Acceleration comparison

MT puts the leaf at 10 seconds.
2011 Nissan Leaf vs 2011 Chevrolet Volt Comparison - Motor Trend

zeroto60times.com
for ford
Ford 0-60 Times & Ford Quarter Mile Times | Ford Cobra 5.0 Mustang, Focus, Fiesta, F250, Ford GT 0-60, 2012 Taurus SHO, GT500 0-60, GT350 and Classic Ford 0 to 60 stats!

has the FFE as TBA..

 

Perception of a car being fast or slow, from the drivers perspective, is often determined by how much torque an engine has at lower engine speeds (in the 1000 to 3500 rpm range), or in other words how much you get pushed back in the seat with a push of the accelerator. Counterintuitively, this torque at low revs usually does not translate into fast 0-60 times, without high torque (or push) also being available at high revs (in the 3500 to 6000 rpm range), where the top of the hp curve lies. As most driving (>99%) is done in the <3500 rpm range and your car happens to have good torque in that range, you will likely be satisfied that your car does not feel slow, which is why I think the 0-60 is a bad measurement of "peppyness" for most drivers, because most drivers don't normally drive in the 4000 to 6000 rpm, which if they did, their engines would not last very long. At 2000 rpm with the accelerator quickly floored, a 1.5L Prius along with it's electric motor is putting out as much torque and hp as a 3.0L conventional engine @2000 rpm, but at 5000 rpm is only putting out as much torque/hp as a conventional 1.8L engine. Remember hp is Torque X rpm. Unfortunately acceleration is often judged my motor journalists from the 0-60 time using highest rpm which often causes most engines to scream. In a 0-60 trial where engines are limited to 3500 rpm, all Prii would be very competitive with most cars including any Porches or Hondas which notoriously need to be revved high to get good acceleration.

 

Slow is totally relative. Keep in mind that most of the media pundits are hugely jaded and accustomed to driving home every night in a $180k press car like a Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet with 530 HP. I'm not making it up either; a couple friends of mine are in the media. They may have sampled almost every car on the planet, but that doesn't mean they have their feet solidly planted on Earth.

For some projecting reason, Americans seem to correlate a floored accelerator with anger, clamping onto the steering wheel, and generally getting all emotional. As such, the vast majority of coffee-sipping and text-messaging commuters rarely use more than 50 HP unless they've been cut-off or otherwise shown how incompetent they are, in which they "prove" themselves by [finally] using their accelerator pedal. A person that has some education and logic doesn't use their car as an extension of emotional immaturity; they use it to get the job done.

The Prius c has plenty of power. Nobody "needs" 300 HP in their daily driver.

-->briank101's comments are very good. Small accelerator inputs coupled with large torque outputs generally communicate to the driver and engine that's "strong", regardless of it's actual torque curve. The Prius c is not tuned this way, as most of the pedal travel is resolute to obtain good fuel economy, not to artificially impress.

 

If you wish to "bench race", here are some figures at least all from the same publication:
Consumer Reports - Fuel economy vs. performance
Best & worst acceleration
Car Acceleration: Consumer Reports

Some older copies at:
Best &amp; worst cars review, best &amp; worst acceleration
Best &amp; worst cars review, best &amp; worst acceleration
Internet Archive Wayback Machine

 

Thank God I've gotten old enough to not give a care how fast a car goes from zero to 60, just as long as it gets there

 

Thank you,

I added the CR mileage for the Prius c and generated this graph:

Only one non-hybrid, the VW Golf, showed up in the top eight or 5% best mileage cars. Of course CR still gives the 'Prius c' a failing grade.

We've already analyzed the CR scoring system and it is drive by:

1. Driver (aka., writer) comfort
2. Noise (aka., writer) comfort
3. Acceleration 0-60 mph no more than 11 seconds (aka., impatient writer)
4. Emergency handling, swerving across the lanes (aka., bored writer)

Missing is any consideration of the fuel cost, the mileage. This shortcoming is matched by the CR MPG test protocol that seriously diverges from the EPA numbers for higher MPG cars.

Bob Wilson

 

^^^
Well, there's more to it than just the 4 attributes. Off the top of my head, they also care about ride quality, braking distances, handling in general and steering feel, transmission shift quality, comfort beyond the driver and room, interior material quality and fit/finish of the interior and exterior. In the past, I believe they've disqualified some cars that couldn't be had (easily) w/ABS. I believe they've also not recommended some cars (long ago) that did too poorly in crash tests.

And, if reliability is below average, they'll not recommend it. It doesn't matter what the test score is, in that case.

Good gas mileage isn't necessarily enough to trump everything else (examples: Honda CR-Z, Prius c, Honda Insight, Smart ForTwo, Scion iQ).

 

I appreciate that CR makes comments about these other parameters. But I was only interested in how they calculate their "Score" in what remains an unquantified, scoring system.

After the recent panning of the 'Prius c,' I went to the library to review a set of CR scores and found these four parameters have detectable weighting effects. Nothing else comes even close with the one outlier, braking of a Dodge:

I see no evidence that CR score has any association with mileage. However, I can find strong evidence that these four have driven high and low scores:

1. Driver (aka., writer) comfort
2. Noise (aka., writer) comfort
3. Acceleration 0-60 mph no more than 11 seconds (aka., impatient writer)
4. Emergency handling, swerving across the lanes (aka., bored writer)

There are other observations CR mentions in their review but I haven't found scores that allow us to quantify them. Truth be told, I'm tired of trying to reverse engineer CR practices as long as they treat their scoring system, the way they convert their observations into a score, as a secret.

