Power vs Torque – The difference in simple terms

[TopAuto]

Power vs Torque – The difference in simple terms

When shopping for a new car you will undoubtedly come face to face with its power and torque figures; here is what they mean.

 

[ShakeSpeer]

“Power is how fast your car hits a wall at full throttle; torque is how far it moves the wall after impact”

 

[chrisc]

The weight of the car makes a difference to performance

A Honda CR-V has the same sized and similar specced engine to a Maxda CX-5
But the Honda is a much heavier car, using more robust construction and the accelleration and fuel consumption are not as good as the Mazda

 

[FiestaST]

 

[Sinbad]

View attachment 1640475

Popular but also bull.

 

[Big Rat]

Always ends up a fight this one...
You cannot have KW without torque.
A truck makes massive torque low down, so you do not have to rev to make power.
F1 car has very little torque at low revs, and a bit more at the higher end, the high revs is what gives the power

You can have two engines each giving 500nm. but the one at 2000rpm will have less power than the motor making that 500nm at 4000rpm.

After all Kw is simply nm* revs* (some arbitary number some genius once figured out)

SO for towing, where you do not want to rev to get you power the low oomph is working for you, but you do not have a big range of revs to work with, think Diesel.
Whereas for speed you want the torque to be higher, so you have more res to play with. think Vtec and F1
500nm at 4000RPM is more powerful than 500nm at 2000RPM.