I did the math once for my own commute, on my e-bike and with my electric car, and found that while the electric car uses only 20% of the energy that an average gas-powered car would, the bike uses just 1%. My bike, on my route (both directions averaged together) got 2,200 mpge.
Just another example of how Americans will use anything but metric (we do use metric sometimes, I know, it’s just a meme). We could easily measure it in Wh/km, but then we would also have to change how we measure gasoline cars if we want people to make direct comparisons. But, since we sell gas by the gallon, we would also have to change how gas is sold. When the EPA first came up with mpge I thought it was stupid (we don’t buy electricity by the gallon!), but I’ve come around to the convenience of being able to easily compare the two types of fuel. The EPA assumes 1 gallon of gas to contain 33.7 kWh of energy.
Maybe we should get everyone to switch to Joules for measuring, buying, and selling gasoline and electricity?
To be fair, even in metric countries in Europe, they use imperial occasionally. This is the case for wheel sizes and display sizes, both usually measured in inches.
Don’t tell them. Once you start looking for exceptions to “use metric for everything”, you’ll find one in every country, and people get really angry when you point this out. As if not being 100% metric is some kind of moral failing.
Car tire sizing is a bizarre, design-by-committee thing, though. Diameter is in inches, width is in mm, and sidewall width is a percentage of the width. Why?
I did the math once for my own commute, on my e-bike and with my electric car, and found that while the electric car uses only 20% of the energy that an average gas-powered car would, the bike uses just 1%. My bike, on my route (both directions averaged together) got 2,200 mpge.
Miles per gallon energy? What’s that abbreviation?
The E is for Equivalent. It’s how “fuel” efficiency is discussed when referring to non liquid fuel vehicles.
Gotcha, thanks.
Just another example of how Americans will use anything but metric (we do use metric sometimes, I know, it’s just a meme). We could easily measure it in Wh/km, but then we would also have to change how we measure gasoline cars if we want people to make direct comparisons. But, since we sell gas by the gallon, we would also have to change how gas is sold. When the EPA first came up with mpge I thought it was stupid (we don’t buy electricity by the gallon!), but I’ve come around to the convenience of being able to easily compare the two types of fuel. The EPA assumes 1 gallon of gas to contain 33.7 kWh of energy.
Maybe we should get everyone to switch to Joules for measuring, buying, and selling gasoline and electricity?
To be fair, even in metric countries in Europe, they use imperial occasionally. This is the case for wheel sizes and display sizes, both usually measured in inches.
Don’t tell them. Once you start looking for exceptions to “use metric for everything”, you’ll find one in every country, and people get really angry when you point this out. As if not being 100% metric is some kind of moral failing.
Car tire sizing is a bizarre, design-by-committee thing, though. Diameter is in inches, width is in mm, and sidewall width is a percentage of the width. Why?
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