大象传媒

The average daily journey made by automobile in the US is thirty miles, therefore the initial electric range threshold intended for the General Motors Volt should cover that. After which, onboard petroleum fuel incineration technology can 'recharge' the batteries and extend the range or, to plug in somewhere, anywhere, and take power from the grid.

When Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute Colorado, addressed members of the joint Houses of the UK Parliament in 1997 concerning future energy and efficiency systems and the interactive relationship between home and vehicle, most of them just didn't get it (then at least; look it up in the UK press archives or contact Ilex Oxford).

Over ten years ago the viability for range and performance was the stuff of invested private research, and tall fore-headed people trying to make it easier and understandable for us all.

Amongst these innovators was a company, then known as GM, who invested hard and went so far as to build road worthy vehicles and allow several hundred 'regular folk' to drive them around for a while; the outcome being that some said it wasn't just a good but the best vehicle that this electric vehicle innovator, called GM, had ever built.

Today everyone can enjoy the full story of this remarkable personal transport platform in the star free documentary available for rent from good movie stores called "Who killed the Electric Car?" or purchase it from Amazon for around $10 with free shipping over $25.

This is a drastic example of corporation-revised history, to cool and sober the praise today long enough to look broader and deeper at vehicle developments that we need to know about, but which receive scant or novelty coverage in few programs on rare channels anywhere and scarcely appear in schools and colleges.

And yet the Lunar Rover parked up on the moon still illustrates where the US have been in respect of developing this technology; four wheels, one electric motor per wheel, wires from each motor to controller and battery system, and then any choice of option thereafter; plug in, generator, fuel cell, solar panel . . wheel motors: think about it.

In other words, no gears, no transmission, no list of a thousand engine components and no toxic waste in the air for the kids to breath

. . but of course for choice the technology modification that Doc brings back from the future at the end of the first movie and pours in the dregs of the root beer and drops in the can . looks like a blender; now that we can appreciate; bolt on, too

Neither General Motors now nor GM then have ever been successfully asked to explain their thinking regarding the 'EV1' aka the 'Impulse', perhaps as a visitor from the 大象传媒 Ethical Man might fare better. Is a $40k Volt the best that they can do? Is the bailout money as safe as money in the bank with these people?

Removing the weight and complexity does not mean removing the strength and safety in a vehicle - look at how Lotus cars are designed and built, closer to aircraft an aerospace than huge welded steel girders and boxes. Did you know that now the number one cause of child mortality in the US is automobile accidents?

Do we drivers even realize that in many states when we use our cell phones while driving that using a cell phone while driving we break the contract which provides us with a license, and as using a cell phone while driving was not part of our insurance contract we are uninsured at the time of an accident involving cell phone usage.

Driving without due care and attention can have several connotations.

Way back in the last century at the Detroit Auto Show in 1997 apparently there was an electric Lotus, the first Prius was on display, as was a V10 motorcycle and the Hummer from Detroit.

Politically of course, Kyoto was as popular as a dish of batter-fried blowfish here, except for the hope it brought those countries who had studied and signed it and supported research into progress rather than avoiding it.

Don't miss the extraordinary vehicle research done elsewhere in the US while you are here, Ethical Man, which does not get the same advertising and pr budget that this essentially late eighties Volt vehicle design with costly to the consumer conversion due to late-in-the-day needs for evidence (other than skeletons in the closet) in order to qualify for billions in development cash which may distract us from knowing much more about American clean vehicle research.

If GM needs to face needing to invest in more external research done in the US so be it.

But don't suffer premature overexcitement about this the current Chevy Volt due to the starvation of progress by the management, who still know that they largely control the pace of change (or the lack of it, now most markedly at their employees expense and insecurity).

Going through AFS Trinity, Zapworld and many contacts to make through HomePower magazine (and of course the Rocky Mountain Institute) stimulates and enthuses all but the least willing of the 'head in a bucket of sand' mainstream car manufacturers; but, as you will find out if you ask and read the interviews they prepare, they will always know better.

