Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
threatening to take this car away from her as General
Motors did with her EV-
, so home life is peaceful. Last
time I looked, she averaged about
miles per gallon of
gasoline.
Figure
shows that if all cars were similar in
electric range, gasoline consumption would be only
.
%
of what it is today.
The transportation system of today still runs almost
entirely on oil. On an average day in
, the United
States used
million barrels of oil (one barrel contains
gallons),
percent of which was imported. Transpor-
tation used
% of the oil, and when oil was
$
per
barrel the US public spent
$
.
million per minute on oil
for transport and paid
per minute for imports, a
considerable amount of which went to countries like
Venezuela whose governments did not like the United
States very much. Now the price of oil is down to a mere
$
$
per barrel, consumption is only
million barrels
per day, and only
percent of that is imported. The
United States spends only about
per minute and
$
pays only
per minute for imports. Incidentally,
the United States is the world
$
is third largest producer of
oil after Saudi Arabia and Russia.
After re
'
ning, the products coming from a barrel of oil
are [
]:
% gasoline
% diesel fuel and heating oil
% jet fuel
% propane
% asphalt
% other petrochemicals for things ranging from
chewing gum to plastics.
