It's because the way we measure torque on electric motors doesn't compare to the way we measure torque on ICE cars. A "muscle car" will be much, much stronger than these busses even though they claim "700 lb-ft" of torque.
Pounds are a unit of money. lbf (poundforce) is a misnomer, it’s actually the pressure required to stamp the King’s portrait into a £1 coin. Slightly changes with each monarch – or by a lot whenever they switch to cheaper materials because of devaluation. The frequent redefining of poundforce is now a major consequence of Brexit. /s
Mercifully, g=9.8 everywhere on Earth's surface, so we use weight interchangeably with mass, but yes, we should weigh ourselves in Newton: "I need to lose 10kg, so I can reach my ideal weigh of 700N" :P
Sure. How much does water in a 1ft × 2ft × 3ft aquarium weigh?
In metric, an equivalent calculation is 30 cm × 60 cm × 90 cm = 3 × 6 × 9 dm^3 = 162 𝑙 ≡ 162 kg of water, and if you're pedantic, the weight is around 1620 N or closer to 1590 N for 𝑔 = 9.8 m·s-2. All calculated in my head.
As someone who's all about science and all the things that use metric as it's standard, I understand why us Americans argue for imperial measurements.
We know them.
I can general look at something and relatively tell how big it is based on my experience with the imperial system.
I'm not saying metric isn't better but there's also different languages with some of them being able to express certain emotions or features better than others. Yet you don't see people demanding we all adapt a singular language.
People who grow up almost anywhere else on earth can also tell how big something is based on their experience with metric. That's not something inherently based on the imperial system. The same way you go "oh that's about 3 feet", we go "oh that's about 2 meters".
And of course, switching systems overnight is insane, people are used to imperial, you're right. But at the very least do what Britain did, and have both systems in parallel at the same time, everywhere. And in time, people would get used to metric too.
You should start by adopting metric in anything remotely scientific. Like
voltage ✔️
current ✔️
power ❗ - horses are no longer really relevant, not to mention this - at least appliances use watts
pressure ❌ - we got lucky that 10⁵ pascals is around 1 atmosphere so usePaorbar, notmmHgorPSI
BTW, PSI is a dumpster fire of an abbreviation, the correct one is lbf/in²
force ❌ - the lb/lbf confusion is not worth it when we have newtons
energy ❗ - joules and watt-hours are both fine, calories, electronvolts and TNT-tons less so, but don't use BTU which nobody can really comprehend, or gasoline-gallon-equivalents that nobody knows how to translate to anything else
strange that motorcycle and gun enthusiasts are the few users of metric length & volume measurement in the US - too bad that these two measurements are never really used in calculations or conversion
torque ❌ - this post says Lb-Ft which is wrong on so many levels
data ✔️ - OK but data rates should be abbreviated MB/s or kb/s, not kbps, Kb/s, kbit/s or Mbit
wire diameter ❌❌ - holy shit, AWG is such a mess - larger wire is smaller number and the formula is so insane that people use lookup tables, also you're afraid of decimal or negative numbers so large wires are 00, 000 etc.
Can you imagine having different units across the world for voltage or data? Like a 2¾-lemon battery or a 2 million floppy hard drive. That would be absolutely insane.
There is an awful lot of inconsistency in the imperial system too, like pound being abbreviated lb, P (in PSI) or even £, or miles being mi or M in MPH
Actually, neither duckduckgo nor google nor bing nor startpage nor searx yields anything besides XBus formerly known as eBussy for me. So, if this name is somehow funny somewhere in the world, google & co are not helpful.
What I like the most about what they're doing is the modular body. I hope that concept catches on and is standardized so I can buy a a Mustang body today and a classic VW van body tomorrow.
Yeah, honestly. If someone could make a repairable, customizable EV, I'd be all over it. Mostly because I don't want massive touch screens or touch-based controls. I want knobs damnit.