Number of the Week: What If Rest of World Had as Many Cars as U.S.?

4.5 billion: Additional cars, trucks and buses on the world’s roads if every place had the same number of vehicles per capita as the U.S.

America loves to drive. At last count, there were 248 million registered cars, trucks and buses in the U.S., or 809 for every thousand people. Only tiny Monaco boasts more cars per capita.

China has 46 vehicles per thousand people, about what the U.S. had in 1917. India, with 14 vehicles per thousand, is where the U.S. was in 1913. As those developing giants put more cars on the road, resources — and the environment — will be strained. There are about a billion vehicles globally; if the rest of the world had as many vehicles per capita as the U.S., that number would be 5.5 billion.

An extreme example, of course, since plenty of developed countries get on fine with far fewer cars than the U.S. So let’s say the world had as many vehicles per capita as Germany, one of the least car-intensive of the major industrialized nations, the total would still be 2.7 billion. Mind you, that calculation assumes no population growth — and that the U.S. would take a third of its vehicles out of service to match German usage.

From the Wall Street Journal