Why does the United States consume so much oil in relation to other nations?

Cheap fuel started it out. When gas went to $4 a gallon consumption dropped by almost 4%.

But here lies are main problems:

Are average vehicle weight is more than 800 lbs heavier than the average european weight and a 1000 lbs over asian. Every 100 lbs of weight in a car decreases fuel mileage by 3%.

We prefer SUV, Vans, Trucks, for everyday driving. Not only are they heavy but they are aerodynamically terrible compared to most cars. Fuel mileage gets horrible at freeway speed because of fuel just to fight air resistance.

We move 90% of our freight by truck and 10% by rail. Trucks (new ones) get about 7 miles per gallon. Trains to move the weight of equivalent freight get about 400 miles per gallon. Europeans move much more freight by trains than us. Asians use smaller trucks, but they also don't buy as much as we do so trucks don't carry as much.

Our roads are very unfriendly to bicycles and motorcycles. Ever see a typical street in China, India, Indonesia? Better than 80 % of the traffic is bicycles and mopeds and 3 wheel trucks. We have taken the berms from most roads, won't let bikes on sidewalks and at every step have discouraged these primary movers.

We light, heat, and air condition are buildings to far higher intensities than any other nation in the world. Walk into any modern building which is usually lots of glass (which is highly energy inefficient). Even if you walk in the bathrooms, there is generally 10-15 fixtures including over the stalls. This light does what? I've gone into classrooms burning 4000 watts of lights in one classroom, even with no one there and sometimes all night long.

We put a red light over every lane of traffic at every intersection, with a minimum of 2 lights for one lane. At a four way intersection this is eight lights. Multiply that times every intersection in the country. That's a lot of wasted power and oil that could be solved with one red light mounted in the middle with lights on each side of it.

Excessive street lighting. Excessive air conditioning. No clothes lines hardly, using hot water to wash clothes with.Gorocery stores that have open coolers for refrigerated products. Excessive glass used in construction instead of insulated panels. No conservation by factories, government, schools, or industry of shutting down utilities, room by room and during off use period. (An empty building at 50 degrees in winter will have no complainers.

The answer in a nutshell, is we got spoiled by cheap energy, and last summer , our pusher upped our price real easy. We cut back a little

but most people don't know how to save and don't want to. They also equate small cars with danger, because they've seen crashes of SUV's into Smart cars. You can't get around physics that's true, but most wrecks are people hitting stationary objects, not head on. And in those collisions, weight doesn't help you at all.

And to be fair in those tests with SUV's running into small cars, they should of run SUV's into Semi-trucks, because in that scenario weight wins also. You can always find someone with a heavier vehicle, bad race to be in from a safety standpoint.

Other countries use less oil because they either don't have the industry to use the oil, or the money to buy vehicles or the price of their fuel has been high long enough that conservation sunk into them long ago.

Speaking of GDP --the world GDP is $69.49 trillion. United States GDP is $14.29 trillion. So we are about 1/5 th the GDP of the world if you want to believe the heavily slanted CIA.GOV website. And also according to the same website, the world produces 85.54 million bbl/day of oil , which United States consumes 20.68 million., which means we consume 24.2% of the worlds oil.

There is 6,790,062,216 people in the world and 307,212,123 Americans. That means we are 4.5% of the world's population but consume 24.2% of the oil. We definitely could do better with easy conservation and getting our vehicle weight down a lot and utilizing trains a lot more and making buildings utilize same efficiency standards we require of new homes

Some of the above answers get at the correct answer. Most basically it is because the U.S. also represents 1/4th of the entire world economy, which is only possible because we consume energy commensurately.

And both of those facts are true because the U.S. has by far the greatest population among *developed* nations. Aside from China, the U.S. has from 2.5 to 10 times more population than any of the other top-10 leading economies, so of course we use more oil. Only China and India have larger populations than the U.S., and both are far behind the U.S. in economic development. However it is extremely likely that China's oil consumption will surpass that of the U.S. at some point in coming decades.

Further, the U.S. uses more oil on a per-capita basis largely as a circumstance of our large landmass and sparse population density. That means people often live far away from where they work and shop, and so do lots more driving than is the custom in most other countries. Also with a relatively low population density, mass transit is not very economically feasible in most of the U.S., whereas it is common in Europe, Japan, and Chinese cities. (Even after another century of population growth, the U.S. population density in 2100 will be less than Europe's is TODAY.)

Darth hits some other good points above.

USA: Hummer, Range Rover, Land Rover, 18 Wheelers

Asia: Bicycles, motor bikes, Toyota's

Canada: perma frost

europe: public transport, trains

oh and all that energy consumption, having 5 PC's 3 TV's and 2 Xbox's going at the same time with all the lights on. and using a clothes dryer in the summer while your AC is on...

Because we produce about 1/4 of the world's GDP.

B/c US is larger than any other developed country, both in terms of population and land area.

Per-capita consumption of oil is higher than Europe b/c of larger cars, longer commutes, and more extreme climate that requires both air conditioning and heating.

Because industrially, we are about half a century ahead of most developing countries. But they are catching up quickly. We will very soon be surpassed by countries that have greater populations than us.

We're more "advanced".

we travel all the time

Because we can.