Polestar and Oxford researchers seek to measure a performance car's effect on the driver
Polestar and Oxford researchers are trying to measure how a performance car affects its driver, Ars Technica reports.
Acceleration, top speed and lap times are the usual ways the industry quantifies performance, according to the report. Performance electric vehicles are currently in an arms race to see which model can reach 60 mph in the shortest time.
Ars Technica notes that measuring a car's performance is straightforward: a stopwatch and a track are enough. Measuring the effect of that performance on the driver is a different problem, and it is the one Polestar and the Oxford researchers are trying to answer.
The report places the pursuit in a longer history of speed. It traces the human desire to go fast to the first horseback riders on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, then to the invention of the wheel and the chariot. About five millennia after that first horseback ride, the article says, equestrianism is mostly a leisure activity, while cars are propelled by motors with more power than an entire herd of beasts could muster.
The published account does not describe the study design, the metrics the researchers plan to use, or any findings. It presents the collaboration as an attempt to move beyond stopwatch-and-track measures and to assess the driver's experience of performance.
Editor's Summary
Polestar and University of Oxford researchers are trying to measure how a performance car affects the driver, Ars Technica reports. The work looks beyond acceleration, top speed and lap times, though the published account does not include the study's methods or results.