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- Elon Musk recently
Tweeted that the purpose
of the new Next-Gen Tesla Roadster was
"to beat gas sports cars
on every performance metric
by far, no exceptions,
thus transferring the "halo
crown" effect gas cars have
as the top speed leaders
over to pure electric."
Well, being who I am, I
had to look into the data
behind this and so that's
what we're gonna do today.
(upbeat music)
Before we get into the details here,
I thought it made sense to take a look
at some of the different
performance categories
that we typically measure cars by
so that we understand
the meaning behind them
and kind of how they're calculated.
Now the first thing to know
is that all of these numbers
that we talk about in terms
of power are the peak numbers.
It's actually a point in
time where this number is
at its highest not the
overall, not the average,
not any of the more
advanced ways we typically
would measure something, but peak number.
And this is kind of standard
how the automotive industry
has been looking at these things forever.
Now some of these numbers
can be manipulated.
Things like gear ratios,
weight of the vehicle,
and a lot of other little
factors in how the cars
are engineered can kind
of inflate or deflate
some of these numbers but
when it comes down to it,
the time trials, the zero
to 60s, the zero to 100s,
the quarter mile time, that is
where the rubber meets
the road quite literally.
So, we'll talk about the performance stuff
and then we'll talk
about the actual results.
First up, we have torque.
Now, torque is force at a distance.
You add more distance,
you get more torque.
So it's subject to manipulation.
Now there is a difference
between engine torque
and wheel torque as well.
Sometimes you hear manufacturers
quote the wheel torque
which is kind of a meaningless number
unless you know the horsepower or the RPM
at which that torque was measured.
And when we talk about torque
we use the term pound-feet.
That is the unit of measure
and that may seem odd
but what it literally
means is that the torque,
which is technically a twisting force,
is measuring the amount
of turning force applied
to move one pound a distance of one foot
around an axis at a radius of one foot.
So it seems confusing,
but it's a really old term
and the idea was to measure
how, kind of strong,
the twisting force is which
then propels the car foreword
by turning the axle where the wheels are.
Now of course it's a much
more complicated than that,
but I think it's not
gonna matter once we get
into the actual results of how
fast these cars really are.
So the next category we look at typically
when it comes to car's
performance is horsepower.
Now horsepower is kind
of what it sounds like.
It was originally coined
by Thomas Savery in 1702
when he was referring to the amount
of work a horse can do as
a method to measure power.
This combined with the torque of the car
and depending on things
like the vehicle weight
and gear ratio, represent
the overall power.
So if a car has 1,000
horsepower and 500 pound-feet
of torque it will be faster
than a car with 500 horsepower
and 1,000 pound-feet
of torque assuming all the
other factors remain the same.
Now Jason Fenske over at
Engineering Explained has a ton
of videos breaking all these things down.
So I'll link to a play list that I use
to actually research this
stuff and learn a lot about it.
And as well as some of the
ways that he looks at things
and calculating a lot of these numbers.
Specifically for the Tesla Roadster
that we're looking at today.
Okay, so those are the
two basic things we look
at when we're talking
about the performance
of a vehicle: horsepower and torque.
Now the ways we really measure
that are top speed and time trials:
zero to 60 miles per hour,
zero to 100 miles per hour,
and the quarter mile time.
There are some other ones
but those are the most popular
ones that you'll find online.
So what I thought we would
do is we would take a look
at all the top cars in those categories
and see how they stack up to
the Tesla Next-Gen Roadster.
First we have the Tesla Roadster.
And this is the new version
not the original one
which is actually the
first car the company made.
Now this is an upcoming, all electric,
battery powered four-seater
sports car made by Tesla.
The Tesla Roadster was unveiled in 2017
along with the semi truck as
sort of a surprise announcement
in very dramatic Tesla Elon Musk fashion.
Pre-orders of the Next-Gen Roadster began
at that event in Fremont, California.
Now there's also a Founder's Series
which we're not gonna look at today
because we don't have the specs on it.
However, Elon and other reports have said
that it will actually
beat all of the specs
that we're gonna look at today.
Now that one is $250,000 and they're
only making a thousand of them.
The next car on our list
is the Bugatti Chiron.
The Bugatti Chiron is a
mid-engined two-seater sports car
developed and manufactured
in Molsheim, France
by Bugatti as the successor to the Veyron.
The Chiron was first shown
at the Geneva Motor Show
on March 1st of 2016.
The car's based on the
Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo
concept car.
Bugatti started making these
in 2016 and they limited
up to 500 and then they began
making them again in 2018
for the Chiron Sport.
