CougTek said:
You're kidding right? 0 to 60 in 20 seconds will drive other drivers behind you mad at every red light because it means that you'll also make 0-40 more than twice as slow as other cars too.
No, I'm not, and especially for city driving it's plenty adequate. I frequently pull away from stoplights on my
bicycle and cars don't catch me for a few blocks, and then only because my poor aerodynamics means I can't maintain much over 25 mph for any length of time, not because I'm not accelerating fast enough. The cars certainly
can accelerate faster than me if they wanted to, but they rarely seem to use their power. BTW, typically from a red light I'll accelerate from 0 to 20 mph in about 6 seconds (under 5 when I'm feeling good). The cars always seem to fall behind. I find in city traffic most cars tend to do 0 to 30 mph in around 12 to 15 seconds unless they're racing each other. If this car can get to 60 in 20 seconds then it can probably hit 30 mph in about 5 or 6 seconds. That's way faster than urban traffic normally moves. I'll also point out that the limit of passenger comfort is around ~5 mph/sec, so you don't want to be accelerating (or decelerating) faster than that,
ever, except for emergencies.
As for highway merging I've yet to see any situation where you absolutely
have to get to 60 in under 20 seconds for safety or other reasons. Remember that 20 years ago the roads were filled with econoboxes which were lucky to hit 60 in 20 seconds, and they all managed just fine. An aunt of mine drove a VW Beetle without problems. I think it took the better part of a minute to hit 60 mph in that thing. Usually you hit the entrance ramp already moving at 30 or 40 mph so you only have to gain another 20-30 mph of speed to safely merge with traffic. In general traffic tends to accelerate at the rate of the slowest vehicles, which are always buses and heavy trucks. 0 to 60 in 20 seconds is way faster than typical heavy vehicle acceleration. And I'll add that one time I accidently got onto the highway while cycling. I was stuck behind a large van which cut most of the air drag, and my "pedal power" was adequate to keep right on his tail all the way to ~60 mph as he merged onto the highway. Again, he easily could have left me in the dust, but apparently he didn't need to accelerate very fast to merge with traffic, and neither did I.
As for the mad drivers, let them honk. I hate aggressive driving. I'd really love to stick some of these impatient drivers in the slowest vehicle imaginable.
