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by semi-extrinsic 3153 days ago
I've not driven the Bolt, but a few of the other "cheap" electric cars (Leaf, Kia Soul, NV200). They all feel pretty torquey-ish. It never really made sense to me compared to petrol cars I've driven based on the actual torques.

Then I figured: it's because you can floor it in an EV and nobody notices, so you do it all the time. Whereas in a similar class petrol car, if you floor it from zero and keep it in the optimal rev band, you sound and look like a huge idiot.

2 comments

Petrol engines will have higher "peak torque", but only in the ideal part of their rev range, whereas EVs have almost flat torque at any speed.
I don't think that's the case here. Electric engines have more torque at 0 RPM and over their RPM curve, and it's clearly observable/reproducible if you like, ~race with someone else at a red light, where the other person in their petrol car is also flooring.