Electric vehicles have gotten a bad rap in some ways over the years. But electric doesn’t mean bad performance. In fact, it can mean the opposite.
How Green Are Electric Cars? | It's Complicated
Mention “low emissions” and “high performance” in the same sentence and you’re likely to get some strange looks. Let’s be honest: in the 100+ years of automobiles, have you ever seen a muscle car with good fuel economy? Yet, EVs offer exactly that: exceptional performance and low emissions, as hard as it may be to believe.
The key to understanding both lies in how electric motors and internal combustion engines (ICE) produce torque and power. Torque is turning force, measured in pound-feet (lb-ft), and power is how much work the engine can do, measured in horsepower (hp) or kilowatts (kW).
Conventional ICEs (used in gasoline-powered cars) generate torque and power based on engine displacement and speed, but you can't get high torque and high power at the same time.
