Hacker News Reader

Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

I was watching a YouTube video the other day that called the accelerator the "gas pedal" - which makes sense, except it was a video about an EV.

I wonder if that term will one day become disconnected from the original meaning, like "hang up" or the floppy save icon.

View on HN

Most of the other terms are global ones (hang up, save icon, etc), but gas pedal is pretty specific to the US as far as I know, so it’s much less likely to hang around like that.

Here in Australia it’s the accelerator, or accelerator pedal.

Estonian word is “gaasipedaal”, which pretty much means “gas pedal”. Gasoline is “bensiin”, no relation to that. The word for pedal comes from accelerator regulating gas-mixture valve (throttle) in carburettor. “Gas-mixture” here is air mixed with atomised fuel.

Funny, in german it is "Gaspedal" and "Benzin". (And gas means gas/air in german, but I never made the connection. With cars, "gas" means "speed")

It's also literally "gas pedal" in Russian, although more often people just say "gas". To accelerate is to "give gas".

The fuel itself is also "benzin" though. As I understand it's because benzene was the original anti-knocking additive.

At least in german I saw EV cars described having a "strom pedal" (electricity/power pedal). More correct I guess, but also a bit odd. We will see, whether it will stick.

In Greek we call it "γκάζι", which means "natural gas", so it's already wrong. I'm fine with that persisting in EVs

Reply on news.ycombinator.com