Gasoline Sales Discussion

i think the decline is based on several small reasons

**more efficient cars
** plug in vehicles
** recession
** more ride sharing
** more staying at home


if we look at any one reason, its a small change. a few % but all it added together makes a significant "data bump"

due to the timing, the recession has probably got the biggest chunk but not by much. related to the recession is more efficient cars, many of which tend to be cheaper. Keep in mind, Cash for Clunkers should have numbers big enough to show. I know there were a lot of small changes but I personally knew a few that went from 12 MPG cars to 20 MPG cars. now that does not seem like a big jump but percentage wise, its huge

 

But looking at the data, there is no real decline. The graph of the last 50 years is of ever increasing gasoline usage.

The number of vehicles is INCREASING every year, averaging 3.69 ADDITIONAL vehicles on the road each year.

The US is still headed in the wrong direction on gasoline usage.

 

that is also true but there might be some reasons why.

for years, (actually decades) I felt that I simply was not whole unless I had a pickup. Now, it would never be my daily driver or anything like that. Used for special occasions only. During various stints I may have gone without one but only for short periods of time, generally less than a year.

At one time, vehicles like trucks held their value well making it easy to buy and sell them. In the recent past, that has not been as true. Add to that, cars that have simply been on the road for a much longer period of time. Its not unusual to see 15 year old cars running about any more. This creates a situation where one has an extra car that they grudgingly hold onto because it is useful occasionally but is virtually worthless on the market.

I had such a vehicle, a F 150 pickup who spent the last 5 years of its life with me being shared among 3 different households. due to moves, I did not have the room to park it so it was shuttled around the family. I eventually donated it when there was a program that would have allowed me to claim like...ummm, hmmm?? well, I forget but it was a LOT more than the truck was worth and it was to ACS so a good thing all around.

so, ya the amount of cars supposedly on the road does go up every year along with the population, # of people old enough to drive, older people driving longer, etc. After all, we are not a zero population growth country.

 

It is not really necessary to berate Bob Wilson. His errors are fewer than just about anybody here, and even the errors are educational

So while the Title did not pass the sniff test, the underlying reason why the conclusion was wrong was not immediately apparent -- at least to me.

 

Conventional economy theory posits that, in isolation, conservation either through efficiency or voluntary reductions in use will not decrease overall consumption because the lesser demand by some will be picked up by others until price equilibrium is re-established.

While the notion that fuel use is in-elastic has some validity, it is more incorrect than correct. You and I, e.g. are living proof
This is why carbon taxation and/or internalizaton of external costs is so important

 

Some reasons might be that F-150 and Silverado are still the best selling vehicles in US.

 

Toyota just sold 5-million hybrids.
Ethanol advocates are upset that ethanol demand is trending down because gasoline demand is trending down. Virginia just put a tax on hybrids to try keep gaso tax revenues even as gasol use goes down. Especially dino gasoline demand is taking a pretty big double whammy hit due to (1) less gasoline use, coupled with (2) national policy to substitute for gasoline with ethanol, EV, nat gas etc.

Thus I do not understand the sentiment that we are heading in the wrong direction.

 

Sequestration will have negligible effect on oil usage for transportation.

We have three effects. VMT have decreased recently. VMT typically has a long upward slope with population, with slight decreases for recession. There may be a systemic reduction as baby boomers drive less as they age, and that generation drives more than anyone else. Long term VMT will once again catch and increase with population. Public transportation and car pooling does not seem to have a major effect, at least as it has been attempted in the US. Generational driving habits do have an effect.

Real average mpg is increasing with the fleet. Unfortunately the fleet is old, over 10 years average life of a light vehicle, so we will only change over the fleet slowly. Still new car sales are more efficient than existing cars in the fleet.
Gas Mileage Keeps Rising: Record 23.8 MPG Average In 2012

Substitution, mainly ethanol, but including biodiesel and electricity decreases oil use. This has increased during the time period. 10 years out plug-in cars, cellulistic ethanol, and algea based biodiesel might greatly reduce oil consumption.

I'd go with wjtracy's fuel consumption figures and your vmt, to project out fleet average mpg and future consumption. We are in a downward trend, especially with cafe standards going up, but use is going down quite slowly. It would take more major policies to speed the decrease.

Yep, the numbers seem to be going the right way.

 

GM just sold 200 million Silverados. Hybrids, all hybrids, represent 3% of sales and 0.05% of cars on the road. Silverado and Fords matching gas guzzler F series trucks are the top sellers in the US. US manufacturers do not have competitive hybrid vehicles. That is what is meant by "heading in the wrong direction".

They are lying oil company stooges and global warming deniers since gasoline sales are just slightly off all time highs for the century. That is what is meant by "heading in the wrong direction".