This is a two-door coup
with an eight liter,
quad turbo charged W16 engine,
seven speed dual clutch transmission,
and a curb weight of 4,400 pounds.
The next car on our list
is the Porsche 918 Spyder.
The Porsche 918 Spyder
is a mid-engined plug-in
hybrid sports car manufactured
by German automobile manufacturer Porche.
The Spyder is powered
by a naturally aspirated
4.6 liter V8 engine with an
additional two electric motors
helping it reach some
staggering performance numbers.
It also includes a 6.8 kilowatt hour
lithium-ion battery pack that delivers
an all electric range of 12
miles or about 19 kilometers.
Porsche started selling this
in 2013 and ended it in 2015,
making exactly 918 units.
It is a two-door roadster and also
has a seven speed dual
clutch transmission.
And the last car in our showdown here
is the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon.
This is the more powerful
wide bodied version
of the Challenger.
It debuted in the New York
Auto Show in April of 2017.
The Demon uses an all new
6.2 liter V8 engine equipped
with 2.7 liter supercharger which puts out
some insane numbers that we'll take a look
at here in a minute.
Now this is the cheapest
car which makes it
really difficult to choose
which one of these cars
will be your next one.
So for the first category let's
take a look at horsepower.
Coming in with an insane amount
is the new Tesla Roadster
at 1400 horsepower.
Now the Bugatti Chiron comes
in with an impressive 1500.
The Porsche 918 Spyder with 887.
And the Dodge Demon with 840.
But remember horsepower
isn't the only thing
that leads to quick and fast vehicles.
So here we have the Bugatti
Chiron with the winner
of this one category.
Next we have torque.
Now this is one where
these two numbers combined
really tell the story of how
fast this car is gonna be
and how well it's gonna perform.
You have the Tesla Roadster which has
an estimated 7,000 pound-feet of torque,
which is an absolutely ridiculous number.
Because we don't have the
true details behind this,
Tesla only lists 10,000
in Newton-meters of torque
which is the wheel torque.
So using some other assumed values,
Jason over at Engineering
Explained calculated
that the engine torque
would be 7,000 pound-feet.
Of course, we'll have to see.
Now, the Bugatti Chiron has 1,180.
Again a crazy number.
The Porsche 918 Spyder 944.
And the Dodge Demon 770.
So the winner in this category
is the Tesla Roadster hands down.
Now when it comes to an actual time trial,
a zero to 60 is a popular measure.
So the Tesla Roadster
lists it at 1.9 seconds
which is questionable whether
or not they can actually do it.
Now I've personally ridden
in it and we've done this
but it's hard to say how
consistent that would be.
Now the other cars here,
the Bugatti Chiron comes
in at 2.3.
The Porsche 918 Spyder at 2.2
and is the current quickest
to zero to 60 in the world
of any production car.
And then the Dodge Demon comes
in at a extremely close 2.3 seconds.
So the Tesla Roadster does win out but
until we actually see it in real life,
it's a question of exactly
how quick it's gonna be
and again, they've also stated
that the Founder Series version
will beat these numbers.
So we'll see what those
look like down the road.
The next test I want to look
at is the zero to 100 test.
And this one I think is important
because once you hit 60 some
cars may kind of top out
and they loose a lot of their power
and start to slow down.
Well, here at 100 miles per hour,
this is where things get a
little bit more interesting.
Now the Tesla Roadster
reports at 4.2 seconds.
The Chiron at 4.8.
The Porsche 918 Spyder
at an abysmal 6 seconds.
And the Dodge Demon at a 5.1.
So, really kind of spread
here from 4.2 to 6.
That's a big amount when you're talking
about fractions of a second.
But again the Tesla Roadster wins out.
Now let's take a look at the quarter mile.
The typical drag race that you might see
out in the wild somewhere.
The Tesla Roadster reports 8.8
seconds which is crazy fast.
The Bugatti Chirion is at a 9.4
which is abysmally slow compared to 8.8
cause remember we're talking
fractions of a second here.
Next you have the Porsche
918 Spyder at 9.8.
And the Dodge Demon at a staggering 9.65.
And I'll explain why that is in a second.
So the Tesla Roadster wins
out here by a healthy margin.
So far what we've been talking
about is how quick a car is.
How quickly can it get
to 60 miles per hour?
How quickly can it get to
a quarter mile of distance?
How quickly can it get
to 100 miles per hour?
When you hear people talk
about how fast a car is,
this is the thing that
they're generally talking
about is the speed.
Now Tesla hasn't officially stated
what the top speed will be.
Only that it will above 250 miles per hour
which many of us will never go.
Then we have the Bugatti Chiron
which is the current world record holder
at 261 miles per hour.
The Porsche 918 Spyder at 211.