Now for the bad news.....and I am by no means an expert here, but just last week I read an article in the New York Times about lithium. Yep, I must have been that bored. It seems Bolivia has a very very very large percentage of the world's lithium ( I won't make up a number: I just remember that it was a lot).

So, if everyone buys a Volt; and Bolivia has all the lithium.......see where I going here....

Sounds "damn ethical" to be true.
Where will the electricity to run "electric miracle" come from?
Burning dirty greenhouse fuel (in someone's backyard)?
Like it or not, the only "ethical solution" now and in the future will remain 'energy efficiency' (the more we cut its use - the better).
So I'd pick bicycle for Volt.

So you are in Detroit now? How did you get there? Sorry if you already explained. I must have missed it.

The Lithium Ion batteries the Volt is supposed to run on may already be obsolete. There has been a great deal of speculation about a stealthy (I would say paranoid) company by the name of Eestor which claims to have what is called an ultra-capacitor (ceramic plates in between conductive plates to separate charge) that will have far greater abilities than conventional or even lithium ion batteries (faster charge at high voltages, safer, lighter, cheaper, more efficient etc). A Canadian company by the name of "Zenn motors" has exclusive rights to use this "storage unit" in mid/small size cars as well as conversion kits for conventional cars.
Critics have called the Eestor unit "vaporware" meaning it is a concept which is only on paper and won't work in the real world. Eestor has said time after time that they have functional prototypes and will deliver the first commercial units around the end of 2009 when Zenn motors is supposed to roll out its highway capable (80mph) car: The CityZenn. Also, Eestor has also landed a contract with Lockheed Martin to apply the device to military applications.
Ethical Man, if you could get in touch with Richard Weir and get him to talk about his product (which if it lives up to its promises could be a truly revolutionary game changing technology) you would become "Ethical Man!!" and fit for your own spandex superhero outfit (emblazoned with a big green E). If you cant' get Weir to talk (and you won't) Zenn motors is always looking to toot their own horn.
Full disclosure: I own a teeny bit of Zenn stock.

Oh yeah, Eestor is a Texas company... so it still fits in with Ethical Man America and all that.

Regarding the transformative power of cap-and-trade, what else can attach the true costs and values so numbers can be accounted for using an internationally recognized accounting standard?

Cap-and-trade makes costs and prices real.

Manufacture or extract something and deem it profitable without dealing with effects or clean up the damage and waste? Someone has to pay to do so. Pay a price for it, or clear it up, or stop doing it that way, which is the desired transformation; but don't report a profit when spending money to evade all these options. Voluntary codes are hypnotic and enticing but intangible and unenforceable, open for abuse.

We have to encourage and enable developing countries to gain capital by selling their surplus credits to polluting countries and to support their investments into clean technologies so that they continue to have non-incineration based clean economies which merit and acquire more credits to sell.

Meanwhile, polluting countries add the cost of buying credits to their reporting, or invest in cleaning up their operations to reduce what credits they have to buy, or both. This is the transitional period of transformation.

If the claim is that neither is an option, the operation is effectively declaring itself truly uneconomic, requiring urgent deep review.

To say that we can't afford not to pollute is like a bank saying they can't afford to lend and, though current, is already more than simply out of date; it is a result of confidence trickery that no one on earth can afford, never could, and true pricing must join true costs in the mainstream debates again.

The difficult fact is that we are doing well, we can afford to do better; when we are not doing well, we can't afford not to. All strength to those who try, especially America at this time.

What we need with the Volt or any electric car, is a "smart grid electric highway" that distributes power where the cars are on the highway. The French use this idea to power thier Mag Lev train. This would extend the range of any electric car so that coast to coast travel would be possible without charging your car. Once you get where you are going you would still have a charge to get you around any town you were visting.
We could pay the power companies a toll way fee and this would be far less hassel then pumping and paying for gas.
We need to stop putting coal fumes in the sky and go nuclear. At the same time it would stop the auto pollution.

I was also going to mention ultra capacitors, but sensibleBiologist already did.

