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abetusk • today at 6:49 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

I find it interesting that the average energy consumption of a person (or household?) is roughly 30kWh/day and the energy usage of a car is roughly 40kWh/day. I wonder if it's some kind of truism that our transportation needs roughly equal our energy needs.

I'd be interested to know if that's just a coincidence or whether there's an underlying reason.


Replies

tomjakubowski • today at 7:06 PM

A person riding a bicycle expends an order of magnitude less energy than does a car ferrying the same person the same distance. So I don't think this really holds.

For comparison: at 50 MPG, traveling one mile by car uses 0.02 gallons of gasoline. This is about 675 Wh of energy or 580 kcal. Travel by bicycle for a ~180lb person is about 60 kcal per mile.

abcd_f • today at 6:58 PM

And a straight angle is just 10 degrees away from the water's boiling point. Might be something in it too :)