Gasoline Sales Discussion

Not if 14 million previous working commuters are no longer working or commuting. As in the past, gasoline use will likely track economic growth until the US gets serious about addressing its No. 1 national security and trade problem, oil use and oil imports with transportation use the main driver.

Consider we have reactionary state governments actually penalizing people for buying the highest mileage vehicles working against lowering gasoline usage and against national interest.

 

I think you need to go back to the 1960s.

 

Modifying your table with census data
Age and Sex Composition in the United States: 2011 - People and Households - U.S. Census Bureau

Other blog with lots of charts
Why is US Oil Consumption Lower? Better Gasoline Mileage? | Our Finite World

Note vmt was increasing greater than population growth, and now has declined. It may contract further, but eventually unless things change eventually it should increase at around the rate of population growth


Note on the above chart, our numbers end up being sketchy, and gasoline has increased its ethanol content, hiding part of the milage increase. All the analysts expect the cafe regulations and aging vehicle fleet to accelerate mpg increase, but it will stay slow. A forbes edititorial makes the point that a federal tax amounting to $1/gallon would accelerate the increase of mpg, and cut the costs of cafe compliance.

 

another good indicator of driving is # of traffic deaths. Cars are safer and yada yada, DUI crackdowns probably accounts for some (although DUI crackdowns have been going on for years) but we have a plunging death toll. Can we say our death toll has dropped 50%? I think we can

 

It has to be the facts that cars are safer, roads are safer, fewer drunk and distracted drivers on the road. Bob earlier posted the stats on vmt, and we have dropped to the level of 2005. The numbers are much higher than when the death toll was much higher.

we also have been decreasing miles traveled per capita though, and are down to where we were in 1997.

 

Here is the DOE gasoline consumed data on a per capita basis, U.S. population. All I did was take DOE data and divided by population. Made units = gal/day/person.

Give or take scatter, we've been at 1.2 gal per day per person since 1980. However, keep in mind ethanol has been added/increasing since ~1991. So by 2012, the 1.2 gal per person per day probably breaks down to about 1.1 dino + 0.1 ethanol. You have to go back to about 1967 was the last time we consumed as low as 1.1 gal/day/person (as AG mentioned).

 

Just 2007 to see the US peak gasoline usage. US is at near all time high of gasoline use.

 

Why can't you just say that you feel we should reduce gaso use faster than we are?
For some reason you feel the need to invoke "we are going in the wrong direction" which is not true. Admittedly living in Virginia and Kansas as you and I do, there are a few F250's on the road.

 

HEY MODERATORS-A Suggestion:
One of our most informative and reliable posters, bwilson4web, posted a story in this thread and gave it a heading that turned out to be a misinterpretation of the data. He was roundly (and in my view a bit unfairly) criticised for not getting the right interpretation before he posted. I say that that this is not a peer reviewed journal, and we put stuff on here, and if we get corrected in our interpretation, that's a GOOD thing.

BUT, now that we know the original posting doesn't mean there has been a 50% drop in gasoline sales since 2008, there ought to be a way for the OP to go back and edit the Thread Title. I know I've wanted to do this a few times, and haven't been able to do it (or maybe just haven't been able to figure out how to do it). I guess if you allow this, it has to be limited to the OP, because you wouldn't want just anybody to be able to hijack a thread subject.

 

How about, "what the sales data tells us, and what it doesn't".
It is a good question and frankly, this has been one of the most in depth, useful threads I have seen here. Thank you Bob, and everyone else that has contributed.

 

We need to start reducing gasoline usage period. If you look at the graph of US gasolne from Dept. of Energy, it is steadily upward. There are ups and downs in the graph but the trend is entirely upward. US is going in the wrong direction on gasoline and oil usage. We are still going up in the long term.

Greenhouse gas emissions are still going up.

We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and US is still going in the wrong direction. We are still going in the wrong direction in large part due to gasoline usage still being at near peak levels and with long term trends, millions more cars on the road every year with F-150's and Siverados the best sellers among new cars.

Fooling ourselves with short term trends that move off the 100 year peak by fractions while the structural factors for US inefficient energy usage are still in place is just that, fooling oneself.

With new taxes on EV's and hybrids, US is going backwards in many cases.

 

From 2007-2012 (5 years)
Oil use for gasoline down 10.8%
Ethanol Use up, total gasoline sold including ethanol was down 6%
Energy use in cars down 7.9%
vmt down 2.8%
mpge (E0) up 4.9%

Thanks Bob and wjtracy for finding most of the data

 

U.S. prices at the pump is still relatively low. World petrol prices, gas prices, diesel prices 2013| MyTravelCost.com

 

^^^interesting factoid from Bob's Petropoly post audio is that Saudi Arabia is the 6th largest user of gasoline, or something like that.

 

Or not something like that, Saudi is 12th and there's a steep drop from the world's gasoline pig, US at 18 millon barrels of gasonline a day to China at 8 million to Japan at 4M to Germany and Saudi at 2.4 million.