Why torque matters

Weekly Newsletter vs. Unabridged Podcast Feed Access. Show Archive Access. Exclusive Member-Only Content. Access to the UL Slack Community. Access to the Book Club. Essays, tutorials, and podcasts. Every other newsletter. Daniel Miessler. I spend hours a week consuming content related to security, technology, and society. Engine 2 has noticeably more power at that RPM so it will pull off the overtake quickest.

Electric cars take this to the extreme since their peak torque figure is at 0 RPM. The problem with these power and torque figures is that they only give two snapshots of an engine at two very specific RPMs. Take a look at these two engines. Both of them have the same headline specs as Engine 2, but different characteristics:.

But at other RPMs, Engine 1 is way better. Of course most engines will have a broadly similar power curve shape, but you have to be careful because some technologies hybrids, forced induction, VTEC etc can distort the torque curve considerably. This content was originally posted by a Car Throttle user on our Community platform and was not commissioned or created by the CT editorial team. Please confirm you agree to the use of tracking cookies as outlined in the Cookies Policy.

Sign in or register. TheMindGarage 4 years ago. What is torque? But what marks electric cars out is that all the torque is available instantly. Internal combustion engines only produce maximum torque at certain engine revs.

Thanks to that instant torque, electric cars are very quick off the mark — like the Tesla Model 3 pictured above. But, as with combustion engines, only the ones with very high torque can accelerate strongly under heavy load — when cruising down the motorway, for instance. What next? Not sure how much torque your next car needs?

Then check out the carwow Car Chooser tool. You can then check out the best deals available on those cars from our network of trusted local and national dealers. Sell your car Get offers from multiple dealers.

Sell your car. What is torque? Torque definition explained Why torque matters when choosing your next car What sort of cars have low torque engines? What sort of cars have high torque engines? How torque affects fuel economy Do electric cars have low or high torque? See the pulling power of torque in our tug of war video. Why does torque matter? In this case the distinction is static torque, the kind you apply with a wrench to tighten head bolts.

To avoid confusion, the units for static torque are traditionally foot-pounds. Just to be contrary, SI sticks with newton-meters for both static and dynamic torque measurements. Power is how rapidly work is accomplished. Eighteenth-century Scottish inventor James Watt gave us this handy equivalency: one horsepower is the power required to lift 33, pounds exactly one foot in one minute.

Honoring that contribution, the SI measurement unit for power is the kilowatt. In other words, power is the rate of completing work or applying torque in a given amount of time. Mathematically, horsepower equals torque multiplied by rpm. So, to make more power an engine needs to generate more torque, operate at higher rpm, or both.

While thumbnail definitions are great for textbooks, applying them to real engines is another matter. One concern is that every car engine has an idle-to-redline operating range.

It makes substantially less power at idle only enough to spin engine-driven accessories and a bit less than horsepower at the rpm redline.