Comment by akudha
2 days ago
Why do car manufacturers brag about hitting 60 mph in 1, 2 or whatever seconds? For a normal person, does this really matter - what is the big deal if a car hits 60 mph in 5 seconds instead of 1? There are more important things like safety, repairability, longevity etc right?
It’s standard measure of acceleration. If you are going to sell a car on performance (like say… a sporty roadster), it’s a great metric.
People in the market for a car like this care far more about performance than they do safety, repairability or longevity.
That’s why performance oriented cars talk about their acceleration, and minivans talk about safety, and pickup trucks talk about longevity. Their target market determines which of the various metrics are going to be the headline.
It's just one stat and it makes for a good headline. Obviously those other things are important but they don't exactly fit into a headline. Oh and some people like fast cars. Why is that so confusing?
For the Roadster, it's a supercar. None of those things matter much.
For something like the performance versions of their high-volume vehicles, it's partially for the same reasons people like sports cars, or at least how some people like a sports car that is faster / quicker and gives them more excitement while driving (obviously a lot of the appeal for sports cars otherwise is the sporty look/sound of the engine, which Tesla doesn't really deliver on at all).
People are interested in speed performance. What other measure should we use?
As someone who has had a Mercedes AMG that could do 0-60s in less than 4s for a few years, it just gets boring so fast, and it makes you question why you bought the thing in the first place. It's unusable in almost every situation on the road, except for the rare "opportunity" when you stop at traffic lights next to a Golf R and yes turns out you have a bigger.....turbo.....than them. Well done, that 5 second ego boost was really worth all the money and looking like a dick to anyone above the age of 25.
Nowadays as a "petrol head" when I look at stats I want to see weight - as little of it as possible. Horsepower needs to begin with 2, maybe with 3 in some cars, any more than that and it's silly. I want reviewers to say the car puts a smile on their face driving it to work every day, not doing 160mph on the race track. And of course, high speed is "fun" - one of my favourite memories is driving at 158mph past Berlin at 4am - incredible. But the modern obsession with horsepower and 0-60 is...just stupid. Fast 0-60 time does not make for a fun or an engaging car. It just makes it fast.
I'm sure the roads I drive must be different from yours, but when I started driving a Tesla in traffic, it felt like you can just teleport into spaces. The threshold for being able to overtake and pull into traffic without obstructing is so much lower.
Of course, it's also less safe. But the threat of a quick death in a lithium fire is the only reason some of us get up in the morning.
" It's unusable in almost every situation on the road"
Yet it's a useful, comparable, measure for acceleration and is frequently exercised on track. If you had an AMG and haven't taken it for at least one track day then I question why you bought it. Image?
Maybe 30-70 would be more useful for determining overtaking capability, but that would require everyone in the motoring industry to agree to change at the same time.
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Your just getting old, I mean I agree with u but I'm also old,
Most young boys have the Lamborghini poster on the wall even if it actually sucks to drive, especially the iconic Countach, I find pure joy in driving my old beetle now, or the past weekend a friends 1957 MGA, horrible safety, tiny engines, zero comforts, not even a radio, just a pure carthat can't even be sold anymore, but there will never be a better driving experience than an proper ancient British roadster.
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Even assuming it’s real and they genuinely are working on selling these to consumers (they aren’t), why on earth would you think this is built for the average person? At the absolute cheapest this car would be $5M off the lot. It’s for the ultra rich (assuming they ship, which they won’t) who want to drive it one day a year on the track
You answered your own question in your very second sentence. “For a normal person”. The modern economy increasingly does not cater to the “normal person” and they prove this constantly. Granted “normal people” stopped existing a long time ago. You have poor people, soon to be poor people, and people who think they will soon be rich but will really soon be poor. Of course then you have the rest but they are not people.
> The modern economy increasingly does not cater to the “normal person”
Is that a bad thing? Aren't there always a range of products that cater to different levels of interest?
If you're a "normal person" you don't need a 8000dpi mouse with RGB, or a Louis Vuitton purse, or a large big mac meal.
This is not poverty it is prosperity.
> Is that a bad thing? Aren't there always a range of products that cater to different levels of interest?
Sure.
