Gasoline Displaced by Light-duty Electric Vehicles in the U.S. in 2020
The Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technology Office drew our attention today to a study published in June 2021 by the Argonne National Laboratory. The good news is that light-duty electric vehicles are contributing more and more to the displacement of gasoline in the United Stated. About 500 million gallons were displaced by all-electric vehicles (EV) and hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) in 2020. That is 250 times more than in 2011 (See the bar chart below.).
We tried to place the numbers in a greater context and found readily available information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA): about 123.73 billion gallons (or about 2.95 billion barrels) of finished motor gasoline were consumed in the United States in 2020. While close to 124 billion gallons sounds enormous, this level was the lowest since 1997, a record low attributed to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On a positive note, 2011's number (2 million gallons) would not have been visible on our pie chart.