|
A son bought an EV last month BUT the Air Con broke down after 2/3 days (local temps around 100F) and it was nigh on 3 weeks for the parts to arrive. So really had it a week.
He says he loves it - how much? Well we will see if he holds on to it for around 2 years and buys another, or goes back to petrol/petrol hybrid.
|
A son bought an EV last month BUT the Air Con broke down after 2/3 days (local temps around 100F)
As an octogenarian I am surprised to find people still talking in Fahrenheit. Of course I grew up with it and learnt to use Centigrade (still don't like 'Celsius') as a scientist. I thought only the arch-Imperial Americans still refused to switch to SI units .....
Gallons, pounds, Fahrenheit, cubic yards ....
|
A son bought an EV last month BUT the Air Con broke down after 2/3 days (local temps around 100F)
As an octogenarian I am surprised to find people still talking in Fahrenheit. Of course I grew up with it and learnt to use Centigrade (still don't like 'Celsius') as a scientist. I thought only the arch-Imperial Americans still refused to switch to SI units .....
Gallons, pounds, Fahrenheit, cubic yards ....
Pounds, hundredweights, furlongs, pints, fathoms, feet and inches all originated hundreds of years ago as units that were useful for everyday practical use.
The current dimensioning car widths in millimetres (I have seen the overall length of mainline locomotives given in millimetres) is just one example not obviously better than Imperial measures.
(Could you measure your car's width to +/- 1 mm? You could do it within an inch, good enough to know if it fits your garage)
The media frequently quote figures of weight/size/capacity in metric units but commonly are incorrect by a factor of 10 or even 100, because the journalists/presenters have no intuitive feel for metric units.
[I should add that after a science degree and many years in engineering, I can personally use either system without difficulty.]
Edited by galileo on 21/07/2021 at 14:25
|
|
The son that bought the EV lives in Texas, is a graduate engineer that worked mostly in metric in UK and now semi Imperial in Texas. Weather is Fahrenheit in US & I understand that better than Centigrade.
Given Centigrade I do a bit of mental arithmetic and get Fahrenheit - I then know how hot or cold I would be much more easily. Likewise with distance/measurement feet & ins or miles is easier for me to visualize
|
Given Centigrade I do a bit of mental arithmetic and get Fahrenheit - I then know how hot or cold I would be much more easily.
It's quite simple: 0°C = cold; 10° = cool; 20° = warm; 30° = hot .
|
|
|
|
|
<< The media frequently quote figures of weight/size/capacity in metric units but commonly are incorrect by a factor of 10 or even 100, because the journalists/presenters have no intuitive feel for metric units.>>
I would have thought that most 'journalists/presenters' would have been educated after our switch to metric units, so their feel may be little better in Imperial.
But the good old gallon refuses to die here, especially when talking consumption - I have no idea when I last bought a gallon of fuel. I still have a 2-gallon watering-can, of course ...
|
|
|
|
A son bought an EV last month BUT the Air Con broke down after 2/3 days (local temps around 100F)
As an octogenarian I am surprised to find people still talking in Fahrenheit. Of course I grew up with it and learnt to use Centigrade (still don't like 'Celsius') as a scientist. I thought only the arch-Imperial Americans still refused to switch to SI units .....
Gallons, pounds, Fahrenheit, cubic yards ....
I suspect it was the wow factor of going into three digit temperatures, rather than 37.8degC.
We Brits like to make things difficult for ourselves:
Buy fuel in Litres but mostly use miles and miles per gallon.
Most items bought from the shops are weighed in kilos or grammes, but we like to weigh ourselves in stones, pounds and ounces. Markets, of course often still use Imperial wights and measures, as often do pubs and bars (pints, etc).
Small distances we measure in mm, cm and some in metres. Some, of course, especially pertaining to the body (wink, wink) are measured in inches and feet. Golf course in yards, but athletics events in metres.
Normally not too much of a problem, except when the 'experts' at NASA and ESA forget to convert km into miles, etc and the space probe crash lands on or misses Mars entirely....
|
|
<< Small distances we measure in mm, cm and some in metres. >>
I think the obstacle is the decimal point. Most Imperial measures use fractions, not decimals. Hence nothing between metres and millimetres, even if centimetres would be the most convenient unit. It's daft to measure things the size of a car or a bath in millimetres - if accuracy is essential a decimal can be included, but those are a no-no in the UK.
|
|
Q 25 (or 26?) seemed particularly silly even in this context.
IIRC (I’m not checking) we were asked to estimate the % improvement in climate change/environmental damage from our individual purchase of an EV.
Whatever that actually means, if anything, the answer is inevitably 0 unless the slider does an awful lot of decimal places to the right of the point.
|
Q 25 (or 26?) seemed particularly silly even in this context.
IIRC (I’m not checking) we were asked to estimate the % improvement in climate change/environmental damage from our individual purchase of an EV.
Whatever that actually means, if anything, the answer is inevitably 0 unless the slider does an awful lot of decimal places to the right of the point.
It might clean up the air, but climate change may not be altered in any way, instead we will end up with piles of batteries all over the place with out of date useless circuit boards to wade through instead of waste plastic.
|
|
I suppose the % change in individual rather than total footprint was meant.
