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Using & Saving Energy

For Transportation

Energy Ant

All together, we drive our cars, motorcycles, trucks, and buses about 3 trillion miles per year. Combined, gasoline and diesel make up 84% of all of the energy used for transportation.

File Scrub 1 ::::: EE ... us_energy_transportation-basics
Grade: A.    Ready, except placement of the bottom graph looks odd. Too many images for amount of content.-Miroslava
from http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyexplained/uses/transportation.html
Pie chart of how much of the total energy used is used in transportation: 28%.
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Pie chart showing what types of fuel are used in transportation. The petroleum products used include gasoline with 62%, diesel with 24%, and jet fuel with 8%. Other energy fuels account for 4%, and natural gas use is 2% of the total.
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America is a Nation on the move. About 28% of the energy we use goes to transporting people and goods from one place to another.

Cars, vans, and buses are commonly used to carry people. Trucks, airplanes, and trains can be used to carry people and freight. Barges and pipelines only carry freight. In 2007, there were 249 million vehicles (cars, buses, and trucks) in the United States — more than three motor vehicles for every four people.

Automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, and buses traveled just over 3.0 trillion miles in the United States in 2007. That’s almost one-twelfth the distance to the nearest star beyond the solar system. It’s like driving to the sun and back 13,440 times.

Types of Energy Used for Transportation

Gasoline is used mainly by cars, motorcycles, and light trucks; diesel is used mainly by heavier trucks, buses, and trains. Together, gasoline and diesel make up 84% of all the energy used in transportation.

There is currently a push to develop vehicles that run on blended fuels or fuels other than petroleum products. Today, there are some vehicles that run on electricity, natural gas, propane, and ethanol.

Hybrid-electric vehicles combine the benefits of gasoline engines and electric motors by reducing the amount of fuel required to move a vehicle. This is why hybrid-electric vehicles can get more miles per gallon of gasoline compared to vehicles that run on gasoline alone.

Energy Use By Type of Vehicle

Automobiles are the most common mode of transportation in the United States. Personal vehicles (like cars and light trucks) consume 60% of the total energy used for transportation, while commercial vehicles (like large trucks and construction vehicles), mass transit (like airplanes, trains, and buses), and pipelines account for the rest.

Energy Use by Type of Vehicle
Image of the types of vehicles that use energy and how much they use. The different vehicles using energy include cars, light trucks, other trucks, aircraft, ships and barges, pipelines, trains, rail and buses. Cars use 32% of transportation energy, light trucks use 28%, other trucks use 16%, aircraft use 9%, water use 5%, construction and agriculture 4%, pipelines use 3%, trains and buses use 3%.
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Source: National Energy Education Development Project