ENERGY FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD - World Resources Institute

Table 8. Oil Use by Automobiles in 1982
Region
Number of Autos
(millions)
Persons per Car
Oil Use a
(million barrels
per day)
Industrialized Countries
United States
Canada
Other OECD
Eastern Europe, USSR
104.5
10.5
143.4
20.1
2.2
2.3
3.6
18.9
4.0
0.4
3.7
0.52
Subtotal
278.5
4.1
8.6
Developing Countries
Africa
Latin America
Asia
(Asia except China, India)
6.98
23.35
9.92
8.94
71.3
15.7
246.7
81.2
0.18
0.61
0.26
0.23
Subtotal
40.25
82.3
1.04
World
318.8
14.0
9.6
a. In the United States the average auto had a fuel economy of 16.25 miles per gallon (14.5
liters per 100 kilometers) in 1982 and was driven 9,533 miles (15,340 kilometers). Here the
same amount of annual driving is assumed for autos in other countries as well. The average
fuel economy assumed for Canada is the same as for the United States. The average fuel
economy for other regions is assumed to be 24 miles per gallon (9.8 liters per 100
kilometers).
grew at an average rate of 7.3 percent per year
between 1975 and 1984, compared to 2.6 percent
in the industrialized market-oriented countries.
Moreover, the number of automobiles in
developing countries is projected to increase
150 to 200 percent by the year 2000. (See Table
9.) It this increase occurs, the developing countries'
share of the world's automobiles would
increase from one eighth to about one fifth. If
the average fuel economy of these new cars
were the same as that outside the United
States today—24 miles per gallon, or 9.8 liters
per hundred kilometers—the increasing number
of autos by itself would lead to a 1 percent annual
increase in total oil use in the developing
market-oriented countries between 1982 and
the year 2000.
Aggressive efforts in both industrialized and
developing countries to improve automotive
fuel efficiency could forestall a rise in the world
price of oil. Fortunately, technical opportunities
for doing so abound.
In the late 1970s, most experts thought that
only relatively modest improvements in fuel
economy were feasible. For example, a major
study in 1979 by the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) concluded that the likely technological
limit on fuel economy achievable over
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