Scientists have been trying to cram more energy into batteries for a long time, and their success has been limited. Ultra-capacitors would be able to hold the energy needed, as well as taking less time to charge up. Lithium supplies are also relatively scarce, as no_la_bound says, and with Morales' nationalization of Bolivia's commodities companies and general suspicion of the West (especially the United States), it's debatable whether Bolivia would be able to supply enough lithium to meet demand.

As for the picture, while I wish it was in vitro meat, I have to go with what one of the Twitter people said: a 'flaming how cheetoh chip (crisp)'.

Basically your saying is if you force current commodities like oil, coal, and other carbon emitting products to be expensive, then innovation will kick in to make a environmentally efeciant car. And you add that it would cost just 2 cents a mile on today's prices.

Well that sounds awesome... except that all prices that also relay on those same commodities will also go up, the price of electricity itself (where a majority produced is by coal) goes up, and the cost of making those cars (raw materials, transportation, etc) also goes up.

I'm all for innovation though, but you would think the Germans, Italians, or even the British would have developed something like this by now; after all, haven't they done this carbon saving stuff for years now?

I totally agree with washuotaku. This blog shows how ignorant the author is about the problem and also how easily do these companies take people like him for a ride. On the one hand GM is proudly showing VOLT and on the other hand has about 200 ads running 24 hours a day on american TV about GMC trucks which are if not the worst one of the worst when it come to efficiency.
One question for the author of this blog
Do you know what percentage of US electricity production comes from coal? Please read this if you don't know

Hey onename. Many companies have to make transitions from thier past practices so dont make it sound like they are somehow being fake about thier efforts to make a carbonless future.

Also your point that all our electricity does not come from coal doesnt make the carbon go away.

GM only changed the propulsion system, slightly different then Toyota did many years ago.
The electric cars need to be smaller and lighter for the usual occupation of 1.x passengers.
That drives the costs down and increases the fuel economy.
The volt is just a prototype, in the market its dead already.

When was the 大象传媒 sold to the Voice of America ?? This article smacks of more American propaganda !!

Accusations of "vapourware" (correct *English spelling, as opposed to vaporware, American spelling) are pointed at other companies when the item at the very heart of this article is, itself, an item of vapourware !! It is not and has not had any announced intention of ever being in production !!

Many a concept car (read vapourware) have failed to get from the drawing boards to the production line !! OTOH, Toyota, et al *have* hybrid cars on the road !!

Furthermore, until America can address its sourcing of energy, as had been pointed out by others here, using electric cars is merely shifting cookies from one jar to another, as the American like to say !! Electricity from coal is probably the dirtiest form of energy and much of the American energy is sourced from this means !!

Hurricane Katrina was said to have hit America like 10 nuclear bombs. When are Americans going to harness this energy and (a) save on their dependence on dirty energy and (b) save a lot of lives and property damage ??

Doing this will truly be classified as *ETHICAL* !!

Meanwhile, the Germans have pride of place in having the largest amount of windfarms in the world even as British NIMBYs rave on about how wonderful windfarms are but *NOT IN THEIR BACK YARD*, please !!

So, I just want to make sure I understand this correctly,
in 1996 GM launches a car called the EV-1 a 100% electric car that re-charged by plugging it in. Although the car was only a 2 seater it had a range of 160 Miles between charges.
Fast forward 12 years to a world that is in an energy crisis, coupled with a car industry that is reportedly in a survival crisis and suddenly GM announces they have designed a 100% electric car that has a range of 40 Miles between charges.
Firstly, I thought the term technological advancement meant that we progressed and improved on technology, not make that technology less advanced to the tune of 120 miles per charge.
Secondly, Does GM really think that their unscrupulous business practices can be swept under the carpet by them coincidently announcing the birth of an electric car in that midst of an energy crisis, a car that 12 years ago they had already launched and then quietly buried the car and forgot it ever existed because "There simply was'nt enough public interest".
Thats right GM, because the Hummer was so much more popular.