And the Dodge Demon at a
paltry 168 miles per hour.
Again faster than many of us
will ever travel in a vehicle.
So, in this one I'm giving
it to the Bugatti Chiron
until we hear exactly how fast
the Tesla Roadster is gonna go.
Now technically this
isn't a performance metric
but I thought it was important to talk
about the price because
there is such a disparity
between the vehicles
we're looking at here.
First you have the Tesla Roadster
which comes in at a cool $200,000.
This is the basic model
not the Founder Series
which is $250,000.
But compared to the Bugatti Chiron
at three million dollars, it is a steal.
Similarly the Porsche 918 Spyder
is at 1.7 million dollars.
So the Tesla Roadster is
still doing and looking great
from a price standpoint.
And remember the Bugatti Chiron
and the Porsche 918 Spyder
are no longer in production
so the value of these cars is
only going to continue to
rise as collector's items.
Now the Dodge Demon is
a really interesting one
because the retail price is around $86,000
before taxes and everything.
But dealers upcharge and
people are reselling them
and they're not generally available.
I actually went and tried
to see on the Dodge website
if I could go order one and
it wasn't really possible.
So it appears that the average price,
and I'm kind of low-balling this here,
is $100,000 for this vehicle.
It could be well over that
if you're looking to buy one
with maybe some additional
specs or anything like that.
But in our category here, this is
by far the winner at $100,000.
So I wanted to try to level
the playing field here right?
There's a big difference between you know
a three million dollar super
car and a $100,000 Dodge Demon.
However, the specs in terms
of performance are quite similar.
So what I did is I took
the amount of the car,
the price of the car in thousands
and then divided its zero to sixty time
meaning how many thousands
of dollars will you be paying
per second zero to 60.
So in this case the lower
the number, the better.
That means you're essentially
getting a faster result
for a cheaper price.
So the Tesla Roadster at $200,000
and a 1.9 zero to 60 time
comes in at 105.
The Bugatti Chiron is an extreme example
of 1,304 because the car is
three million dollars divided
by 2.3 seconds in zero to 60.
Similarly the Porsche 918
Spyder is a really big number
at 773 because the price is so high
even though it is the world
record holder currently
in the zero to 60 time trial.
Now lastly we have the
Dodge Demon and this one,
because it is at 2.3 seconds
which is really close to 1.9
with the Roadster but it's half the price,
you can see that the thousands per second,
the thousands of dollars
per second that you'll spend
on the zero to 60 is the
lowest and it is our winner.
And I think this is
interesting and I wanted
to throw this out there
because this is the nature of the channel.
This is the nature of what we do.
We look at data and we see
the story it's telling us.
I went in to this assuming
that the Tesla Roadster was
just going to win hands down no matter
which category you put it up against.
But when you look data
and you normalize things
like we did here with this
thousands per second calculation,
you can see the Dodge Demon is
actually a really good deal.
And if you're just looking
for an extremely fast car,
it's a great option.
It is dollar for dollar your best bet.
Not what I was expecting
when I first started looking
at this data.
So the final tally, is we
have the Tesla Roadster
winning four out of the seven categories.
The Bugatti Chiron winning two of them.
The Porsche 918 Spyder
while it is currently
the world record holder
in the zero to 60 time,
it doesn't actually win
any of these categories.
And the Dodge Demon
with the price of being
only $100,000 comes out
surprisingly with a win here.
So the Next-Gen Tesla
Roadster does beat gas cars
in every single category so far.
We'll see what those look like once
it actually gets released but as of now,
it is winning hands down against
the top cars in the world.
So let me know what you think about
that down in the comments.
Do you think that when the
Roadster actually comes out
it will blow these
numbers out of the water?
Or do you think that the Founder Series
will even beat these without
the Space X options package
which says it's gonna have 10 rockets.
Don't know if it counts anymore
as like a production car
at that point.
But anyways, if you'd like to learn more
about how do these things, how I was able
to parse this data and
come up with these answers
and when I do these kinds
of analytical things,
I would recommend going and
checking out brilliant.org.
Brilliant is a really great site
that helps you learn math and logic
and solve all these kind of problems
in really fun and interactive ways.
I actually spend quite a bit of time here
and love their machine learning track
which has a lot of different
statistical methods
and analytical ways of looking at data.
Which is essentially how
really complex systems
that are based on machine learning work.
So I have quite a bit
of fun working with this
and I hope you guys do to.
If you're interested in learning more,
you can go to brilliant.org/teslanomics
and the first 200 people get 20% off.
So thanks for watching
this and don't forget
when you free the data
your mind will follow.
I'll see you guys back here next time.
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