HOW MANY PRIUSES EQUAL AN OIL SPILL?
This article is from our archives and has not been updated and integrated with our "new" site yet... Even so, it's still awesome - so keep reading!
Published on Sun, Jun 20, 2010
By: The LACar Editorial Staff
2010 Toyota Prius Here is an interesting way to put the Gulf Oil Spill in perspective: How many Priuses would it take to offset the spill? The Car Connection asked this question and we can't say the answer surprised us. "If the average U.S. car drives 10,000 miles a year at 25 miles per gallon (to make the math easy), then the 50-MPG 2010 Toyota Prius saves 200 gallons of gasoline per year. Or 0.55 gallons per day. So you'd have to sell 912,500 Priuses--each of them saving a little over half a gallon of gasoline a day--to offset the loss of half a million gallons every day." Now for the rest of the math. An estimate from the Washington Post said one million barrels of oil have been escaping from the well each day. One gallon of unrefined light crude produces one-half gallon of gas. So that means we'd need to save 500,000 gallons of gas a day. One problem? Toyota is only able to produce 500,000 Priuses a year right now because of constraints in the supply of battery materials Ailis Aaron Wolf Hybrid Owners of America
