A discussion that dates back to the dawn of the very first combustion engine. Torque and horsepower are what an engine produces when you turn the key and press the accelerator. Air and fuel ignited in the glorious chambers of combustion causing the crankshaft, transmission, and drive axles to do their dance. This is the miracle of energy conversion: the potential energy contained in a liter of recy­cled dinosaur remains efficiently changed into a means of propul­sion. However, many people don’t understand what horsepower and torque really mean, let alone how they affects the performance of the vehicle. While every review we do contains these words, we’ve never really gone into explaining what they are and what they do. Well, that changes today. Let’s start with torque. Torque is basically twisting an object. If you have ever used a torque wrench, you can relate to this. If the han­dle on your wrench is one foot long, and you place one pound of pressure on the end of the wrench, you have exerted one ft-lb of torque on the shaft. In vehicles, the engines rotate around an axis, thus creating torque.

Horsepower, on the other hand, is the power produced by an engine. In physics, power is the rate at which a work is done. In cars, horsepower translates into raw speed. While the two are independent entities everywhere else, but when inside an engine both horsepower and torque affect a car’s overall speed, so you can see why people mix them up.

So, which should you have more of in your vehicle—horsepower or torque? It all depends on what vehicle you are talking about. For instance, the greater the horse­power an engine produces, the higher the torque potential. “Poten­tial” here means how the torque is programmed to behave in your car. This explains why a race car and a tractor that have the same amount of horsepower can vary so drastically. In a race car, all the torque is used for speed through the gearing, whereas in the tractor it is used to convert the horsepower into pushing and pulling extremely heavy weights.

While we are on the topic of heavy weights, let us first focus on heavy vehicles so that we can cancel them out and move onto cars. The heavy vehicles, say, light pick-up trucks, heavy commercial trucks and load­ers and also excavators and bulldoz­ers which are used to haul heavy loads from one point to another need high amount of torque; and diesel engines are the kings when it comes to torque. While these heavy vehicles have less horsepower than your everyday sedan, they have high amounts of torque peaking at a much lower rpm than the sedan.

For instance a pick-up truck may have 170 horsepower but 400 lb-ft of torque at say 1,800 rpms, and a sedan may have 250 horse­power and 200 lb-ft of torque at say 5,000 rpms. While the pick-up truck may not reach high speeds it will certainly be able to carry heavy payload up an incline with ease because it has tons of torque at low rev range. The truck will roll along uphill in the first gear with all the weight on its back without breaking a sweat, while the sedan will need to reach a much higher rev range to even attempt the climb. This is why high low end torque diesel engines are used in heavy commercial vehicles.

On the flipside, cars have their peak torque much higher up the rev range. To help you understand horsepower and torque better in cars here is a simple example.

Let’s take three cars of identi­cal size, shape, and weight, being driven on an identical track with identical conditions. Car One gener­ates 200 hp and 400 lb-ft. of torque; Car Two has 300 hp and 200 lb-ft. of torque; and Car Three has 400 hp and 250 lb-ft. of torque. The engines of each of the three cars generate power along the same power-band—so, let’s say that they’ll redline at 7,000 rpm, with peak power at 4,000-6,000 rpm, and they’ll all be shifted by a robot driver who shifts at the identical rpm on all three vehicles, assuming all are identically-geared.

Now let’s take these three cars on three different races. First being a 0-60 kph run, second a 400 meter run and third a run on absolute top speed. Car One would win the first race, as it has the highest torque which equals to maximum pulling power; it would be the quickest off the line. Car Three would win the third race as it has the highest horse­power which equals more speed, and Car Three would be a balance of One and Two.

In other words, more pulling power comes from engines that achieve peak torque at low rpm, but more sporty performance is found in those with high-revving, high-horsepower engines that have peak torque at mid to high rpm. It has been said that horsepower makes you go fast, but torque is the power that presses you back in your seat as you leave the start line.

 Xiaomi Mi Pad

Price Rs 27,600

 Xiaomi has been developing very pow­erful smartphones for decent prices since its inception and this holds true when it comes to their tablets as well. For a decently priced tablet, the device is impressive mainly because it houses technology that pow­ered Nvidia’s Shield Tablets. The Nvidia Shield Tablets are known for their prowess in gaming thanks to the mobile Kepler GPU, the same microarchitecture for graphics cards by the company in its 600, 700 and 800M series com­puter graphics cards.

