Is there a connection between the amount of power in an engine and the amount of gears in the transmission?
Like, wouldn’t more power mean that you can get away with less gears, because you aren’t always needing to be in a narrow rev range to generate torque?
I guess the real question I’m asking is, does the author of the article actually known anything about cars and how they work?
More gears means you can stay at peak efficiency. So you can also build a more efficient engine with a narrower torque band rather than one with a wider torque band that may be less efficient.
Porsche used to claim they left the 4 in the 930 so long bc then you could enjoy the motor pulling hard for longer between shifts and bc it had so much power more gears would just be an annoyance with very little benefit. They really just didn’t want to build a new 5-6 sod transmission that could handle the increased torque. But also they were kind of right about the enjoyment thing imo
A car needs to be capable of high rpm low speed acceleration and low rpm (relatively) high speed cruising once up to speed. And together you get something that’s capable of high rpm high speed. You can’t legislate or dictate physics.
Is there a connection between the amount of power in an engine and the amount of gears in the transmission?
Like, wouldn’t more power mean that you can get away with less gears, because you aren’t always needing to be in a narrow rev range to generate torque?
I guess the real question I’m asking is, does the author of the article actually known anything about cars and how they work?
Usually if you have a load of torque you can get away with fewer, taller gears since you can get moving at low ass RPM
They know nothing about cars.
More gears means you can stay at peak efficiency. So you can also build a more efficient engine with a narrower torque band rather than one with a wider torque band that may be less efficient.
It depends on the working RPM range. A semi truck has 1000+ ft-lbs. of torque, but still has 10-18 gears to keep it in a narrow RPM band.
There are a lot of 1500+hp drag cars with 2 speed power glide transmissions.
Porsche used to claim they left the 4 in the 930 so long bc then you could enjoy the motor pulling hard for longer between shifts and bc it had so much power more gears would just be an annoyance with very little benefit. They really just didn’t want to build a new 5-6 sod transmission that could handle the increased torque. But also they were kind of right about the enjoyment thing imo
4 gears = 4 speeds
8 gears = double the speed
^^/s
A car needs to be capable of high rpm low speed acceleration and low rpm (relatively) high speed cruising once up to speed. And together you get something that’s capable of high rpm high speed. You can’t legislate or dictate physics.