Greenhouse reduction effect will depend largely on the source of the electricity. If I was back in Scotland, where it is almost all from renewables, it'd be greater than here in Taiwan, where hardly any of it is.
However, it'll also depend on what one is replacing. If you account for the energy involved in constructing the vehicle, since I drive a 36 year old fairly economical car very low miles, it seems likely that its replacement with a new EV would increase emissions, at least within my lifetime.
I couldn't reflect this in my response since there was no negative scale on the slider.
|
|
Scotland depends on
1)Torness nuclear 1.4GW
2)Peterhead Gas 0.5GW
3) Imports from England - GAS in the main + French Nuclear/Dutch oil/coal/gas
It was claimed, by some greenies, Scotland was capable of almost 100% wind generated - total generated = total burned.
This is twisting the truth - many weeks and months there is little or no wind power or the wind is during darkness when there is a much reduced demand.
We are dependent on nuclear/gas and England supply. You cannot rely on wind - Hydro & pumped storage only really provide power for peaks in demand and very short periods - say an hour or 2!
|
Scotland depends on
1)Torness nuclear 1.4GW
2)Peterhead Gas 0.5GW
3) Imports from England - GAS in the main + French Nuclear/Dutch oil/coal/gas
It was claimed, by some greenies, Scotland was capable of almost 100% wind generated - total generated = total burned.
This is twisting the truth - many weeks and months there is little or no wind power or the wind is during darkness when there is a much reduced demand.
We are dependent on nuclear/gas and England supply. You cannot rely on wind - Hydro & pumped storage only really provide power for peaks in demand and very short periods - say an hour or 2!
www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-56530424
"Scotland has narrowly missed a target to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020.
New figures reveal it reached 97.4% from renewable sources."
Fake news?
|
Scotland depends on
1)Torness nuclear 1.4GW
2)Peterhead Gas 0.5GW
3) Imports from England - GAS in the main + French Nuclear/Dutch oil/coal/gas
It was claimed, by some greenies, Scotland was capable of almost 100% wind generated - total generated = total burned.
This is twisting the truth - many weeks and months there is little or no wind power or the wind is during darkness when there is a much reduced demand.
We are dependent on nuclear/gas and England supply. You cannot rely on wind - Hydro & pumped storage only really provide power for peaks in demand and very short periods - say an hour or 2!
www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-56530424
"Scotland has narrowly missed a target to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020.
New figures reveal it reached 97.4% from renewable sources."
Fake news?
Assuming its not fake, I take your point that total generated = total used does not mean that all electricity used in Scotland was from renewables, since generation and demand are not coincident in time. but its surely a pretty good ,milestone,
Assuming consistent accounting it compares favorably with Taiwan, where its a negligable 3% or so, and presumably they did something with the electricity. perhaps offloading gas and hydro (which can ramp up and down fairly quickly) and /or exporting it.
Long term expanding pump storage locally and in Europe should help to address the temporal mismatch.
|
|
<< Small distances we measure in mm, cm and some in metres. >>
I think the obstacle is the decimal point. Most Imperial measures use fractions, not decimals. Hence nothing between metres and millimetres, even if centimetres would be the most convenient unit. It's daft to measure things the size of a car or a bath in millimetres - if accuracy is essential a decimal can be included, but those are a no-no in the UK.
When I was at school the metric units were based on the CGS version. (centimetre/gram/second).
Then some committee of academics/politicians decided that the S.I. preferred units should be based on MKS (metre/kilogram/second).
Your guess is as god as mine why.
|
|
|
|
|
As an octogenarian I am surprised to find people still talking in Fahrenheit.
USA consistently uses imperial units (though NASA uses metric units).
Rest of the world consistently use metric units.
Only UK continues to use messed up units, buy fuel in L but measure distance in miles - yet measure fuel economy in MPG.
I find distances easier in km. Typical motorway speed is 100 km/h. So if a place is 250 km away and I'll be mostly travelling via motorways, then I can instantly figure out it will take me 2.5 hours roughly.
|
Was it British Gas or British Rail who have pledged to have an all electric road fleet of 2500+ cars and vans by 2027?
Good luck with the charge points!
|
Was it British Gas or British Rail who have pledged to have an all electric road fleet of 2500+ cars and vans by 2027? Good luck with the charge points!
Expect most of them will be at the depot.
|
|
|
|
|
<< USA consistently uses imperial units (though NASA uses metric units). >>
That was what led to the famous rocket failure I believe - some measurement was wrongly stated or misinterpreted.
|
|
|
|
|
I can't get on with metric and have to convert everything to imperial. For me metric was progress backwards.
|
I can't get on with metric and have to convert everything to imperial. For me metric was progress backwards.
I would suggest that if it's not too late, you should learn to 'get on' with metric, if only to prevent errors in converting to Imperial :-) Remember that spacecraft ....
|
My favourite tale of metric/imperial confusion was the ‘Gimli Glider’, a passenger Boeing 767 fuelled in lbs of Jet A1 instead of kilos.
No serious injuries, despite running out of fuel at 41,000 feet/12500 metres.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
|
|
|
|
|
|