If we adopted the German naming practice, the CR reviews would be called:

drivercomfortquietzoomswervingsreport​

(komfortfahrerstilleschnellstenweitwartsdrehenbericht) Google translation?​

Bob Wilson

 

^^^
If I find any text (esp. on CR's web site) that describes what Top cars in our tests in more detail, I'll post it.

You'll also notice best/worst cars in terms of test score. It looks a bit outdated as I think the Scion iQ scored worse than the FJ Cruiser.

edit: Here we go. 2012 Annual Auto Issue: Best and worst road test scores has a link to How we test. Maybe I've posted the latter before...

And to reply to an earlier post, from A guide to new-car Ratings and reviews

Again, none of this is suddenly new. CR's been considering test scores, crash tests and reliability for AGES to recommend or not.

 

With thanks,
I appreciate the repost:

My understanding is the CR score can achieve a maximum of 100. What we don't know if how the various metrics, scored 1-5 with 1 being the worst and 5 being the best, are used to calculate this score. But we can analyze a large population of scored and reverse engineer their formula (or one that achieves the same result.)

If we have a large enough sample set, typically found in their annual reports, we can find enough vehicles entries and find cases where only one or at most, two, variables changed. Then the difference between the scores gives a metric for the one or two variables. When I looked at it in June:

• over 11 seconds 0-60 - about a 15 point decrease
• noise 4 to 3 - about a 10 point decrease
• driving position 4 to 3 - about 10 point decrease
• emergency handling 4 to 3 - about a 10 point decrease

It looks like these four control about 45 of the 100 points. Everything else nibbles at the edges. Also, they are not linear but have threshold values. So a score that changes from 5 to 4 can have more or less effect than going from 4 to 3 or 3 to 2. or 2 to 1. It is also possible their scoring system may support values less than zero.

Give us the mapping of individual metrics to the final score and we'll have a way to understand what is going on. But right now, MPG has to be one of the least important metrics.

Bob Wilson

 

Yeah, probably, given the mileage of the top scorers.

 

The 0 to 60 times listed are definitely not correct. I owned a 2002 Prius and it was slow. However, I have owned a Prius III and an an Insight II and the acceleration of both are dead even. The Prius C is slower than the Gen III Prius or the Insight, but faster than the Gen I Prius. The Civic Hybrid is slower than the Prius C and it may not be any faster than the Gen I Prius.

 

I'm disturbed that CR uses the 0-60 time as a way to judge how quickly a car can accelerate our of danger. This measure is too simplistic, because one is not often going at 0 mph and needs to get up to 60 to get out of danger. While in motion and a dangerous situation presents itself, where quickly accelerating is the only option, a typical automatic or manual has to downshift a few gears and substantially increase the rpm, before sufficient thrust is felt (precious time in an impending accident situation). In a Prius that initial thrust is both instantaneous and strong due to the electric motor and that first second could be the difference between a messy, costly situation or scot free.

30-35 mph acceleration time
It would be interesting to measure Prius 30-35 mph acceleration times versus a typical automatic and typical manual transmission car where the initial conditions prior to the 30-35 mph test are light throttle to sustain 30 mph and normal gear selection for that speed (throttle is stabbed after starting stopwatch). Repeat for 35-40, etc. I suspect the Prius would compare favorably to even some high hp rivals. Plus flooring a Prius is a much less torturous event on its power train compared to most other cars.

 

I have a C four. I took it on vacation ... loaded down. I have a family of 4; it was tight for luggage. I was able to pass cars on 2 lane roads. It did not have the kick that a regular automatic transmission has but it roared pretty good and dutifully passed the slow vehicles. By the way, I got about between 47 and 52mpg on each leg of the trip. I took it out of eco on the big hills and it zipped right up. All of the modern conveniences (GPS, Satellite Radio, Music on thumb drive and ipod even the weather app) were terrific on the trip. The ride is ok ... I have the larger optional alloy wheels. Punishing roads are punishing in any smaller vehicle.

 

By the way, I've been a fan of CR for years but they are way off on this one. The Prius C is an awesome vehicle. All cars are loaded with plastic these days. No sciatic pain from the faux leather seats on our long trip. Car handled well. Pickup is acceptable ... if I wanted a fast car, I would have bought one. Even my teenage kids who thought our vacation would be uncomfortable, thought the car was acceptable. I had to put their station on the satellite radio but we all need to sacrifice something to go green ; )

 

My friend's husband - electrical engineer - was very interested in my C. Asked how the power curve(?) was - I asked him why. He said in electrics and hybrids the power, as braink101 posted above, would be instantaneous. The electric motor could not maintain a sustained boost but the initial power input is very high and the gas engine will be right behind it. I don't feel at all disadvantaged when accelerating while traveling on the freeway - unless I hit a long hill at relatively low speed - heavy traffic or backup. Otherwise - passing cars on the freeway is easy and better than my Prizms including the now dead 2001. Only car I had that would have matched and beat the C would be my old '69 Cuda 318 with AT.
YMMV