Ethical car. Everybody should drive pope-mobiles.

There is another competitor on the horizon too. BYD, a Chinese car company, is designing a car very similar to the Volt which they claim can get 60 miles to the charge, at which point the gas engine kicks in.

Zenn cars are horrible little pieces of junk. I walked by one in my company's car park and I had a look. It was tiny. It looked cramped (even though it could seat 4 people, in theory). It was ugly. And I imagined that in a crash it would offer zero protection, especially against SUVs or trucks. I gladly welcome GM and other car companies' efforts to go green.

But is it enough? Personally I think these companies have been so ignorant and complacent for so long that it will take them going bankrupt for them to learn their lesson. That will, on the upshot, provide opportunity for entrepreneurs to innovate and do what America does best - take a shortcoming or bad situation and turn it around. Screw GM and the whole lot - we need real change.

Something that needs to be said here, even though some comments are headed in the right direction. Electric traction (not hust cars) is the first step to reducing carbon emissions. Yes, it will "just" transfer the emissions to the power stations, but these are a much smaller target for containment (sequestration?) than millions of gas burning vehicles spread across all our cities!
We must convert all our surface transport to electric propulsion and at the same time take drastic, if necessary legal, action to remove carbon from the generation process. So the grid will not be able to cope? Well, don't complain about it - fix it!

The reliance on renewable energy sources to meet initial targets is too optimistic. Given the consequences of failure, we cannot take a chance on that happening. An already developed source of energy capable of meeting our current immense demand worldwide is available. (I hate this next bit as much as you will, dear readers). It is nuclear I"m afraid, but accepted as a TEMPORARY solution, it will get us past the approaching disaster, even though it does bring with it an equally dangerour pollution problem. THEN we will hopefully have a better handle on renewables and even have solved the nuclear fusion problem.

A quick technical comment.

Energy is measured in kWhours.

Power, which is the rate of spending of energy is in KW.

Please clarify sentence:

Lithium Ion battery contains just 16kW - the same as a mere half US gallon of petrol.

Is that 16kWhours?

Thanks

We live in Spokane Washington USA where most of the electricity produced is by hydro or made in other sustainable ways.
We run a business in Spokane and for all our running around the city we drive a 100% electric car.
Our car of choice is the Zenn NEV for it has a minimal impact to our enviroment and it practically fits all of our city driving needs here in Spokane.
Such a minimal car is not for everybody for it is like driving in the future and many folks wish to live in the past.
However, we are now very attached to our little 'Sparky' and for us there is no going back.

Something to note is that electrical power stations produce power at a much higher efficiency than automobiles. So while using coal or oil to make electricity to power electric cars still creates green house gases they would produce less. Also power stations can be more tightly regulated than the 300 odd million cars in the US. Furthermore while half of US power generations is from Coal. A carbon trade setup would produce incentives to change to other forms of power. Power generation can shift and move with the wind where as car infrastructure tends to sit on one dominant form.

One thing the car companies are'nt telling us is how these batteries perform in cold weather.

In Canada, where I live, we have temps that can go to -30 C and below in many parts of the country in midwinter. What sort of range will someone get in these temperatures ? Also, you have to expend quite a bit of energy just to keep the passengers warm (probably 2KW or more), as well as keeping the windshield defrosted.

Finally, rolling resistence is vastly increased in snowy roads and all moving parts such as wheels and drivelines have a lot more resistance at low temps.

I can see these vehicles having less than half their rated range during winter in Canada. In such a case, I can't see all electric vehicles being as practical as the current hyrid design.

Car production, electric, hybrid or internal combustion is massively damaging to the environment. What is needed is infrastructure changes like homes near work/leisure and mass transit systems between the two, then a weekend leisure vehicle could be a gas guzzler/bike/volt, it wouldnt matter.

You cant be serious even to write an articel like this....Pleeease....make your homework...cars like that used to run through america loooong time ago...just check ...pleeeeease..

........Who killed the electric car....

movie....

and only after you have put all your facts together post article like this one...

cheeeers

This only a stop gap that sounds green while it is not.

