Record High Gas Prices?

[aero84]

To the european ear, that sounds incredibly cheap. But I'll expect you to have a silghtly different opinion on that.

[Arragonis]

£1.36 for a litre of Diesel here at the moment. I have 536 miles on my tank and about 240 miles left according to the onboard computer. This morning it said 240 though, and when I arrived where I was going it said 275, and now back at 240. So I have done ~80 miles without using fuel

I used to get max 420 miles from a tank. Double + good.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by aero84

...why can't the US use metric as the civilised world does?

I dunno - why can't the Europeans use dollars?

Indeed, they've got even less excuse for their monetary obtuseness: the gallon was around for a long time before the silly Europeans (actually the Revolutionary French, and you know what wonderful people THEY were) came up with liters, but the Americans simply adopted the existing Spanish dollar (from the Austrian thaler, and from which we get "pieces of eight", quarters being two bits, etc.) from Europe...

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I dunno - why can't the Europeans use dollars?

Indeed, they've got even less excuse for their monetary obtuseness: the gallon was around for a long time before the silly Europeans (actually the Revolutionary French, and you know what wonderful people THEY were) came up with liters, but the Americans simply adopted the existing Spanish dollar (from the Austrian thaler, and from which we get "pieces of eight", quarters being two bits, etc.) from Europe...

The Metric system is logical though, unlike the 'based on the length of the upper arm and an average stride of a man' nonsense of the older system. As for currency, maybe moving away from this was a bad idea.

[aero84]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I dunno - why can't the Europeans use dollars?

We like hard currency.

Indeed, they've got even less excuse for their monetary obtuseness: the gallon was around for a long time before the silly Europeans (actually the Revolutionary French, and you know what wonderful people THEY were) came up with liters, but the Americans simply adopted the existing Spanish dollar (from the Austrian thaler, and from which we get "pieces of eight", quarters being two bits, etc.) from Europe...

Nobody outside the US understands you when it comes to measurements...
6.6 bn people worldwide use liters - compared to 300 million americans using gallons.
You're outnumbered by factor 23.


I'd really like to enter some data in the garage, but I won't convert everything manually. Would be great if it were to possible to choose between liters and gallons as well as miles and km when entering data.
Users watching could then choose which units to diplay, so everybody could enter and view data in his native format.
I have an account on the german fuel-logging site Spritverbrauch berechnen und Autokosten verwalten - Spritmonitor.de, where you can do that.
Does the garage offer a similar feature? If yes I am too stupid to find it...

[Arragonis]

he he UK.

We buy petrol and diesel in litres, measure MPG in Imperial Gallons, distances in miles, height in feet, weight in lbs/oz as well as Kg/g, DIY lengths in both inches and cm/mm, tool size in AF and metric, etc etc.

And we are in Europe but spend £ and pence.

Fun isn't it.

[groar]

aero84, you have a conversion tool available on EM.com.

You can also use cMPG.com's garage...

Have fun,

Denis.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

The Metric system is logical though, unlike the 'based on the length of the upper arm and an average stride of a man' nonsense of the older system.

I don't think it's all that logical. It just replaced those arm & stride lengths with "the length of this metal bar we keep in Paris", then when technology got to where it could do accurate measurements, redefined as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second", with a second being defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom". That's logical? That's even accessible to ordinary mortals?

Then instead of having different names for units, you just stick on confusing prefixes - and worse, abbreviate them so you're never really sure whether M stands for milli, micro, or mega.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by aero84

We like hard currency.

Oh, so you're converting to Swiss Francs? :-)

[groar]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Then instead of having different names for units, you just stick on confusing prefixes - and worse, abbreviate them so you're never really sure whether M stands for milli, micro, or mega.

No confusion for units/prefixes...

• milli = m
• micro = µ
• Mega = M

Anyway, in several centuries we'll have the same discussion with aliens when they will ask us to use their units as they are a few galaxies to use them...

Have fun,

Denis.