If you’re looking for gaming performance on a budget, look no further because a device with Nvidia chipset is in itself difficult to find and outright impossible at this price range. The Mi Pad is an exciting anomaly in the tablet scene right now, but if you do decide to go for it, you will need to keep in mind that the device only supports Android KitKat and hasn’t received further updates. This could create problems with app support on the device.

 Amazon Fire HD 10

 Price Rs 25,950

 Amazon’s Fire line of tablets have been pretty popular because of its price. The company has been producing some decent, relatively cheap tablets since it started producing tablets back in 2011, mainly to sup­port its online library of e-books. But a good device is a good device. While the Fire HD is not as impressive as the Mi Pad, it does offer some decent specifications that would be more than enough for media consumption. The device is powered by a Quad-Core MediaTek processor which is paired with 2 GB of RAM, which is plenty enough for media consumption.

But internal hardware is not one of the tab­let’s strong points; the strongest point would be centered more on the tablet’s software, especially Alexa. Amazon has developed and implemented Alexa so well around its products that it works like a breeze on the Fire HD 10: it’s smart, provides excellent off-hand features and also comes with a sharp, large 10-inch screen as its face.

 Lenovo Ideapad Miix 310

 Price Rs 35,400

 If Android is just not power­ful enough for you, the Lenovo Ideapad Miix 310 offers a gen­uine Windows experi e n c e. The tablet is powered by Intel’s 1.44 Ghz Atom X5 processor, 2GB of RAM and 64 GB of eMMC storage; it’s more than capable of running a full-fledged copy of Windows 10 Home. More like a laptop than a tablet, the device also comes with a plethora of connectivity options such as a HDMI port, USB Ports and even an SD card reader.

To add to its functionality, it comes with a dedicated detachable keyboard, an addition that propels the device into the space of an effective work machine. For the price, the Lenovo Ideapad Miix 310 is a steal and while it may not be as powerful as your laptop, it is definitely a capable device if you want to do light work on it.

 The Indian government in 2016 announced its rather ambitious project to have an all-elec­tric vehicle fleet by 2030. Even for a country like ours, where the Prime Minister has promised us our own ships and trains even as the prime entry route into the valley is in a state of shambles, the idea of India going all-electric felt a little farfetched. We were able to find a little respite after India set a more real­istic target of 30 percent e-cars by 2030. Nevertheless, the ultimate electric era seems eminent. So, does that mean us average income earn­ers are headed for a boring automo­tive future?

This has been a nagging quandary that has been in the back of our heads, and it was not very different when we headed out to test-drive the newly introduced, all-electric Hyundai Ioniq. For probably the first time, ever, we were not in as positive of a mindset as we’d like to be. With the odds stacked against it, the Hyundai Ioniq had a grand task at hand.

Exterior

Considering the futuristic nature of an electric vehicle, the Hyun­dai Ioniq is not as modern as you’d expect, which is a surprise because Hyundai have been bold with their styling ever since the introduction of their fluidic design language. The Ioniq does not scream its hi-tech electric caliber; instead it blends with the crowd of fossil fuel pro­pelled vehicles.

The Ioniq has a lot of generic body lines that work well to give it a subtle stylistic design. HID lights with LED light flank the full blacked out grille. The headlight unit is also equipped with Dynamic Bending Light, which moves the HID headlights when you turn the steering so that you can see through dark corners better. The sloping nose and rounded off rear end help to make the Ioniq more aerodynamic. You will notice the back has a split rear window and angular wraparound taillights.

We had the Ioniq in black noir pearl, but we think the ceramic white color scheme looks much better.

Interior

The exterior might not blow you away, but the interiors will surely have you smiling from ear to ear. It’s not a cabin that overwhelms you with a plethora of fancy thing­amajigs, although it has plenty of those. On the contrary, the dash is cleanly laid out with materials that feel good to touch. According to Hyundai, the company incorporated sugarcane fiber as 25 percent of raw materials in the door trim panels, as well as recycled plastic “combined with powdered wood and volcanic stone,” which reduced the weight of “some interior plastics” by up to 20 percent, so there’s a bit of an eco-side to the interior trim.

On the gearshift panel you get your driving controls, where you can put the car into drive, park, reverse or in neutral at a push of a button. There are buttons that let you heat the front seats or cool them down, you get a switch for the electronic parking brakes and more buttons to let you choose the driving modes and to switch on auto hold mode. You can even drop your phone into the wireless charging bay on the Ioniq where it will wirelessly charge your phone (if the phone has that feature).

The front seats are spacious and we can definitely see ourselves com­fortably munching miles with the Ioniq. The front passengers also get power adjustable seats.

Performance

Complete silence is what you are greeted with when you’re driving the Hyundai Ioniq, and for people new to electric cars, this is the first thing you’ll notice.

