The devaluation of power

Because power today is not what it was. It took Bugatti seven years and the most lavishly specified engine in history to reach the 1000bhp mark, creating on the way a powertrain so potent and complex it needed 10 radiators to keep temperatures under control. And, lest we forget, that was with the aid of some pretty sophisticated turbo technology. Without them extracting big power from a manageable capacity was extraordinarily difficult, requiring all sorts of fancypants materials to ensure the motor’s component count would not suddenly, unexpectedly and catastrophically increase at the revolutions required to produce it. And even then, the result was often spiky when the engine was ‘on the cam’ and truculent when not.

But still they were things of wonder and you don’t need a McLaren F1 to know it. An old Civic Type R knocking out 100bhp per litre at 8000rpm will soon re-acquaint you with the magic of thoroughbred automotive mechanical engineering. Even my silly old Caterham with the bluest of blue collar pushrod Ford lumps under its louvred bonnet is an unrelenting joy, because once someone bothered to put it together with love, care, steel internals, no-prisoner cam profiles and a pair of bloody great twin choke Webers strapped to its side.

With the advent of battery propulsion, power has today become homogenised, so much so that manufacturers now even feel the need to synthesise the illusion of gears and sounds – see Andrew English’s splendid review of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N to see what I mean. But I suspect it’s fooling no-one. To me accelerating hard in a battery electric car is an utterly empty experience, devoid of pleasure. It is the automotive equivalent of speed-eating a motorway burger: the objective is reached either in speed accrued or calories acquired, but in both cases the experience – and that is what matters here – leaves you simultaneously sated and unsatisfied. And probably feeling sick.

So where do we go from here? There is an automotive market research company called JATO Dynamics, and one of the useful things it does for car manufacturers is ascribe a value to feature content. So if a manufacturer is wondering whether to offer, let us say, radar-controlled cruise as standard, an option or not at all, JATO will say what it’s worth to the customer and it can decide accordingly.

Because it’s expensive and I’m not a car manufacturer, I don’t subscribe to JATO, but I understand that one of the things it used to do is put a value on each additional horsepower. And were it so doing today, I would bet you all the tea in the world’s second most populous country that said value would be sliding, and sliding fast. Now that power is cheap to provide, abundant and unfulfilling – now you can spend less than £50k on a Chinese saloon with more power than a Ferrari F50 – it can only hereafter become devalued.

Which is of course great news, far better news indeed that the fact that more people than ever are now able to accelerate at rates you’d have once needed a Lamborghini Murcielago to match. Because the less desirable power becomes, the less manufacturers will feel the need to provide it. Outputs will level off, then may even fall, and the moment that happens, so too is the requirement for all the stuff needed to manage said power similarly reduced.

Which means less rubber clothing smaller wheels, less hefty suspension, less vast braking systems and smaller batteries and electric motors. All of which will make cars lighter and improved in every measurable way, save the one that has become rendered something between irrelevant and meaningless. In short cars will be nicer to drive, cheaper to buy and less wasteful of the world’s resources. Better, in other words.

Alternatively, I’ve lost the plot. Power, and the visceral acceleration it brings will always be desirable, and in whatever form it takes. Providing vast amounts of it at the twitch of a toe is the one thing at which EVs are really, really good and as the alternatives melt away, that’s what we’re going to be left with. The choice won’t be between an EV Big Mac or an ICE dégustation menu, but a Big Mac or starve.

Maybe. But I’d love to find out what the Ti community thinks of this. Many of you through choice or circumstance will now be driving powerful EVs. How important is that power to you, particularly compared to how important power was back in your internally combusted days? All other things being equal would you like your next EV to be less powerful but lighter, or even more powerful and heavier? If you don’t have an EV but are thinking about it, is the availability of cheap and plentiful power a draw, an irrelevance or a turn off? Perhaps you could let me know in the comments below. I look forward to hearing from you.