One of the greatest things about driving electric vehicles is their quickness of acceleration. Press on the gas pedal and you get immediate and impressive torque, even in a “lame” 2014 Nissan LEAF such as mine.
I call it “lame” because its official 0-60 m.p.h. time is somewhere between 8 and 9 seconds, hardly stellar, but also TOTALLY deceiving, as it’s damn quick from 10 to 50 m.p.h.
Immediate accelaration is intoxicating, believe me — and, if you’re like me, it changes your driving behavior. I’ll zip in here, past that car over there, take off here, and there, way more often than I ever did in my 1992 Acura Integra, which I owned for 21 years, and which, while not the peppiest of cars, wasn’t the un-peppiest of cars either.
I can only imagine what it’s like to drive a BMW i3 or a Tesla Model S or a P85D.
Yikes!
It’s great to watch the Tesla P85D Insane YouTube videos and see how people respond to going from zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds. And it’s great that electric cars, whether you’re talking about a LEAF or a Tesla, are far from the lame accelerators the die-hard gas-engine muscleheads falsely believe.
In fact, one of my big suggestions to Nissan for the 2017 LEAF is: Make it quicker, get it close to the BMW i3 0-60 time of around 6.3 seconds or so, or at least drop it to 7.0 seconds. Please!
Once “everyone” catches on to fudnamental driving superiority of electric cars, the fun will be over, meaning the next guy and the next guy and the next guy will be able to accelerate, zip, zoom, etc. exactly the way we early EV adopters are right now. So, enjoy that feeling of accelaration and torque superiority over the rest of the driving world while you can — because it won’t last!
However, there is a potential down side to such “insanse” acceleration and the intoxication of immediate torque: It can be dangerous, or, at least, more dangerous than what we had before when far fewer people were in such quick, torquey cars.
Personally, I know I need to be careful when zipping around in my black 2014 solar-charged LEAF, especially when suddenly passing someone on the highway, or on a high-speed, multiple-lane multiple access road such as Route 83 (Parker Road) here in the Denver, Colo. area. As I am passing another driver, I have to be prepared for someone else who is not expecting me to be suddenly “there” to their left pulling out in front of me as they try to pass someone else.
No, I’m not down on quicker — not to mention way smoother and quieter — electric cars. I’ll never go back to a pure gas vehicle. Ever. And quick, smooth acceleration is a big reason for this.
However, as more and more of us, realize the joy of quick, even “insane” acceleration, and the power of immediate torque, we need to be aware of how those of us around us have no idea, and I really do mean they have NO IDEA, about electric car accelaration and torque (having done SolarChargedDriving.Com for 5 1/2 years, I’m totally amazed at how few people still know absolutely nothing, and I do mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!, about electric vehicles).
That means driving even more defensively than before. It also means trying — and this is hard, I know — to be patient with the glacial acceleration of those around us who are still mired in the dark, dirty gas days.
It also means enjoying being ahead of the curve on electric cars and their awesome acceleration and enjoying being one of the few who can dart, zip, zoom, around, through, and in front of virtually everyone else.
One day we’ll lose our EV acceleration advantage over “everyone” as more as more and more cars become electric and more and more drivers take advantage of the quickness of electric cars just as we current EV drivers and early adopters do everyday right now.
Indeed, once “everyone” catches on to fudnamental driving superiority of electric cars, the fun will be over, meaning the next guy and the next guy and the next guy will be able to accelerate, zip, zoom, etc. exactly the way we early EV adopters are right now.
So, enjoy that feeling of accelaration and torque superiority over the rest of the driving world while you can — because it won’t last!
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