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Moving tons

siiky

2022/09/12

How stupid is it to move around by (mainstream) motorized vehicles? Can we make up a scale?

Sorry in advance to physicists: I used weight and mass interchangeably. If it helps make up for it, I do know the difference!

I found online some numbers that I'll present next. I didn't include any trains because the weights I found varied too much to be reliable to me since I don't understand much about them (e.g. one page said between 4t and 20t). For the coach bus, since they didn't vary that much (relatively), I even picked the lightest. Some pages showed weights in pounds, which I assumed to be avoirdupois pounds and converted to kg with the unitconv CHICKEN egg:

(exact->inexact (unit-convert lb kg 2935))
; 1331.29360595

gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/view/en?Pound_(mass)

https://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/5/unitconv

Now some of the weights I've found:

+----------------+-----------------+---------------+
| Vehicle        | Weight (pounds) | Weight (tons) |
+----------------+-----------------+---------------+
| Smart Fortwo   | 1808lb          | 0.82t         |
| Ford Fiesta    | 2600lb          | 1.18t         |
| Ford Focus     | 2935lb          | 1.33t         |
| Jeep Wrangler  | 3941lb          | 1.79t         |
| Some coach bus | 49400lb         | 22.41t        |
+----------------+-----------------+---------------+

Coach bus weights & number of seats

Some car weights by make&model

More car weights (guestimates)

Let's assume that the average person weighs around 80kg (which apparently is really the average in the USA?).

gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/view/en?Human_body_weight

For an average person driving a Smart Fortwo (being generous here) to work/shopping/w.e., a total mass of 900kg has to be moved to move the 80kg meatbag that actually has/wants to be moved. That's only 8.89% of the moved weight! Even if two people share that car, it's only marginally improved to 16.32%! And you can't get any better unless you put more people in the trunk or something... Does it even have a trunk? That thing is tiny...

For a smallish 5 seat car, like the Fiesta, 6.35% for a single person, 11.95% for two, and 25.33% for the full five.

For a wrangler, also 5 seat, it's 4.28%, 8.22% and 18.28%, for one, two and five people, respectively.

Now for a coach bus, assuming 57 seats (driver + passengers). At half capacity (28 passengers) it's 9.38%, and at full capacity (56 passengers) it's 16.91%. To be honest, this was way less than I expected... If you add up some luggage (let's be generous and say everyone carries 10kg), that's 10.43% at half-capacity and 18.63% at full capacity.

Just WOW! I never realized how grossly inefficient it is in numbers. Think about that: on the most efficient of these 4 examples (in terms of the "want to move" over "have to move" mass ratio) ONLY A QUARTER of the moved mass is what effectively has to be moved!