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Page added on August 23, 2013
Peak Oil’s Impact: Automobiles
Oil plays an essential role in almost everything that touches our everyday lives. From the food we eat to the means by which we transport ourselves, our goods, and our services, to what we grow, build, have, own, need, and do, oil is almost always an important element. But the painful truth now and soon is that the ready supply of oil and gas that we almost always take for granted is on its way to becoming not-so-ready—recent production increases notwithstanding.
What happens when there’s not enough to meet all of our demands, to say nothing of those of every other nation—including the many countries seeking more growth and prosperity? What sacrifices will we be called upon to make? Which products will no longer be as readily available? Which services? Who decides? What will be decided? Who delivers that message to the designers and producers and shippers and end users? What’s their Plan B? And how will we respond when decisions are taken out of our hands? Where exactly will the dominoes tumble?
There is nothing on the horizon that will work as an adequate substitute for the efficiencies and low cost and ease of accessibility that oil has provided us. We simply do not have the means to make that happen—not the technological capabilities, not the personnel, not the industries, not the leadership … yet. Clearly, we do not have enough time to do it all with effortless ease and minimal disruptions.
Piecemeal approaches that address some small aspect of need for some short period of time in some limited geographical area for just a few consumers is in the end a monumental waste of limited resources, time, and effort. We can’t wait until we’re up to our eyeballs in Peak Oil’s impact to start figuring out what to do. We’re too close as it is. We’re going to have to be much better, much wiser, and much more focused. **
Here’s the latest contribution to my Peak Oil’s Impact series—observations and commentary on how Peak Oil’s influence will be felt in little, never-give-it-thought, day-to-day aspects of the conventional crude oil-based Life As We’ve Known It. Changes in all that we do, use, own, make, transport, etc., etc., are inevitable. A little food for thought….
~ ~ ~
As the first post of this two-part series indicated, not only are there a lot of autos/SUVs on the road today, officials in the know are expecting a whole lot more in the years to come. Using the smallest measure of barrels of oil needed to make one car per the stats I shared suggest that nearly 2 billion barrels of oil are required by the automobile industry worldwide, and that’s just to “make and assemble” each vehicle.
In 2011, the United States consumed about 134 billion gallons (or 3.19 billion barrels) of gasoline, a daily average of about 367.08 million gallons (8.74 million barrels). This was about 6% less than the record high of about 142.38 billion gallons (or 3.39 billion barrels) consumed in 2007. [1]
[T]he United States still constitutes by far the largest vehicle population in the world, with 239.8 million cars. [2]
A back of the envelope calculation suggests that our approximate 3 billion barrels is about one-quarter of worldwide usage. That’s a lot of crude oil drawn from a finite supply, and that’s just for driving.
And then there’s this:
How much oil is required to produce a tire? Approximately seven gallons. Five gallons are used as feedstock (from which the substances that combine to form synthetic rubber are derived), while two gallons supply the energy necessary for the manufacturing process.
More back of the envelope math (which I admittedly suck at, so take the totals here with that advisory): 4 tires per vehicle of oil = 28 gallons per car = approx 1.5 barrels of oil per car times more than one billion cars = more than 1.5 billion additional barrels of oil … just for our passenger vehicles.
And among other items inside each of those passenger vehicles: car bumpers (plastic); hoses; wiring; fluids (brake, transmission, motor oil, lubricating grease, etc.); windshield wipers; visors; sound insulation; fan belts; dashboards, and seats. Each depends in some measure on crude oil for their production. Then there’s the transportation of needed materials to the auto manufacturers, and all the crude oil used by all of their suppliers for all of their business needs, and on and on it goes.
How long can we keep this up using a finite resource for just this one (important) product?
~ My Photo: our not-very-fuel-efficient rental courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, CA – Sept 2004
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19 Comments on "Peak Oil’s Impact: Automobiles"
Plantagenet on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 3:51 am
Cars can be shifted to cheap natural gas as oil runs out. Obama says we’ve got a 100 yr supply of NG
GregT on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 4:40 am
Cars, unfortunately also run out, they are made from finite resources, and they require a huge input from oil in their manufacture. (exactly what this article is trying to point out)
Obama is either lying about natural gas, or he has no clue what he is talking about. I highly suspect the former, follow the money.
Norm on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 5:13 am
Hey plantagenet, i have a bridge to sell you. Will make you good deal on it.
BillT on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 5:44 am
What will disappear first? Anything that is not profitable for whatever reason. The price/availability of oil is one of the reasons that something is not profitable. Couple that with the ever decreasing incomes of ‘consumers’ and the slide will pick up speed as we head down the hill of energy availability. When there is not the millions buying I-junk, it will not be profitable at some point and it will disappear from the market.
The internet will lose it’s billions of ‘consumers’ when they cannot afford the machine/connections that allow them to access it and then it too will disappear. Some believe that is not possible, but they have not looked at the financial world collapsing around them. Or the cost to keep all of that infrastructure powered up and maintained around the world. Think about it. When Apple cannot make millions of PCs every year, that are profitable, they will be out of business. Ditto all of the other makers/providers of today’s I-toys.
dashster on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 8:42 am
It would make more sense to shift cars to electricity than natural gas. For long distance commutes – electrified trains. Or possibly they can electrify the freeways so that cars can ride on them the way buses do in certain cities – powered by overhead lines.
