YOU DON'T NEED TO HIT 100 KM/H IN TWO SECONDS
Some say it's a safe-pass feature — and that is `ridiculous,' writes
“I am living on a farm in the deep countryside of Portugal, and I often drive on the small roads around here,” Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, explained. The exec was responding to journalists at a press conference who were questioning whether his company's Dodge, Jeep and Alfa Romeo vehicles needed to be able to accelerate as rapidly as they can. More specifically, they were asking about Stellantis's newly revealed battery-driven STLA Large platform, which “can house twin-motor, all-wheeldrive electric powertrain sprints in just two seconds,” as enthusiast mag Top Gear reports.
Why the rush? The deep countryside of Portugal where Tavares lives would seem to lend itself more to leisure than laptimes, so what possible use could a two-second bolt off the line be in such bucolic farmland, where most cars are small, cyclists travel in groups, and the infrastructure invites you to lay back instead of lean in? Well, it could help with safety, of course.
Tavares believes your vehicle needs all that oomph – that is, needs to accelerate faster than the average Formula One car – to safely navigate around traffic — because, as Tavares continued, “there is nothing more difficult than starting to overtake a truck and then having to jump on the brakes because you just discovered that the acceleration of the car you're driving is not good enough to overtake in safe conditions.”
Well, it's an answer. It's also ridiculous. If you've driven an EV – or even a golf cart – you know the acceleration out of those things is instantaneous. You're pretty much starting at the top of the power band, with every available horse handing you the reins the second you tap the throttle. While some Luddites (like me) are happy to churn through a few gears to get to 60, the electric car beside me will leave me in its non-exhaust-filled dust.
We've had generations, now, of auto manufacturers bragging about how fast they can get you from zero to 60 m.p.h., or 96 km/h here in Canada. It's a useful number for doing things like merging into traffic that's moving at highway speeds, and, yes, for passing a lolling lorry. But Tavares's efforts to bang a square peg into a round hole – trying to justify this explosive speed in the countryside – should be a reminder that just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Electric vehicles are about 30 per cent heavier than their ICE counterparts. Factor in that, for North American consumers, most manufacturers are continuing their race to keep building bigger and bigger vehicles. Massive SUVS and pickups
now sport, in some cases, 3,000 pounds of battery, and all are also capable of going from a stop to screeching speeds in the blink of an eye. All cool for those inside if something goes awry; we know these behemoths take very good care of their own occupants. But for those they connect with on the outside? Too bad.
The independent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the U.S. establishes crash-test ratings for North American vehicles. Crash-test ratings typically determine how safe you will be if the vehicle you're in crashes in a variety of ways. As the electric-car revolution ramps up, their testing has kept pace.
Are EVS safe? “Their extra weight will afford them greater protection in a multi-vehicle crash,” says the Institute. “Unfortunately, given the way these vehicles are currently designed, this increased protection comes at the expense of people in other vehicles.”
Heavier vehicles take more distance to come to a stop, and when they collide with lighter vehicles, they win. For pedestrians and cyclists, you now won't even be safe in the Portuguese countryside, it would appear.
Back to that two-second blastoff. If you can't complete a safe pass around another vehicle without having the speed of an F1 car, you're a terrible driver.
How many times a day do you need to reach 100 km/ h in two seconds? Brag about your stopping power rather than your ability to fling your vehicle off a starting line faster than any nontrack application requires.
Tavares should know better, and he should do better.