On paper, the electric motor of the Hyundai Ioniq makes 118 BHP, a decent number for the Nepali mar­ket. But what really impresses are the combination of the 218 lb ft of torque with the almost nonexistent pause between gear changes.

You get to choose from an option of economy, normal and sport mode. As you might have guessed, we were mostly driving in sports mode. This did affect the range by a smidgen, but switch to sport mode and stamp on the accelerator with wicked intent and the Ioniq bolts forward like a football being kicked. This means that the driving experience is surreal when you’re gunning it through straights. How­ever, with a low center of gravity, thanks to its battery position, and a low curb weight, the Ioniq feels extremely lively. The steering is light but retains a certain degree of feel to it so that the person behind the wheels enjoys the time there.

For the Ioniq Electric, with its 28.0 kWh lithium-polymer battery pack, a full charge on a Level 2 char­ger is said to take about 4 hours and 25 minutes, while a 100 kW charger could deliver an 80 per­cent charge in about 23 min­utes, and a 50 kW charger could deliver an 80 percent charge in about half an hour. You will not have much ‘range anxiety’ that elec­tric car owners are susceptible to because the Ioniq has a claimed range of 280kms on a full charge. Even when you switch to sport mode and really floor it, you will still have enough juice to get around the city for the entire day. Depending on where you’re headed, you might have to be more judicial with your driving if you decide to take it out of the city though.

Verdict

Let’s put aside the actual possi­bility of an all-electric future for the automobile industry; let’s assume it IS going to happen somewhere along the line. But can we see a future where we will not be griping about the lack of performance vehicles for the common folks?

Thanks to the Hyundai Ioniq, we can. The Ioniq is not just a tree-hug­ging environmentalist. Yes, it is an electric car that goes above and beyond in its endeavor to help save the planet but it is not a boring dud when it gets to the tarmac. It might not be a mad machine but it packs enough silent grunt to be considered a fun car to drive. It isn’t a silent creep incapable of exciting even the most mellow of the auto enthusi­asts. To the contrary, it is a car that encourages the possibilities of an all-electric future for automobiles where you can realistically dream of buying a fun EV. And we desperately needed this ray of hope to help keep us sane.

 We’re quite far into 2018 and this year, we’ve seen some really great phones. Veterans of the market worked on improving their flagships while newcomers worked on finding the delicate balance between power and price. It has been a great year for consumer tech with the release of genre defining technologies like the bezel-less displays, massive bat­teries and higher screen pixel counts. But as all eyes have been set on the top end of this market, there are some really interesting devices for people looking for some good, affordable smartphones this year. Let’s take a look.

Xiaomi Mi A2

Price: Rs 30,999

Xiaomi’s second crack at the use of Android One, the Xiaomi A2, is a device that performs way over its price range. It’s got all the new features: an 18:9 ratio display screen, chamfered edges and aluminum uni-body design. The phone looks gorgeous from the outside—though perhaps a touch too much iPhone-ish—and is easy to use. The Snapdragon 660 SOC is paired with 4 GB of RAM, ensuring everything runs blazingly fast. All of this performance comes to life inside a beautiful 5.99-inch LCD screen that pushes out Full HD+ (2160 x 1080) resolution of data. As for the camera, the device has a dual camera set up at the back, with one camera sporting a 12 MP sensor and the other a 21 MP sensor. Both have a wide f/1.8 aperture which helps the device produce high-quality images. For the price point, the Xiaomi Mi A2 is an excellent phone to have in your pocket.

Huawai Nova 3i

Price: Rs 38,999

Huawei has been marketing flagships in Nepal while leaving the lower and mid-ranged markets to its sub-brand, Honor, which is why a mid-ranged device from Huawei comes as a surprise to all of us. A boiled down version of Huawei’s Nova 3, the device flaunts its big brother’s excellent design aesthetics. It’s a sandwiched metal and glass design with glass on both sides. The front houses a fetching 5.84-inch edge-to-edge display, with a notch on top. The device is also very powerful with Huawei’s inhouse Silicon Kirin 710 SOC, amply supported by 4GB of RAM. It has a fingerprint reader at the back and comes with a 3340 mAh battery. The selling point of this phone is also the dual camera setups, both at the front and the back; the rear houses a 16 MP sensor and 2MP monochrome sensor while the front houses a 24 MP sensor with another 2 MP monochrome sensor. Considering all the features and hardware that Hua­wei has crammed into the Nova 3i, the phone is an excellent mid-ranged smartphone.