> My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph

This is a silly point of fact. Motorcycles have been capable of achieving far greater than 110 mph for a long time; a top speed of 110mph puts your 2018 vehicle on the low end of the speed range for "motorcycle" class vehicles (as opposed to scooters, mopeds, ebikes, etc). My random 1997 low-end 600cc sportbike could exceed 130 mph when it was 15 years old.

My 2013 motorcycle gave me 72mph.... in first gear (yes, super sport bike are nuts).

Exactly. ICE is/was more size- and weight- efficient than electric. We had motorcycles with the performance of normal person modern motorcycles many decades ago.

Electric power only became practical enough for motorcycles in the last few years.

Just a small correction-- Formula E doesn't swap cars anymore, they go the full race distance now, although the distance is much shorter than Formula 1, for example.

I wonder if any electric cars are going to get swappable battery packs? That way you could get an instant recharge, and for racing, it would make battery pack heat manageable by just swapping out the hot pack. It might even provide an advantage over ICE race cars, as fueling is often the lengthiest operation in pit stops.

Tesla already built a Model S with a swappable battery packs, plus a robot that could swap them in 90 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj6LaYFall4

They have given up on that, and there are certainly some problems with the model (for example, what if you own the battery, and they replace it with one in poorer condition?), but other companies are still pursuing it: https://electrek.co/2018/11/01/nio-battery-swap-station-next...

> Tesla, for example, still doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because it simply isn't able to drive at racing speeds for long enough without the battery overheating and reducing power output to avoid damage

Now I'm really curious: with a limit on the Tesla's performance to keep the battery from overheating, what's the fastest time it could do?

That they don't have an official lap time for this reason strikes me as almost dishonest, since they marketed the Roadster entirely and the Model S significantly on performance. But you can't actually drive either to its limit for more than a couple minutes? Lame.

> But you can't actually drive either to its limit for more than a couple minutes? Lame.

Notice all of Tesla's marketing is about acceleration, not lap times. They beat any other car hands down on the drag strip. But cornering is just not their forte (too heavy) and driving fast for a long time is hard (too much power draw).

You saw that when top gear compared the original tesla vs its donor car - the Tesla had amazing acceleration but wallowed going round corners when compare to the ICE Lotus it was based on.

Too heavy? But the skateboard puts all of the weight as low as possible

Weight, even if it’s low, still increases stopping distance and requires more grip to get around corners. You can’t escape kinetic energy.

A Tesla is way too heavy and soft to produce a decent lap time. They accelerate really well but fast cornering is not their forte. The Nurburgring has some very fast sections where you go top speed or near top speed for a long time. I also would have my doubts about the brakes holding up.

It should be mentioned, too, that Tesla doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because they don't want one. They've made several official statements that they aren't interested in such competitions.

There are unofficial times [1], but Nürburgring apparently takes manufacturer wishes into respect on declaring official times.

Multiple EVs have official times at this point. Tesla doesn't seem to care right now.

(VW, on the hand, with Nürburgring in their backyard has to care, and it is fascinating to hear what's going on with their EV race teams.)

[1] An example: https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-a-tesla-model-s-can-do-aroun...

Nurburgring has a notoriously long lap. Fast times are measured in handfuls of minutes. It's an interesting fact that Teslas aren't race cars capable of going full out for minutes on end, but I'm not sure that's relevant to most potential customers.

Here's an 8:50 lap (amateur driver) with a P85D. From 2015.

The 3 is better on the track than the S. Still heavy, of course.

Oops, missed the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dphw4km60m4

And more importantly, the Model T was a factor of 6 cheaper than the competing steam cars.

External combustion just sucks. Heat exchangers, or indeed anything that transmits heat through solid/fluid interfaces, are not something you want if you can avoid it. The ICE has the advantage that the working fluid carries most of the waste heat away from the vehicle.

Interestingly, we're seeing the same thing play out in stationary power plants today. Gas turbines are beating steam-based power plants (coal, nuclear), because they have much lower capital cost.

What do you mean steam powered cars? When I think of an X powered car I think of putting X into the car to power it. You put petrol in a petrol car and electric power in an electric car. You don't put steam in a steam train, aren't they actually coal powered? According to Wikipedia, steam cars just ran on petrol, but the combustion engine was external, and the car was less efficient overall. Steam engines don't seem to make sense for cars.

It's not a combustion engine, but a burner, not unlike a grill or stove. To your point they could also be electric.

The earliest ones were coal or wood burning, we're also talking 1880s

Or nuclear!

There were a few attempts at steam motorcycles/bicycles too - which boggles the mind a bit. Definitely not going to meet modern health and safety.

Here's one from 1860: https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/motorcycles/a26052/186...

Ransomes, famous maker of traction engines and inventor of the powered lawnmower had a couple of patents for steam motorcycles, but I've never seen details of what they envisaged.

Isn't the whole point of the article that ICE was not way better and racing is a harmful distraction?

I have strong doubts about both those claims. Depends on what you want your car for, of course, but how do batteries of the time stack up to ICE cars in terms of range and durability?

If memory serves, until very recently, most consumer rechargable batteries would basically stop holding charge after 2 or 3 years. Was that better for bigger batteries? I don't know ... but it would suck to have to buy a new car battery every 3 years since the lifespan of most [modern] cars is much longer than that.

As for racing being a harmful distraction: maybe. Depends on the type of racing. I like racing as a driver of what-can-this-technology-possibly-do. Bleeding edge engineering that trickles down to consumer devices. Racing is great for that.

As for the article's claim that electric cars even back then were better than ICE for city driving ... in the city nothing beats a bicycle, a brisk walk, or public transit. Cars were never a good fit for cities.

Battery durability has to do with the battery management system itself as much as it is about the chemistry. Consumer devices did and still do stop holding a usable charge because they batteries on portable devices are deep cycled 100%-0% (Or near zero) on a regular basis. This greatly reduces a battery's lifespan.

A properly managed car battery won't be kept at 100% charge level, and will definitely not be discharged down to 0%.

Car HV batteries are kept at 80-40% (Varies by chemistry) state of charge to prolong battery life. A Prius can go hundreds of thousands of miles on their original battery, and have been around for over 20 years.

Racing has led the development of more economical, lighter weight, and more powerful cars that handle better and stop faster. No other development method has made such rapid progress in automotive technology.

I'd have to agree with that. I'll add that "customized" cars, mostly built in small shops and home garages, have also had a huge influence in the evolution of automobiles.

For example, in the `50s custom car builders were "sectioning" the bodies and "Z-ing" the frames to make cars thinner and lower to the ground. By the `60s all the big manufactures were building cars styled like that.

But racers have had a huge influence on mass production cars and still do. One simple example of that is the coolant overflow tank. As I recall it was small circle track racer that made that mod to his race car and encouraged other car owners at the track to install them because when cars overheated and blew coolant on the track it caused delays in the races. If I recall the story right he had to sue the car companies to enforce his patent and collect a royalty.

the claim is dubious. article focus on the range, which is ok-ish as long as the claim is "see! only 20 miles less" but it's like two third of ICEs, and ICE at that time had shit fuel economy.

plus we focus on range because recharging is slow, not because range is a core value of the vehicles per se. and that point stands. sure you can commute, once, but then how long is the recharge? having two vehicles because you need to leave one at the office recharging for the next day commute is going to be inefficient.

and then there's all the stuff about battery self discharge, capacity depletion and burning everything down if shaken. it's not like battery tech then was that great.

Leno steam car video was thrilling. Even with the early century crippled controls it was tempting.