How EV Adoption Will Impact Oil Consumption

As the world progresses towards the electrification of the transportation sector, the oil demand will be replaced by the demand for electricity.

To highlight the EV impact on oil consumption, the infographic created by BloombergNEF reveals how much oil has been and will be saved every day between 2015 and 2025 by varying electric vehicle types.

A typical combustion engine passenger vehicle in the United States uses about 11 barrels (1749 liters) of oil equivalent. A motorcycle uses 1 (159 liters), a Class 8 truck about 24 (3975 liters), and a bus uses more than 258 barrels (41019 liters) per year.

When cars switch to electric engines, they no longer require oil, making electricity their source of power instead.

Most of the oil saved from EVs on a global scale has come from two- and three-wheeled vehicles, such as motorcycles, scooters, and mopeds. With a wide adoption in Asia, notably, these vehicles displaced the demand for almost 675,000 barrels (107,316,424 liters)of oil per day in 2015. By 2021, this number had quickly grown to 1 million barrels (159 millions liters) per day.

Type of Vehicle	Number of barrels saved per day, 2015	Number of barrels saved per day, 2025P
Electric Passenger Vehicles	8,600	886,700
Electric Commercial Vehicles	0	145,000
Electric Buses	43,100	333,800
Electric Two & Three-Wheelers	674,300	1,100,000
Total Oil Barrels Per Day	726,000	2,465,500

Today, while work is being done in the commercial vehicle segment, very few large trucks on the road are electric—however, this is expected to change by 2025.

Over the past few years, electric passenger vehicles have shown the greatest growth in adoption.

In 2022, the electric car market underwent exponential growth, with sales surpassing 10 million cars. Throughout 2023 and beyond, the market is forecast to grow strongly, eventually saving 886,700 barrels (140,974,034 liters) of oil per day by 2025.