Eli5: How come cars With more than 10x the horsepower of a normal car only has a top speed that is about 2-3x higher than one of a normal car.

Question

Fx: The Bugatti Chiron has just under 1500hp and a top speed of MAX 500kmh, while a Volkswagen Golf has 150hp and a top speed of around 200kmh.

In: Physics

Answer 1

Horsepower is exactly that.

If you have 1 horse pulling a carriage or two horses pulling a carriage, do you expect to go a lot faster?

With more horses it is more power, which creates slightly more speed, but only because there are more horses.

Each individual horse can only run so fast, more horses simply means they can run closer to the speed they would if they weren’t pulling anything 🙂