Is it really that difficult? won’t that just require a pressure sensor at the bottom of the tank?
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I think it’s possible. I just think the reason why car manufacturers don’t do it is because of the expense. Why spend the money on that when all you need is a pointer that says E when you are about to run out. Or modern cars have a display that says you can drive x many more miles before you are empty.
I think the fuel gauge is really more of a way to say how far away from Empty you are and not so much an acurate read on how much fuel you have.
Pressure would vary whenever you accelerated, braked, or turned. It could only be accurate when you are stationary.
Try using kitchen scales in your car while someone’s driving to weigh a bottle of water. It will never settle on a number.
There’s simply no point to it. Cars generally use a float connected to a electric contact pad that depending on position gives you a voltage between something like 2 and 5 volts indicating empty and full respectively. The finite amount of voltage in between the two points is a percentage of the whole so it’s easy just do display the percentage of the tank is full of gas/petrol. You can take that percentage and estimate the amount of fluid remaining in the tank based on the maximum capacity but there’s literally no legitimate reason to do that math and there’s no functional point to having the finite amount of fuel left in the car.
Is there really any benefit to knowing you have 12.5 liter left in your 50 liter tank? Or is 1/4 tank remaining good enough if you know you can get 100 miles out of that 1/4 tank?
To get real liters, they would have to calibrate every level sensor to the specific tank it’s in, because they’re all different shapes. Also, fuel sloshes around. By using a single threshold, and measuring fuel consumption rate, it’s easy to approximate distance remaining, but even that fluctuates all over the place. Then they can reuse the same equipment across multiple models for a generic sensor, which is much cheaper.
No, it’s not difficult and is done. You just have to buy the trip computer upgrade on select models.
The fuel level is measured by a float in the tank.
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