QuinceDaPence , 5 months ago

To accelerate a vehicle we need to put kinetic energy into it and Power is the measure of how fast we can do that.

From a technical capability standpoint, torque is a useless measure. With a motor of a given power you can always gear it up or down to whatever torque you need (assuming a lossless transmission system).

If we take two identical trucks with 10k lb trailers on them and one's a 800ft-lb diesel and one's a 300ft-lb gas, both with 400hp, they sould realisticly accelerate and climb a hill at the same rate. The diference is the gas engine will be screaming at 6/7/8000 rpm and guzzling gas. (This also assumes no other factors like heat cone into play, the gas may not be able to maintain as much power due to cooling system designs or other factors).

Torquey-er engines also tend to feel better from a driveability standpoint but that's not representative of capability.