If you want to buy a car, in addition to meeting the requirements of safety and comfort, what performance do you pay most attention to? Most people will put forward the two requirements of "high maximum speed and good acceleration performance". So, what indicators of the car are related to these two performances? That is "maximum power", also known as "maximum horsepower".
A unit of horsepower. In the industrial age, horses were the main means of transportation in production and transportation. Therefore, Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, put forward the concept of "horsepower" in 1789 in order to vividly explain how many horses the steam engine can replace.
The "maximum power" and "maximum horsepower" of a car are actually the same. They both refer to the maximum energy that the car's engine can output per unit time. The maximum power determines the power performance of the car. Under the same conditions, the greater the maximum power, the faster the acceleration and the greater the speed that can be achieved. However, different cars often have different requirements. For example, sports cars have the highest speed requirements; The climbing ability of off-road vehicles and commercial vehicles is greater than that of cars; The starting acceleration ability of cars is stronger than that of commercial vehicles and off-road vehicles.
However, cars with high horsepower do not necessarily run fast, but also consider the problem of engine torque and speed. Because the power of the car is directly proportional to the product of engine speed and torque, under the same power, the speed of the car with high torque will be low.
For example, the engines of commercial vehicles and off-road vehicles have large torque and "great strength", but the speed is not fast. Therefore, these vehicles have strong ability to go uphill or through uneven roads, high traction and good off-road performance. Sports cars such as sports cars have small torque but high speed, so they have fast speed and start and accelerate quickly on flat roads, but their bearing capacity is small and their off-road ability is not good.
In order to improve the power performance of the vehicle, it can be achieved by improving the power performance of the engine, reducing the driving resistance of the whole vehicle, improving the matching between the engine and the vehicle and its transmission system, including reducing the self weight of the vehicle, using four-wheel drive, selecting tires with low rolling resistance, streamlining the vehicle shape, reducing wind resistance and other measures.