trivial enough to do so) so that most new cars on the road have these limits at least in cities.
Does this sound crazy? I'd argue it isn't. Consider that E-bikes/E-scooters are limited to 25km/h in a lot of countries. Similar story with small 50cc scooters. In some places rental E-scooters even have geofenced speed limits already, and the Netherlands is considering a similar plan for E-bikes (ones owned by ordinary citizens).
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
But then you need an up-to-date database of allowed speeds on roads all over the world, and since those already aren't reliable when they're used as indicative data, I don't think that's a viable solution. It also wouldn't work on road sections with variable speed.
Doesn't need to work everywhere for it to be useful. You can always fail fast, literally. The data is available for wide swathes of Europe, for example. Last time I checked it was very accurate even for temporary construction sites. Variable speed roads, either make the limit the highest speed that's in the range, or come up with a way to communicate the current limit. Most new cars are always connected, anyways. And…
Yet failing anywhere can be dangerous, even fatal.
An example: A construction site goes away, raising the speed from 35 to 70mph. Someone governed to 35 is suddenly a virtually stationary obstacle. Theoretically (and legally), the onus is on the other drivers to avoid it, but practically speaking it's just begging for an accident.
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#57I think lot of people here are going to disagree with me but seems to me there's a case for putting limiters on cars. Drivers sometimes hit other vehicles. Airbags go a long way here. Sadly, drivers will often hit less fortunate road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. We already know that pedestrians hit at 30 km/h vs. 50 km/h stand a much better chance to survive. Sadly, cities are rarely designed for 30, and u…
While this is theoretically a good idea, in practice there's a lot of hard questions without good answers.
Where does a city begin? End?
Should we cover the suburbs with the geofence?
What about the beltways or highways that go through the city?
In big cities, GPS is spotty or completely unavailable, what do we do there?
What about city streets which pass under/over highways?
As I've pointed out in other replies, there isn't a good enough, when forcing cars to slow down significantly. Road conditions and surrounding traffic speeds make any unexpected slowdowns ripe for creating accidents.
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone living near a luxury car rental place (but in a country with a national speed limit), I want to point out that the main target audience for renting Lamborghinis and Ferraris isn't passionate drivers. It's 28 year old males with money and no sense of self-worth. There are regularly reports of people doing nothing but driving up and down a nice street downtown. Flooring it from red light to red light, droppi…
Woah it's a crime to flip someone off in a car in Germany? TIL
It's also a crime to insult people outside of cars in germany. When doing so behind the steering wheel it may result in a temporary driving ban in addition to a penalty.
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#59I would appreciate having a mode on my car that automatically sets the governor to not exceed the speed limit as found with GPS. I could turn that off if I really need to and otherwise not have to think about the speed limit.
Re: Ask HN: Why do they make cars go so fast if it’s illegal?
#60Disclaimer: IANAL, but also asked that question once in my youth, and went digging for the answer. They technically don't in a meaningful sense. What they do is make a car that has high torque and can accelerate 0-60 mph as quickly as possible. This has the unwanted side effect of also being able to still continue accelerating quickly past the target zone ( The acceleration in cars are designed around pretty much one…
> the German Autobahn
Since this meme comes up a lot: About two thirds of the Autobahn network do have speed limits, ranging between 80-130 km/h (50-80 mph). In fact, one of the arguments for a general 130 km/h speed limit is that it would reduce the rate of speed limit changes, thus making traffic flow smoother overall.