1 The electricity for charging these cars is produced by burning fossil fuels. So where is the gain. The eco foot primt in manufacture is much worse than with a normal car. So the carbon savings from driving have to be large before you start - currently this is not the case.
Electric ards from carbon produced electricity have no eco benefit -only the fuel tax is zero to the consumer.

2 Charging the batteries takes a very long time. It take longer to charge the battery than it does to drive 40 miles - so people will be lazy and just use the back-up petrol engine all the time. While they boast that they use an electric car they do not.

3 The batteries only last 1 year if you charge every day - then they need to be replaced. The range is reducing each time you charge the batteries after 1 year of average driving the range will be less than 30 miles and falling.

4 The cost of a new battery pack is very high many thousands of dollars/pounds Euros. If you amortise this over the per mile cost thne this is very expenisve driving

5 The ecological consequences of maunufacturing and then recyling the battery packs is frightening , there is no infrastructure.

6 While battery capacity can be increased by reasearch - currently there is no significant advance that will come within 10 years. So we may see 60 mile range but no more.

7 the problem with electric cars is no heating and no airconditioning no defrostig without shortening the range dramtically. On an urban run to work the battery capacity may limit to 20 miles in hot or cold weather

8 Batteries perform poorly in hot and cold conditions just when you need extra capacity heating and airco. So it gets worse

9 In UK the exchequer revenue from road fuel tax is around 20,000,000,000 pounds so while electric cars are fuel tax exempt today a mass switch over will see the need to raise taxes else where to compensate.

10 The tendency is that people will buy such avehicle to show "how green they are " rather than looking the at the implications

11 While electric is problably the future for vehicles - the only known sustainable technology is based on hydrogen fuel cells
If there is a gigantic investment in off-shore hydrogen farms where tidal current energy is used to make electrcity to locally electrolyse the water to hydrogen and oxygen. That his hydrogen is then used to power fuel cells in cars to run electric motors.
This has close to zero eco impact
The investment needed is similar to what we spent on off shore oil platforms - but the tidal sources of energy will never run dry. Because we are not burning fuel o create energy - we only move one energy form to another 10% efficiency is great.

But who will make the investment?

As I thought about the sensible questions posed about the Volt and the lack of any answers, it occurred to me that GM executives would be extremely remiss if they had not assigned some employee to monitor this blog and report on it.

So, with near certainty that at least one of you who is reading this either has the answers or is in a position to get them, the question must be 鈥� why no answers?

Of course, it may be that GM wants only to be a 鈥渓urker鈥� on the discussion of electric cars rather than a participant. Or, from a more paranoid viewpoint, perhaps some of the posts we read here and on EthicalMan ARE from GM but not identified as such.

Paranoia? Ask Ralph Nader about how GM deals with criticism.

The current information on the Volt car shows that the Korean made Lithium-ion battery pack weights in around the 375lbs mark鈥�. Sounds heavy. How much will your local recycling facilities want you to pay when it comes time for you, or your GM dealer, needing to replace it? I am aware that these batteries do not hold their charge in cold weather and this particular type of battery is no different than any other in that respect. The battery needs a minimum temperature of between 32掳F to 50掳F (0掳C to 10掳C) or it becomes flat and useless. To stop this battery freezing, or not charging due to it being cold, I am told the gasoline engine will run until the battery warms up鈥�. I would like to point out that currently 1/3 of the entire U.S.A and virtualy all of Canada is below 32掳F (0掳C) and a flat or frozen battery may become common, if that鈥檚 the case then the gasoline engine may possibly be running for hours on end. I suggest Volt should only be sold in California and southern Arizona as these places at least stay above 32掳F and this is where your new Yuma testing track is.

I have to say, some of you guys have no sense of ambition.

I get the impression that there are a lot of North Americans posting here. Can I ask, whatever happened to your "Anything is possible" attitude?

Sure, in this case, GM has come out with a joke of a prototype. I'll join in the slating of GM for a moment.

