this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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I have a hard time seeing why the average person should have a zero to 60 in the sub 6 second range. People fucking suck at driving.
A coworker of mine was recently bragging about their new electric mustang and its zero to sixty time. "Have you ever gone zero to sixty?" was my only response. Of all the facts and figures, 0-60 has you to be one of the least important when buying a car.
Only up to a certain point. My Kia Rio has a 0-60 of like 16 seconds.. overtaking even on a clear road sucks.
The car is perfect otherwise, but I'd definitely want much better acceleration in the future.
My last car was like that and then every time I borrowed my dad's mercedes I'd constantly do stupid unecessary overtakes just because I could. It's a moral hazard - I don't think a faster accelerating car is safer because people drive those differently.
Of course you have to hold yourself back, but where I live there's plenty of really nice stretches of road where you can overtake. But with my car while I'm accelerating some guy in an Audi or a BMW already decides to overtake from the back.. overtaking with a better car feels much less stressful and safer.
Let me guess, automatic transmission? I have a manual Rio and I can push it in half the time in third gear. Not redlining anything, just less conservative shifting.
Nope, manual, I'm in Europe. But 75 PS Diesel with 6 gears. Redlining doesn't help much when it comes to accelerating.
Especially diesel engines.
Being able to accelerate to highway speeds quickly is useful when merge lanes are short. We have a car that kind of struggles with that, and it's pretty scary sometimes merging into 70 mph traffic. Normally it's not a major issue, but one ramp we sometimes use is designed poorly - it's curvy, so you can't accelerate to highway speed until after the final curve, then it's up a hill, and of course there's a short merge area into traffic that's usually doing about 70 mph. So, there, I REALLY miss the power our previous car had. It's a frustrating experience.
When I got my license back in the early 2000s I got taught very economical driving, generally choosing gears to keep rpm low, use the motor brake to decelerate before traffic lights, such stuff. Then it was time to get on the Autobahn, and the instructor just said "Forget everything I taught you, now it's safety first: Floor it in 3rd gear, merge in third gear, once you've found your position switch directly to 5th you'll be fast enough."
If I'm not mistaken that was an Audi A4 TDI so... 15 seconds 0 to 100? Maybe about 10, don't remember the displacement. Of course, merging is more like 30 to 120, directly onto the second lane. With a Punto you're kinda lucky if you get to 80 by the time the on-ramp ends and barely get into the right-most lane (where you're probably staying).
Rolling to 75 is more relevant in MA where onramps to highways are 50 feet long, but 0 to 60 is correlated.
It is a relative performance indicator that is easy to measure and verify.
Of course you rarely ever actually do 0-60, but it gives you an idea of how well the car accelerates relative to other cars. So in a way 0-60 is like a cinebench score for cars.