DOE: Outlook on fuel economy: A three-pronged program that could save hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily

Last year in the U.S., the more than 100 million automobiles on the road consumed the equivalent of five million barrels of oil per day. An increase in their fuel economy of just one mile per gallon would have saved the equivalent of 400 000 barrels of oil per day. Because the automobile is the primary petroleum-energy consumer (it not only consumes more petroleum than trucks and buses combined but also more than either the industrial or residential sector), it has been the main focus of the transportation-energy-conservation efforts of the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration [now part of the Department of Energy (DOE)]. These efforts are aimed at ensuring that technologies are available to reduce petroleum-energy consumption by these vehicles for the near term; and at eliminating their dependence on this diminishing energy resource, while maintaining current mobility levels, in the longer term.