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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Have any sources to back up your claims?

    According to KBB, the average American drives around 37 miles per day. That means that the overwhelming amount of driving could be accomplished by a plug-in hybrid, let alone a fully electric vehicle. When it comes to the occasional long road trip (what, once a year or less for the average person?), is it worth burning - and paying for - gas for the thousands of miles that could be easily covered by even the most pathetic of electric vehicles’ range without issue just so you can save a bit of time pumping fuel and hitting the convenience store rather than stopping a bit longer to charge up? In those cases, it may even be cheaper to rent a gas vehicle for the occasional road trip if if is that big of a concern for you.

    Your use case may be different than mine, but I can’t think of too many trips where I couldn’t stop for a half hour here and there to charge up a bit. Most people, especially people with kids, have to stop periodically anyway, so use that time to charge up and you won’t even notice. It’s true that, especially in the particularly sparsely-populated western United States (speaking from a US perspective), some route planning may still be required, but that will get better as more people buy EVs.

    Why are battery swaps even entering the conversation? Are engine swaps a concern for most people purchasing a new car? According to J. D. Power, every EV in the US comes with at least an 8 year or 100k mile warranty on the battery. Some manufacturers, like Hyundai, have a lifetime warranty on the battery. Most batteries are expected to last somewhere between 100k - 200k miles, which is often longer than the rest of the car will hold up and certainly competitive with combustion vehicles.

    If you want a serious argument detailing a real struggle with which EV manufacturers and the market/government must contend, then here you go: apartment dwellers. From a US perspective, you pretty much have to own your home or work somewhere that provides charging parking spots to be able to fully take advantage of the benefits of an EV. While using a public charger is a viable option, it is more expensive than charging at home (though, in my research, it is still cheaper than gas).

    EVs make sense for a super-majority of the driving that takes place today by normal people in North America. If you don’t own your home, want to tow a boat, or travel hundreds of miles a day on a regular basis, then EVs will serve your needs somewhere between “fairly well” to “not at all”.

    If “range anxiety” is the only thing keeping people from pulling the trigger on an EV, I strongly suggest they consider the possibility of renting a car for the rare cross-country trip if finding a DC fast charger every once and a while and spending a little extra time at each stop isn’t a viable option for them.


  • mreiner@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlFreedom units 💯
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    1 year ago

    Ah, I guess I misread (in my own research) or somehow missed that a degree change in Celsius was directly pegged the same degree change in Kelvin (shifted by 273.15 ) when the Kelvin scale was updated to be pegged to the Boltzmann constant. Thank you for helping me understand where my understanding was flawed!

    I guess I still don’t understand the utility of Celsius, though. If it’s really just an alias, shifted by 273.15, for Kelvin, what utility does Celsius offer? Why not just use Kelvin?


  • mreiner@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlFreedom units 💯
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    1 year ago

    Apologies, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.

    Both Celsius and Fahrenheit are based off the exact same thing: the freezing and boiling points of water. Fahrenheit just gives you more resolution between the two (180 degrees for Fahrenheit vs 100 degrees for Celsius), but otherwise they operate in the same way.

    I agree that the underpinnings of the weight and distance measurements used in the Imperial system are silly, but they are still just as accurate as the weight and distance measurements in the metric system. The metric system’s units for weight and distance are more logical and easier to use, but that doesn’t make them more accurate given modern measurement methods.

    I think the US should adopt the metric system in general, but I honestly don’t see the point in bringing Celsius along with the rest of the measurement standards.

    I honestly see zero benefit to Celsius over Fahrenheit: they are both pegged to the boiling and freezing points of water, Celsius was just unnecessarily limited in the number of degrees between those two points. Beyond that limitation of Celsius, there’s basically zero difference between it and Fahrenheit.


  • mreiner@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlFreedom units 💯
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    1 year ago

    Respectfully, I don’t think you are completely correct.

    While you are right that Kelvin is tied to absolute zero, it is also defined in such a way that a change in 1K corresponds to a change of thermal energy kT by 1.380649×10−23 J (the Boltzmann constant).

    It is the difference in what 0K describes, along with the fact that a change in temperature equals a specific change in thermal energy (the measured value to which I previously referred), that separate it from Celsius. In Celsius, zero is the freezing point of (mostly pure) water (at sea level), and a change in temperature has no relationship to a specific/prescribed change in thermal energy.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin


  • mreiner@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlFreedom units 💯
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    1 year ago

    Honest question: other than the number of people using Celsius, what benefits does Celsius bring over Fahrenheit?

    Even the scientific community felt the need to hollow out the Celsius scale, leaving the numerical values of Celsius in tact but otherwise completely decoupling the scale from the properties of water when it created kelvin. It instead moved to measured values, like basically all other SI/metric units.

    Celsius is there to describe water. Well, it’s used to describe a mostly pure form of water. Well, it’s used to describe a mostly pure form of water at around sea level. So, why does that make Celsius more relevant or useful for temperatures than Fahrenheit?

    Frankly, it feels like Celsius is, to the rest of the world, what the Imperial system is to the US: a vestige of times past that has been supplanted by a better, measurement-based standard, but has yet to be abandoned because it is so entrenched in popular culture.


  • mreiner@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlFreedom units 💯
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    1 year ago

    I’m sorry, but Fahrenheit has nothing to do with the errors you cited. Hell, even the overall Imperial system, silly an (mostly) antiquated as it is, has nothing to do with the examples you cited.

    The expensive failures you listed were caused by a lack of standardization. Those failures wouldn’t have taken place if every international agency had standardized on the Imperial system or the metric system.

    Your point is not only a nonsensical non sequitur, it is also wrong.