I think the poster you are replying to is trying to say that the “k-shaped” economy is incentivizing the market to cater only to the high end and simply ignoring the low end.
A few businesses I own are dealing with this issue now. It’s just much more profitable and logistically easier for them to charge what seems like an absurd price, justify it with some inexpensive “white-glove” service, and just ignore the rest of the market.
On the one hand, this is a tribute to modern marketing that high value-add products and services can match with customers more efficiently. On the other hand, it has the potential to create a bizarre “race to the top” such that only suckers will cater to anything other than the top 1% of their target market (in terms of wealth / willingness and capacity to pay).
Where I currently live, this is happening with frightening efficiency with health care. Almost all of the “good” PCP doctors are going concierge, and the concierge prices are increasing at a rapid clip.
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Normal person as in position in economic distribution, not normal as in not quirky or strange. Lots of quirky people all across the spectrum.
But to be clear, in my example products aren’t the only thing to which the economy doesn’t cater to normal people for (lower-middle class but increasingly middle and lower class). War, corruption, and genocide are all bad for the average person. Generally things that funnel money into hurting or enriching individuals. Both of these are inefficient and the inefficient use of resources, is hurtful to normal people. E.g. enriching an oligarch to build roads could be twice as much road if he takes a 50 percent cut. And the money sitting with him does harm, oppresses people. Food for thought.
Some cars are not for a normal person.
Not all products have to be aimed at you.
Speaking for myself I love the quick acceleration of electric cars because it enables you to safely pass other cars quickly on two-lane roads without needing to linger in the oncoming lane.
This is a sports car with a deposit that costs more than an ordinary new car, and with a price that would probably buy you a decent house. Nothing about this is meant for a normal person.
The more powerful the motor, the better the brakes and safety features.
I hope.
lol.
I think of F-150s that have quickly climbed over 400hp and can pull a giant trailer... but I don't think the brakes and suspension match.
(f-250 or f-350 might be more balanced when pulling those 30'+ trailers)
It matters a lot, when playing Top Trumps [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Trumps
It's one thing they can brag about, you know. Dumbing everything down to a single number, regardless of whether it's meaningful, feels impressive.
The vast majority of LLM users -- not the average person here on HN -- doesn't know which "model" they are using, can't tell the difference and don't care, including many software engineers. You could ask the same thing about those LLM benchmarks.
Bruh. Chicks man. Chicks dig fast cars.
as with lots of muscles, it's actually the dudes who care about this the most :D get hugely muscular, buy a nice sports car and dudes will absolutely love you.
You remind me of a friend who bought a nice sportbike. He thought he would attract lots of women.
He complained to me "I keep getting guys coming over to talk about the bike"
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Haha, that's exactly the reaction you could hear from the crowd in the demo video. Made for bros by tech bros.
Not to mention top speed. The US should have a federal or at least NY/CA state law that modern cars be electronically limited to 112 mph, as it is in Japan. There is no valid reason for a street legal passenger car to be travelling faster than that.
I live in Germany, and routinely drive faster than that. With good roads and reasonably trained drivers this isn't an issue
Its not an issue and it still is not necessary at all.
The faster you drive the more stress you produce in other drivers. The faster you drive, the higher the risk.
And i have seen plenty of ' trained drivers' thinking its reasonable to start taking over on the right side because 2 cars are ahead of him. swiffling into your lane without proper safetydistance, starting to take over everyone from the 3th or 5 position...
If you don't drive faster than 180 at night on an empty autobahn, you just might be a dick and ignorant to everyone else you share the autobahn with. And yes when i do this, it might be a short sectionwere it is very clear that its for fun and thats it.
That makes sense for Germany, but the US does not have universally good roads or reasonably trained drivers. Many states have no regular vehicle safety inspection. On top of all that, culturally, the US is just very different when it comes to respecting regulation. I have seen germans completely befuddled when they realize that Americans will intentionally ignore laws and regulations. To many Germans it seems like it is almost inconceivable that otherwise respectable people will just not follow rules sometimes.
I take my road car to racing events (SCCA) and get above 112 routinely.
I think Nissan had a workaround I could live with: GPS fencing around known tracks would activate/deactivate the speed governor.
Cool, just bring a gps jammer to point at the guy behind you on the straight.