 

U.S. Product Supplied of Finished Motor Gasoline (Thousand Barrels)

2007 - 3,389 million barrels
2012 - 3,185 million barrels

Difference 204 million barrels. This includes the ethanol used to make the gasoline. Add in the 144 million barrel decrease from ethanol, we get a total of 348 million barrels or 11% decrease in the oil used to make gasoline. Oil use dropped in the US approximately 10% from 2007-2012.

Ethanol percentage may have peaked, and the vmt decrease may be close to over, which means in the near term the future decreases will need to come from more efficient new cars. Methanol/Elethanol blends, electricity, may help decrease oil use in the long term not short term. The biggest bump in vehicle efficiency was probably cash for clunkers, but that was very expensive per mpg saved. The new cafe standards should be much less expensive per gallon saved.

 

Keep in mind US lost 14,000,000 jobs which have not been replaced so taking 14M workers off their daily commute to work is responsible for the most of the very small drop off from the all time 100 year peak in US gasoline usage. Generally lower economic activity of those working also reduces gasoline usage.

Also keep in mind that ethanol usage requires 3% more gasoline usage to make up for power loss.

And while the CAFE standards are nice, it only reflects what is offered not what people actually purchase. Gas guzzling F-150's and Silverados are the top sellers in the US.

 

Misleading. 10% ethanol displacement of gasoline is really only effectively ~6% dispalcement since the oxygen content is essentially diluent. Another way to say this is, gasoline demand has dropped off even further today than DOE numbers, adjusting for the "diluting" effect of ethanol. Interesting thought though.

 

I was just saying we had a 10% reduction of oil, not that ethanol displaced the majority of it.

When we just focus on gasoline consumption drop, the country used 6% less in 2012 versus 2007, and the amount of oil dropped anouther 5% from ethanol. If we use 70% for the energy content then in

2007 - Gasoline(E0) 3,125, Ethanol 164 -> 3,340 E0 equivelent value
2012 - Gasoline (E0) 2,877, Ethanol 308 -> 3,092 E0 Equivelent value
That is a drop of 7.4% in energy, a drop of 10.8% oil, with ethanol making up 7% of the energy of gasoline motor fuel in 2012.

Someone should check my math, but this should at least be in the ball park of correct percentages.

IMHO the US could drop energy used for cars by another 10% in the next 7 years through increased fleet fuel economy, but this would also drop the amount of ethanol used. Something has to break either the ethanol mandate needs to be scaled back, or an open fuel standard adopted to get more E85 vehicles on the road and more vehicles using higher than E10 fuel.

 

Ethanol requires 3% more gasoline in terms of energy such that 10% ethanol dilution has a net effect of 7% less gasoline needed.

And gasoline demand has not really "dropped off" when we are using 2007 as the baseline since this was the highest ever in history of US gasoline consumption. A huge economic decline in 2007 from which the US has still not recovered, especially terms of people's jobs (14 million lost, median income down) which is the main driver for gasoline usage is the key, nothing structural.

You can see this from the US Dept of Energy graphic. Oil use drops as recession hits, rises slight with stimulus and declines again as economy stagnates especially on jobs.

US needs to cut oil usage by 50% and 75% of oil usage is gasoline usage. We are not even on the path to do that. Oil and gasoline usage are a historic highs in the US.

 

we are basing this on 2007 which is 6 years and how many million more drivers and cars? The overall consumption maybe down a bit but escalating populations means break even requires an increase in consumption correct?

so if we are down 11% in total usage since 2007 but up 10% in cars, what is the rate per population change from 2007? gotta be a pretty good number I am guessing

 

p = old population
c(i)= old consumption rate
C = current consumption rate
t = old total consumption

so,
1.1p * C = 0.89t,
C = 81% of old consumption rate per car.

This does separate out fuel economy from use, and it assumes of course the numbers are correct

 

The number of cars don't matter, but the vmt do. We have had a 2.8% drop off from 2007 to 2012 according to that graphic that I think bob put up. Theories are that some of this is caused by the economic slow down, some by higher gas prices, and some shifting demographics (baby boomers drive more vm than younger generations, but they are aging and decreasing milage). That would mean, if population has grown 4.2% (estimate) vmt per capita dropped 6.7%. If we have 10% more cars, we are driving each car less distance. The cars if these numbers are correct are 4.7% more efficient.

E0 consumption per capita would have been 89.2% / 104.2% = 85.6% or a drop of around 14% (I don't think the numbers are as exact). Part of this drop is more efficicient vehicles, part fewer miles traveled, part more ethanol.

 

If you look at US per Capita gasoline use basis, you have to go back many decades to get as low as we were in 2012. 1990 we were at 250 million people vs. 315 million people end of 2012. On that basis we are using less gaso now than 1990 and I think I probably gotta go back to 1970s or 1980s to find per capita use as low as 2012.