Do we know how much this thing weighs?

Ek= 0.5(m)(v)squared. If you're limited to 16kWh by your coffin-sized battery, I'd be thinking a bit more about what the car is built from.

I read somewhere that it takes 10 tons of coal to make one ton of steel - with a CO2 equivilant of driving 100,000 miles (probably closed 50,000 in an American car), so if GM was serious about sustainable driving, it wouldn't be deliberately making a car that's just like our old, appallingly inefficient designs. It would keep the cosmentics, sure, but start from scratch on the technicals.

Some answers to post 25:

1. Actually, even using today's mix, charging electric cars is far more energy efficient. A 33 mpg (British gallon) car (which is far higher than the current US average) consumes 80kWh per 100km driven. 8 years ago, the REVA (Ok, it's a horrible box on wheels) was doing 21kWh per 100km. Tesla's sports car released in a couple of months (at about $110k) will do 16. Take into account the 40% efficiency of a conventional fossil fuel station and you're already seeing energy efficiency savings. OK, coal is less CO2 efficient than oil, but if you average out in the UK at least, taking into account renewables, and get an average of 500g/kWh CO2 from power stations, we're looking at 100g/km equivilant already.

In summary, these electric cars are already just already at the very forefront of environmental driving, and this is before the UK or the USA has done anything substantial to decarbonise it's electricity supply. Electricity will stay with us, we have to decarbonise it, so electric cars are future proof, and get more environmentally neutral with every windmill (and nuclear power station) that goes up, and every coal station that we decommission.

(source - "Without hot air", around page 130)

2. Charge them overnight? If the average person drives 30km/day, you're sorted. You've also got the advantage then of not needing any extra electricity capacity because you're using energy when demand is lowest.

3/4. Forget batteries, it's all about capacitors in the future! That said, I don't know about this particular car, but the batteries for the Prius and most electric cars have a current design life of about 10 years anyway - how old is your car?

5/11. So build the infrastructure. It's not like we don't already invest billions on our carbon infrastructure every year. You suggest hydrogen as a better alternative. Surely hydrogen infrastructure would be more costly.

Also, due to Hydrogen's low energy density and storage problems, current hydrogen prototypes are costing about 250 kWh/100km, inc. production, storage, compression etc. - 3 times worse than current gasoline cars and potentially 12 times worse than direct electricity motors. Given that we're going to need to double electricity production at least to replace fossil fuels in transport and heavy industry, using 12kW capacity when you could use 1 seems very unefficient to me.

6. You're thinking inside the box. We just all need to drive lighter cars. Tesla are already expecting up to 220 miles range! Smaller is safer too. If you get hit by a car, you want it to be a small one. It's basic physics. OK, you need a nice strong cage to protect you too, and small cars don't come off well against SUVs, but I have a simple solution: ban SUVs.

7/8. Valid points. Again, capacitors have huge potential in extreme temperatures. We already use them everywhere with no problem. There will always be a trade off with power if you want air con (even in a petrol car), though, to be fair, I'm fine with a simple fan. If you need air con, and want to be flash, I guess you could put solar panels on your roof to give you the extra kW?

9. What's your point? They'll tax something else, but there will be no net change to your pocket. What Brown/Obama giveth, they taketh away. Oh well, on the bright side, you might help "save the planet" (more likely "save the humans") in the process though.

10. Do we care? I don't care if people buy green because it's green, because it's fashionable or whatever, the net result is the same, provided that the technology is such that using the technology can only have green consequences.

On bringiton8989's complaint about the Volt looking just like the cars already on the market, it is pretty much a requirement in America for a vehicle to be able to seat four full-grown men plus six cubic feet of cargo in the boot. How are you going to carry your kids if your vehicle only seats two people? Are you going to have to buy separate cars for driving to work (2 seats) and carrying the kids (4-5 seats)? As such, the smallest footprint that we are likely to see is that of the Mini Cooper.

ARRRGGGHHH!!!

Why not look at a truly revolutionary car, the Honda Clarity!!!