DC on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 11:50 am
The (private) EV, modeled after the current gas-burning garbage cans plying our oil-soaked roadways-is not a viable ‘replacement’-for anything. I am glad that no one will be building ‘electric freeways’ for a billion personal 2.5 ton EVs, much less the billions EVs themselves. Problem is, were in no hurry to get rid of the gas-burning versions either. And demand destruction, while helping, really isn’t moving fast enough. In fact, were fully committed to making more of them. No one, and I mean no one, is talking about how to get rid of cars. All discussions, such as they are, are centered around how to accommodate MORE of them.
All that that toxic auto-waste he talks about, will also be around for a very very long time, even if the much discussed ‘electic economy’ ever actually happened, there would be zero energy left over to clean up the mess the oil economy created. For a just a tip of iceberg, look at the problems created by old used tires. So far, we have (sort of) been able to sweep that mess under the rug. But, the trash just keeps piling up and car-trash is particular toxic and problematic. Ah well, another problem we have no intention of ever ‘solving’ either. And its a very long list…..
I would have to say, after nuclear power, the private gas-powered trash can is easily mankinds second worst mistake.
dashster on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 12:45 pm
“I would have to say, after nuclear power, the private gas-powered trash can is easily mankinds second worst mistake.”
Worst mistake was overpopulation. Finite planet with finite fossil fuels would be much easier to deal with if the world had 1 billion people in it. Or 2 billion people in it. Or 3 billion people in it.
Beery on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 1:13 pm
I realize it’s a big issue for you, Dashster, but face it – no one here cares about overpopulation because nothing can be done about it. It has to fix itself, which it will do. You are just going to have to accept that your country’s population is going to get a little darker in hue. It’s only skin color.
dashster on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 1:34 pm
Beery you can try and turn it into a racial issue, but 100 million more people in the US and 2 billion more in the world in 50 years is a huge deal.
As many times as someone says “gonna be a lotta dying, all hope is lost, get back to the land” here, you would think you guys would be used to repetition.
simon on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 1:59 pm
Could it be that you want a population reduction to maintain a certain standard of living ?
if so, exactly what standard of living are you shooting for ?
if not you must be worried about survival, is this the case ?
GregT on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 3:11 pm
Overpopulation is the result of excess energy, and it’s associated technologies of mass personal transportation, industrialism, pharmaceuticals, and modern agricultural practices. All of which are also destroying the biosphere, and all of which will disappear as fossil fuels run out, which , in turn, will take care of our overpopulation problem.
Fulton J. Waterloo on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 4:16 pm
Beery: nice simpleton statement on your part. It is far more than skin pigment. The Democrats want mass immigration to have a permanent underclass to manipulate the electoral system. The Repuublicans want a permanent underclass to destroy what is left of the wage scale in the United States. Both parties have alterior motives for talking about immigration but really not getting it under control. Your “happy,open minded liberal desireing racial harmony” comments notwithstanding…
GregT on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 4:43 pm
The fact that so many of these discussions end up with racial and political undertones, speaks heaps to where our societies are headed. Violence never solved anything, but it most certainly would appear that we are heading in that direction. Once again.
DC on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 6:15 pm
This is a gas-burning trash bin article guys, we have plenty of over-pop articles where there is much lively discussion. This is about filthy cars-not 3rd world economic migrants!
sandu on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 7:21 pm
BillT : Consider just the basic function of the internet: instant communication and basic information storage and access. Today this is somewhere in 0.1%-0.5% of total internet. This can be optimize and centralize to be only 0.05%. It can be maintain for a long time with minimum resources .
actioncjackson on Fri, 23rd Aug 2013 8:42 pm
I’d rather have lived 10,000 BC than in this junk heap. The future is, and always has been, the past’s garbage dump.
BillT on Sat, 24th Aug 2013 1:18 am
sandu, ‘minimum’ resources? It takes tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people to maintain the internet. Then it take many gigawatts to energize it 24/7/365. Then it takes many millions of machines to access it, etc. No, it will not last long after oil is gone, and may disappear as far as civilians are concerned much sooner.
simon on Sat, 24th Aug 2013 7:15 am
Hi Bill
Normally I pretty much agree. However I am an IT geek, so know a little bit about the web.
After petrol, you will get a period of what is termed ‘graceful degradation’ whereby the non essential parts of the internet are lost, to preserve the core.
What will happen is the cost of storage and processing will rise, and so server farms will merge to make savings, the smaller content rich websites will no longer be viable, and will again merge (amazon re-sellers etc).
Outlying (Countryside) areas will not be accessable for high speed internet (Satellite exempted).
The content on the web effectively will shrink.
If you look at the way google runs its search engine, this is already happening.
So for most people in the 1st world there would be no percieved difference for a while.
question is ….. how long is a ‘while’.
As nearly all our major advances in the last 20 years have been cool internet cr*p I would imagine governments will do all they can to prolong the life of the internet.
watch this space !!!
sandu635 on Sat, 24th Aug 2013 1:02 pm
BillT , we don’t need a PC in every home, we have the cybercafe model from 10 years ago that worked fine in poor countries (i used cybercafe for 5 years before i had my first pc).
One PC can be built to support multiple users (20-50) => one pc per cybercafe.
I don’t see a people problem.
you don’t really need 24/7/365 to make it work so it can be 100% on wind and solar.
I see a lot of complex systems going down in the next 20 years but the basic function of the internet is not one of them.
I see a lot more problems with gsm/3G service