Foreign oil and the Prius

It would appear (i.e I Googled it) that:

US gasoline consumption 21 Billion Gallons / year
US imports = 58% of all use.
Assume Prius gets twice the gas mileage of the rest of the fleet.

Means if every car was a Prius we would still be importing oil. We would then need to start converting some trucks to Prii.

 

It's going to take a helluva lot of Priuses to stock the shelves at your local Whole Food stores.

 

US Military is the largest consumer, so not sure how the domestic car fleet could cause the turn around. Not to mention oil used in commercial and power industries, as well as commercial fleets. The big rigs are under the gun now, and their mpgs are going up. If you see what looks like a boat stuck under a semi, that is a new innovation to reduce drag to lower fuel use. I think if they all did that, it might have a larger impact on domestic consumption even. Maybe not.

 

I do not know, I traded a 95 rodeo literally getting 11.5 mpg when I got my Prius, and now I get 50.

If regular folk would just drive an appropriate vehicle for their daily needs, we should be swimming in oil.

 

Unfortunately the math doesn't support your idea. There is also the inconvenient fact we export oil as well.

Regardless, the major reduction in air pollution would be huge. So I'm personally happy you ditched the Rodeo. Thanks!

 

You have to decide if you are trying to stop all imports, including our biggest partners, Mexico and Canada. Hard task since 59% of our oil is imported. A little easier task is just to replace OPEC oil as per T Boone Pickens plan.

According to Pickens, USA imported over 1.5 Billion barrels of OPEC oil in 2011. So that's about 4.1 Million barrels per day OPEC oil out of the total of about 20 Million barrels per day total USA use (or about 20% of our total oil use is OPEC imports).

 

I hope you're not suggesting we cut the trillion dollar military industrial complex budget in half ... leaving us with a huge surplus to re-build infrastructure ... fund social security ... build hospitals ... high speed rail ... revamp our educational system ... import less fuel from terrorist countries, and STILL have cash left over. Why . . . may it never be so ... that's CRAZY talk!

 

But just a couple hydrogen powered big rigs.

Remember how 10 years ago US auto manufactures were rolling around on the ground saying they couldn't build a 50 mpg car for a US family of four in 50 years?

And imagine if your life depended on it like the 3,000,000+ plus US troops that have been fighting continuous oil wars for the last 20 years.

 

Inconvenient but not a fact. US has NET imports of 8 million barrels a day. We don't really export any oil.

As to the question, US uses 148 billion gallons of gasoline with avg. passenger car mileage 24 mpg. So everyone switching to Prius at 50 mpg would roughly cut US gasoline usage by 50%. Gasoline usage is about 70% of US oil usage so if we targeted oil imports specifically, we could come close to eliminating oil imports, getting them to 15% of US oil supply vs. 50%.

$500B oil trade deficit would be cut to $120B. That puts $380B a year back in US economy.

All good, very good.

 

all this could be solved by simply raising the gas tax a dime.

21 Billion gallons means $210 Million per penny increase which is just about what the EV Highway Project was valued at (230 million) but that only covered 5 states but would have could have (supposed to anyway) provided a lot of long term support for electric vehicles

so lets take a nickel or a Billion for EV infrastructure improvements. guessing that would only be needed for 3 years and that program could be curtailed significantly.

take the rest and put it into the highway fund (they really need it) since the gas tax hasnt been increased in several years, its not like its too soon

 

what about buying prius that is foreign made? tat would cut some of that $380b back... but then again, if the sales were that good, prius would have been produced in the usa.

 

And yet our #1 export last year (and probably this year, with demand down) is oil products--gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. So we import the oil, refine it, and then export the products from the oil

Gas, other fuels are top U.S. export

 

lol at most of the arguments about foreign oil

 

The business model works for Japan. Import cheap wood mulch from Australia and process it into paper and sell for a premium. Woot! lol

 

Import of oil is single biggest part of the US trade deficit.

Import of oil has a huge multiplier cost effect in national security, military spending and pollution.

Cutting oil use and imports is No. 1 US strategic, economic and environmental priority.

 

Not sure you quite understand the term NET imports. It means adding and subtracting imports and exports, US absolutely IMPORTS 8 billion barrels of oil a year.

It is about $500B of our yearly trade deficit depending on oil prices and US economic economic cycle.

Cutoff of Middle East oil (which controls the world market for imported oil upon which US is so dependent) is the No. military contingency for which US military budgets and operates. US spendings $1.3T per year on military costs. It is the single biggest item in US budget. The single biggest cause of US budget deficit. It is the single biggest part of the $14T in US debt built up over the last 30 years, 20 of which have involved continuous oil war in the Middle East.

US imports 50% of it's oil.

US uses 50% more energy per capita and per GDP dollar than advanced industrial economies in Europe, Japan etc.

Oil use is going up in the US so while oil imports may actually decline percentage wise they are increasing in absolute terms making US strategic threat of Middle East oil cut toff higher.

Single best thing US can do is cut oil use by 50%, eliminating main military threat to US, eliminating $500B year in military costs, eliminating $500B per in trade deficit, reducing US greenhouse gases by 50% (80% by 2050 is science's goal), providing 20M green alternative energy jobs and sustainable US economy.

I just cut my oil use by 60% by buying a Prius, the real patriot act. In three years, hopefully a US Ford or Chevy plug-in on hydrogen fuel cell car cutting my oil use another 60%, kind of a Moore's Law in reverse applied to oil use.

 

you seem to be stuck in pre-iraq war usa... today, look above. US exports more than it imports.

so your statement is not correct.

i do agree that cutting oil use should be No1 priority and definitively agree with Dave on taxing the oil consumption and use that money to build alternative sources of energy for our vehicles.

 

The solution is literally under our noses. NatGas.

WE are the Saudi Arabia of NatGas. We have so much of it that we can't bring any more to the surface since the price is plummetting and nearly all the storage facilities are full.

We could replace our entire purchase of OPEC oil with NatGas with one action by Congress and a signature by the POTUS. ExxonMobil wouldn't like it much but it'll make do ( it is the largest holder of NatGas leases in the continent ).

In addition NatGas now is about half the price of liquid petro-fuel. :rockon: Hellooooo, anyone home in DC??? Finally all the money spent by drivers using CNG and LPG goes to companies and workers in the USofA. Double no brainer.

 

Fracking to produce natural gas is huge consumer and polluter of water so it has a big cost. Also US is still a big importer of natural gas so you'd have to turn the place into Mordor to break even on natural gas.

With US 50% less energy efficient per capita and per GDP dollar than Europe and Japan, US No. 1 priority and cheapest option is to get more energy efficient.