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Page added on August 23, 2011
One billion vehicles hit the road. Are we ready for two billion?
Last year, for the first time in history, a billion cars and trucks hit the road. Sadly, we’ll never know who registered the world’s one-billionth vehicle, but, according to the industry trade journal Ward’s, which reported the numbers, it’s increasingly likely that the lucky prize-winner could have hailed from China, India, or Brazil:
The market explosion in China played a major role in overall vehicle population growth in 2010, with registrations jumping 27.5%. Total vehicles in operation in the country climbed by more than 16.8 million units, to slightly more than 78 million, accounting for nearly half the year’s global increase.
The leap in registrations gave China the world’s second-largest vehicle population, pushing it ahead of Japan, with 73.9 million units, for the first time.
India’s vehicle population underwent the second-largest growth rate, up 8.9% to 20.8 million units, compared with 19.1 million in 2009.
What’s stunning is how far countries like China and India still have to go. Right now, there’s one car in China for every 17.2 people, compared with one car for every 1.3 people in the United States. If China caught up to the U.S. ownership rate, the country would field a billion vehicles all by itself. And car ownership in China would have surged even faster had the country not recently scrapped a series of auto subsidies last year.
So where is this all heading? According to the International Transport Forum, the global vehicle population could reach 2.5 billion by 2050. Daniel Sperling, a professor at UC Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies, put out a useful presentation last year running through what that two billion cars would mean. Take energy: Right now, the world produces about 87 million barrels of oil per day, and most of that comes from conventional sources. A world with two billion—or more—cars will likely require boosting that to 120 million barrels per day or beyond, Sperling argues. And, given that production from conventional wells is expected to flatten in the coming decades, getting to that level will mean relying on unconventional sources like the tar sands in Alberta.
That, in turn, poses problems for climate change. Transportation, after all, currently accounts for 23 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. And most of that unconventional oil is significantly dirtier, from a CO2 perspective, than the traditional stuff. If people in the developing world keep buying vehicles—a good thing, to be clear, since it’s a sign that the world is getting wealthier—then simple upgrades in fuel-efficiency alone aren’t going to be enough to stop a steady uptick in global temperatures. Sperling expanded on the argument in this Yale Environment360 piece, arguing that this shows the need for alternatives like electric vehicles and noting that “sprawling land use and vehicle use must be managed and restrained.” Not an easy task.
4 Comments on "One billion vehicles hit the road. Are we ready for two billion?"
armageddon51 on Tue, 23rd Aug 2011 8:08 pm
It`s never going to happen. It’s amazing how main stream newspapers are so ignorant about the pending oil crisis. They keep posting those ridiculous extrapolation for the future; 120 millions bpd really ? They never heard about the EIA warnings lately, the last month SPR release clue or the climbing oil price. Don’t count on any news media to present the facts as it is. No one want to hear bad news, especially those days.. only what Lady Gaga had for lunch.
DC on Tue, 23rd Aug 2011 10:10 pm
We will never reach 2.5 billion cars, the very effort to do so will collpse industrial civilization. It not longer matters what there power source is, be it electric, the hydrogen car-scam, or the prefered source, fossil-fuels. The 1 billion we have now are makeing a ruin of the earth. No effort to make them marginally more ‘efficent’ will have any effect on the final outcome.
Q/If people in the developing world keep buying vehicles—a good thing, to be clear, since it’s a sign that the world is getting wealthier—then simple upgrades in fuel-efficiency alone aren’t going to be enough to stop a steady uptick in global temperatures. Sperling expanded on the argument in this Yale Environment360 piece, arguing that this shows the need for alternatives like electric vehicles and noting that “sprawling land use and vehicle use must be managed and restrained.” Not an easy task.
This part is simple madness. And yes, there is an ‘easy’ solution. Ban the production and sale of all new personal mobile trash bins yesterday. Of course, since cars are industrialisms cash cow, that wont happen. Or if it does, it will only happen after a ban is far too late to do anything remotely useful.
MrEnergyCzar on Wed, 24th Aug 2011 12:10 am
There’s a great book called, “Two Million Cars”. China hasn’t even really started driving. The country with the best military will keep its cars running longest…
MrenergyCzar
DC on Wed, 24th Aug 2011 8:24 am
Cars have turned N.A. into one of the ugliest and most polluted places on earth. They have allready done huge damage in china in a very short span of time, and im not talking about damage you can pretend doesnt exist or isnt happening(we in NA are famous for ignoreing the obvious. The chinese are, on the whole not a stupid people, they are practically humanities oldest organized civilization that we have reliable records for….yet, they think cars are just swell. Every piece of evidence clearly shows cars are a disaster of immense proportions, and all a chinese offical or citizen needs for proof is go outside.
I cant get over that. I can understand why they embrace coal they way they do, dont care for it, but can understand, but cars. And dont get me started on India, maybe the govt there hopes ramping up car ownership will act as a form of population control. They certainly dont have the room for them. India is allready the cesspool of the world and they hardly have any cars. What would you call a cesspool+a few hundred million cars? A carpoolsaster?