With so much of the industry beginning to turn towards electrification, there have been a ton of questions cropping up from consumers across the country. What are the different types of electric vehicles? How do I go about charging my electric vehicle? These are just a couple of the more practical questions that are circling, but there are plenty of other questions out there posed to help consumers decide which way they want to go – Electric or Gas?
For most of these questions, there isn’t likely to be a definitive answer, on top of the fact that the answer will likely change alongside the technology. In other words, as electric vehicle technology advances, so, too, might the answers to these this-or-that questions. Even still, they’re important questions to look at and discuss, so we wanted to jump on one of the biggest. Between electric and gas, which are the faster cars?
This isn’t an easy question to answer, and it isn’t likely to be a question that has a catch-all answer. The answer will likely vary from vehicle to vehicle, but we’re going to take a look at the big picture and give you the facts so that you can come to your own conclusion. But first and foremost, it’s important that we take a look at the difference between acceleration and speed.
Acceleration vs Speed
This is going to be the biggest crux of this debate – acceleration vs speed, or as you might more often hear it, quick vs fast. When it comes to general terminology in the racing world, and by extension the automotive industry as a whole, the term quick represents the length of time in which it takes to get from one point to another. This is a vehicle’s acceleration. On the flip side, the term fast represents the speed a vehicle reaches while traveling between those two points. One has a unit of measurement in time, while the other utilizes miles per hour. In other words, acceleration (or quick) is measured by the number of seconds it takes to get from 0-60 miles per hour, while speed (or fast) is measured by the highest miles per hour the vehicle can reach.
When it comes to answering the question at hand, though, we’ll take a look at both acceleration and speed. That way, the answer to the question will come down to what’s more important to you. As the technology stands, electric vehicles are capable of going much quicker than gas-powered vehicles, though they’re still quite far away from reaching higher top speeds.
To give you more tangible examples, if an electric vehicle and a gas vehicle lineup next to one another and take off at the same time, the EV will take off much quicker than the gas model and appear as if it will win the race. However, the longer the race goes, the more likely the gas vehicle will be to take over as it can reach higher speeds than the electric.
Hopefully, this gives you a good idea of which type of vehicle is faster. When it comes to short bursts, the answer is EVs. When it comes to going as fast as possible, the answer is typically gas models. Of course, there are outliers on both sides of the field, and as we mentioned… technology will continue to advance and might change this in time. For now, though, if you’re looking to shock the guy next to you at the stop light? You might want to consider an EV.