What is horsepower and torque and how do they relate to a car being fast or a truck having a towing capacity?
In: Engineering
Horsepower = top speed
Torque = top pulling power
Internal combustion engines can maximize one or the other, but not both at the same time. Typical car engines are tuned to have average of both, while big trucks will usually favor torque. Race cars can vary quite a bit, for long races usually horsepower is best because you will have long tracks over which to move as quickly as possible. Drag racers maximize torque because the race is only a short track and the winner is typically whoever gets off the start-line quickest.
Electric motors don’t have the same limitation, their horsepower and torque both increase linearly with the amount of input electrical power. Street racing is already starting to favor electric cars like the Tesla for this reason. You’d see a lot more electric race cars if the batteries could supply a large amount of power for a long race, and maybe that will happen in the future.
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