Comments on: Metric Display Test

Metric Display Test

pb — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:05:32 -0800

We're just about ready to give everyone a way to view the entire site in metric units, but we'd like to do some testing first. We have a switch in place that will turn all instances of mpg into L/100km, all miles into km, and all gallons into litres. Here's what a standard car profile basic stats display looks like in metric units:

If you'd like to help us test this feature, you can turn on metric display here: display metric units. And you can turn it off here: display English units. Once set, you should see metric units across the site: browsing cars, recent activity, your dashboard, and your car profile pages. Please let us know if these are the units you expect to see, and if everything is working for you in the metric view. (Currency conversion is a next natural step—Fuelly is expecting everything in US Dollars right now. It's the next item on our internationalization to-do list.)

By: RolandOfAwesome

RolandOfAwesome — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:13:23 -0800

Speaking as an Englishman, the choice is a little confusing - I don't think "English" is the best choice of name for the units, since in England we use mostly metric units, and although we use gallons for MPG, Imperial gallons (as used in the UK) are different to US gallons. This means someone in the UK setting their preferences to gallons would be getting an "incorrect" MPG (e.g. 50 MPG (imperial) = 41 MPG (US)).

Not sure what you should substitute for "English", according to Wikipedia the correct term is "United States customary units". I recognise that (according to Wiki) "English" is a common term for the USCUs, but I feel it would only confuse new British users.

Christ, can't we all just change to metric and stick with that?? ;)

By: RolandOfAwesome

RolandOfAwesome — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:16:50 -0800

Huh, tried out the metric switch, and something's gone wrong.
I had one fuel-up with 26-ish litres at 1.129/l, and now I've switched to metric it says I bought 88 litres at 0.30/l. I'm guessing the site didn't know I already entered that data in metric (Track fuel in: Litres) and converted to metric again?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:42:22 -0800

Hey Roland, we've changed the header to say US instead of "English" on units.

For your fuel-up, I think you might have added that before we had the metric fill up options in place. I'd say go back and edit the fill up to be 26L and see if that gets stored properly. If not, report back here and we'll fix up the bug.

By: RolandOfAwesome

RolandOfAwesome — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:51:26 -0800

I tried that and it worked. I definitely added the data after I'd set the Track fuel in: litres option though.

By: RolandOfAwesome

RolandOfAwesome — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:53:51 -0800

Oh, another thought: you might want to specify the odometer reading units, if you're having a global US/metric switch. i.e. my odometer is in miles and I entered it as such, but I'm not sure whether the site is actually assuming it's km now that I've hit the metric link.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:55:52 -0800

Naw, Roland, the US/Metric option is just for viewing data on the site, it doesn't affect your fuel up screen, which is set in your car's preferences.

By: mremrich

mremrich — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:43:50 -0800

I'm viewing in metric, and the best L/100km shows my best mpg. I've only fueld up once, and everything else is correct, except for that field.

By: pb

pb — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:57:24 -0800

Thanks mremrich, fixed that up.

By: DarkBahamut

DarkBahamut — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:33:51 -0800

This is certainly a good step towards making the site more available to everyone. Do you plan to add imperial gallons as an option at some point for us UK folk? It should be a fairly simple change from the current US system, as you just need to change the conversion for litres to gallons and the rest should work itself out with a new button like teh current metric system?

Good work so far though!

By: pb

pb — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:07:49 -0800

Do people still use imperial gallons, DarkBahamut? Based on what we've read, most pumps have already moved to Litres.

By: DarkBahamut

DarkBahamut — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:29:03 -0800

Mainland Euopre does indeed use L/100km, but here in the UK things are alittle different. Fuel is normal bought in litres (probabaly becuse the cost per gallon is insane), so the costs per litre (of the mectric setup) is good for us, but fuel usage is normally MPG (imperial) here.

It's alittle weird, but thats how our little country works!

By: pb

pb — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:42:46 -0800

ahh ok, makes sense now. So we'd just need a switch on the display side that has the US display using imperial gallons to calculate mpg. Thanks for the info--we don't have that on our to-do list yet, but we'll consider it.

By: kazamatsuri

kazamatsuri — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:59:14 -0800

When you say currency conversion, do you mean for other people viewing your information? I live in Japan so I want the data that I see about my car to be in yen, liters and kilometers. I certainly don't want it converted to US dollars or something like that.

Any idea on when I'll be able to enter my fill-ups in yen?

By: pb

pb — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:25:59 -0800

No estimate on currency conversion yet, but it's fairly high on our priority list. In the meantime, Google is great for quick conversions to US Dollars.

By: mremrich

mremrich — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:27:15 -0800

hey guys, it's fixed in my car profile, but not on my dashboard.

keep up the great work. :)

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:27:42 -0800

When you say currency conversion, do you mean for other people viewing your information?

I envision it being a setting on your car, just like entering data in liters/gallons and km/mi, you'd pick which currency you use from a list of supported ones. Then you'd go ahead and enter in how many yen you spent on how many liters and how many km you traveled.

Each night, we could have an up-to-date currency table internally that would be used to convert currency throughout the site. So, for instance, as you look at my profile, my fill-ups would be displaying in current values of yen how much I paid in the US for my gallons of gasoline. Everyone on the entire site could be displayed in yen for you if you wanted, while members in european countries could be seeing euros everywhere, etc.

I imagine it's a few weeks away.

By: kazamatsuri

kazamatsuri — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:51:13 -0800

OK, I think that makes a lot of sense. That's pretty much how I envisioned it. It will be great to see those conversions because it will give me a quick and easy way to see how much (or how little) I am paying for gas, compared to other countries.

Thanks! I'm looking forward to the functionality being implemented!

By: micahlink

micahlink — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:52:05 -0800

The Metric option works well for me, thanks for implementing it. Here on the East coast of Canada we often refer to the two systems as Imperial and Metric, but that might look a little clunky on the top of the page.

I appreciate being able to see the entire site in metric as that is the way my brain grew up thinking so the comparative measurements seem to make more sense. Thanks again.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:28:40 -0800

Thanks again mremrich, fixed that other one up.

By: peter

peter — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:11:08 -0800

Is Avg mpg (bottom left of Basic Stats) intentionally not metric, or should it be Avg L/100km?

As a side note, it's interesting to see how comparatively cheap US prices are after doing the conversions (based on the screenshot.)

By: peter

peter — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:12:53 -0800

Interesting. Just noticed that if I switch the display to US that box shows Avg L/100km.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:40:45 -0800

Yeah, peter, that's sort of an extra space that we first thought could help some worldwide readers and also help americans begin to think about what L/100km means. Likewise, when swapping the values, we figured some people might want the standard mpg showing as well (we had a lot of Canadians asking for a way to see both).