Yes hydrogen is hard to make and store but so is 'Gas'. Hydrogen can be made at the pump and with a fuel cell almost all of the hydrogen is turned to energy and electric motors are very efficient about putting that energy onto the road.

Hybrids are less efficient than you average blue motion vw or Eco diesel!! Plus all the pollution from making the batteries.

Plus who believes the range claimed for these cars, who here has ever had a battery that lasted as long as manufacturers claims. My personal experience is about half that of what is claimed.

rpbourne:
Yes, but batteries are hugely less efficient than combustion, which is why the next gen laptop battery will be combustion based and not battery based.

pollutiondog:
I had that idea when I was 9, the problem is what happens when you stop at the side of the road and the kiddies say whats this power line dad - zzzzt!

In Bulgaria, and I think other Eastern European countries the trams are powered by over head lines, why can't cars draw power from the same lines?

Ok. Simple problem here is this: If you're going to replace the world's fossil burning cars with this or even some kind of magical vehicle that runs on nasty looks or moonbeams there is still not enough oil to do this. Wake up!

. How Much Energy is Used to Construct a Car?



I. Calculations as Done By Matt Savinar:



The average car will consume during its construction 10% of the energy used during its lifetime.



Source: "Automobiles: Manufacture Versus Use," published by the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assesment;



How many barrels of oil does it take to equal the energy consumed during 10% of a car鈥檚 lifetime? Let's see:



In the US, the average car has a median lifetime of 17 years. (Source: Matt Creenson, Associated Press: "Is This the Beginning of the End?" )



On average, a car will consume 750 gallons of gas per year.



17 years x 750 gallons of gas per year = 12,750 gallons of gas consumed during the median lifetime of an American car;



1 gallon of gas = 125,000 BTUs;



12,750 gallons consumed x 125,000 BTUs per gallon = 1,593,750,000 BTU鈥檚 consumed during the median lifetime of an American car.



1,593,750,000 x 10% = 15,9375,000 BTUs consumed during the car鈥檚 construction;



159,375,000 BTUs consumed during construction divided by 5,800,000 BTU鈥檚 in one barrel of oil = slightly more than 27 barrels of oil. Twenty seven barrels of oil (42 gallons of oil per barrel) contain 1,142 gallon of oil.

Michael C. Ruppert, editor of From the Wilderness and author of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of The American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, has estimated the construction of the average car consumes 42 barrels of oil. In a private email (reprinted with Mike's permission), he provided the following calculations/observations:



"When discussing 100 mpg vehicles one must absolutely figure in the amount of energy required to make these 鈥渘ew鈥� vehicles. I have good numbers showing that it requires 12% of all the hydrocarbon energy a vehicle will use in its lifetime just to make the vehicle in the first place (ore mining, raw material transport, paint, electricity, etc . . ."



"And this does not factor in the hydrocarbon energy required to make the non-existent factories that make the vehicles in the first place. Nat鈥檒 Geographic told us last June that there are 7 gallons of oil in every new tire. These net-energy costs are crucial to avoid making some painful mistakes and possibly dangerous assumptions."



"Assuming 25 gallons/wk of consumption over about 15 years (average vehicle life expectancy) that is 19,500 gallons of gasoline for a vehicle lifetime. 12% of that is 2,340 gallons of gasoline equivalent to make the vehicle in the first place. These are fixed costs that won鈥檛 change as you make higher-mileage vehicles."



"This country has almost 250 million vehicles on the road. So we鈥檙e looking at 585 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent to make these new 'theoretical' cars. Assuming a 1:1 conversion from oil to gasoline (It can鈥檛 be that efficient) that鈥檚 roughly 13.9 billion barrels (42 gallons per barrel) of oil just to make these cars."



"Is there 13.9 billion barrels of crude lying around anywhere for this process to even begin? Not hardly. There's no elasticity anywhere and this process would require taking oil supplies away from existing use to implement. Remember, you haven鈥檛 even built the factories yet. Where does that oil come from?"