> Is a "synthetic gallon" unit really the right thing to measure here? It seems like $ per distance traveled is more appropriate. I think the value of the MPGe

> Is a "synthetic gallon" unit really the right thing to measure here? It seems like $ per distance traveled is more appropriate. I think the value of the MPGe equivalent is glaringly overwhelming, in that it provides a real, truthful, honest & physical equivalency that can grounds understanding & give us a common scale to measure with. We should absolutely think about filling up with electricity in an equivalent way to thinking about gallons of gas. That most electric cars only have ~3 gallons is a feature of them being so efficient. But when a gallon costs as much as it does, that should also be visible and notable. I don't want consumers having two totally decoupled notions of usage. There needs to be some way to think-laterally across electric & gas cars. Being able to understand that gas prices are way lower than electricity prices- as they are- should set off alarm bells. Justifiably. Energy is God's Honest truth. Value is imaginary, a far far downstream happenstance of infinite cofactors. The gallon-of-gas equivalent is absolutely a brilliant move, grounds us to something truthful, & is how we should think of things. Shout out (again[1]) to the Technocracy Movement, which in 1937 proposed an Energy Distribution Card[2], to represent energy consumption embodied in the products & items & work of the world around us. Having a science-oriented, grounded frame of reference to begin to approach reality from is a win, is an opportunity to get humanity thinking straight, able to actually understand a complicated world, simply. Because it's true & honest & real. Only when things are comparable are they real. Money hides, not enlightens the impacts & comparability. Edit: it's been slow for me to accept, but I realize the truth might dissuade people from considering EVs, based off the $/"gallon" idea. I guess I'd say it's important to emphasize the reciprocal end as well: that their 68kW car only has 2 gallons of "gas" capacity. (That's where all the people up-talking MPGe/efficiency circle back around into being right!) Still, I think the uniform scale is incredibly important, makes real something we otherwise could never understand- it emphasizes how massively more efficient E's are. But the prices also could dissuade. But I don't want to dissuade people. Electric cars are awesome. But we need a ground-truth to compare across. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31525240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31525240 [2] https://www.technocracyinc.org/the-energy-distribution-card/ https://www.technocracyinc.org/the-energy-distribution-card/