Even as miles driven inched to a record and the population surged, gasoline consumption in 2024 was where it had been 20 years ago.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Gasoline consumption in the US, in terms of product supplied to gas stations, inched up by 0.25% in 2024, to 8.97 million barrels per day, according to EIA data, below where consumption had first been 20 years ago in 2004, despite a population increase over the same period of 47 million people, or 16%.
Compared to the peak in 2018, consumption is down by 3.9%. Gasoline consumption is determined by miles driven, which inched up to a new record in 2024, the improving efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles, and the growing share of EVs which in 2024 surpassed 10% of total new vehicles sold.
Per-capita gasoline consumption has plunged, as a result of a growing population and at first stagnating and then lower overall gasoline consumption. This shows the structural decline in demand for gasoline.
While the population grew by 16% or by 47 million people over the past 20 years, gasoline consumption has gone nowhere. So per-capita gasoline consumption has plunged by 16% from 2004 and by 21% from 1978, including the on-trend decline in 2024 of 0.5%.
But miles driven rose 0.9% to a record of 3,294 billion miles in 2024, the second year in a row of records, according to data from the Department of Transportation through November and an estimate for December. This covers miles driven by highway-legal vehicles of all types – cars, light trucks, buses, motorcycles, delivery vans, and commercial trucks.
This record number of miles driven, in conjunction with gasoline consumption that’s going nowhere and is below the peak from 2018, attests to the impact of rising fuel economy of ICE vehicles and the increasing penetration of EVs.
People on average drive a little less: Miles driven per person of driving age (16 and older) inched up to 12,217 miles in 2024, but was 7.4% below the peak in 2004.
Fuel economy keeps improving and EVs gain share: that’s a big part of the long-term structural problem in demand for gasoline.
The average fuel economy of passenger vehicles sold in the US of the model year 2024 rose to a record of 28 “real world” MPG, according to data from the EPA. Over the five model years since 2019, average fuel economy has risen by 3.1 MPG, or by +12% (fat red line in the chart below).
EVs show up in a big way in the blue line of MPG of “Car SUVs,” which spiked by 47% since the 2019 model year. They’re SUVs based on a car chassis and include the #2 bestseller in the US, the Tesla Model Y, whose sales exploded since production started in 2020. There are now many other EV models in that category. The Model Y has an equivalent fuel economy of 114 “real world MPG,” according to the EPA. (our report here).
But for our purposes here, EVs’ efficiency doesn’t matter. What matters here is that they don’t consume any gasoline at all, and each ICE vehicle that is replaced by an EV pushes down gasoline consumption. Conversely, EV’s impact on electricity demand has started to show up, along with that of data centers (AI, cloud, crypto).
The share of EV sales surpassed 10% of all new vehicles sold in 2024 in the US overall (red segments in the chart below). EVs dented gasoline consumption particularly hard in California. In 2024, the share of EV sales was 22% of total vehicle sales, despite Tesla getting crushed in the state.
There are now nearly 6 million EVs on the road in the US, and at the current pace of EV sales, there will be over 7 million EVs on the road by the end of the year. And each one of them pushes down gasoline consumption, even if miles driven are edging higher.
What about supply of gasoline? Crude oil production in the US has surged by 165% since 2008, to a record 13.3 MMb/d in 2024. In 2020, the US became a net exporter, exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imports.
Exports of crude oil and petroleum products jumped by 5.4% in 2024 to a record 10.8 MMb/d, while imports declined to 8.4 MMb/d.
These petroleum products that the US exported in 2024 included 1.3 MMb/d of distillate (diesel) and 0.81 MMb/d of gasoline, which is how refiners are dealing with the structural decline in demand for US gasoline amid soaring crude oil production.
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