Believe it or not, this isn’t an easy “versus” to get supporting data for.  Even on the interwebs.

Most conversations concerning both the electric car and mass transit seem to devolve into more general discussions about other benefits of each – mainly personal freedom vs. land use – and have trouble staying focused on the issue at hand: energy use.

So, I’m going to assume folks who frequent this site are familiar with the general pro v. con arguments surrounding autos vs. transit.  Let’s leave all that stuff on the sidelines and concentrate solely on energy use, which for decades has been an important element of the pro-mass transit argument.

What does the reemergence of the electric car in America do to the energy-consumption playing-field between mass transit and the auto?

As I opened with, even Google has trouble providing an easy click-thru answer to this particular question.  While comparisons between cars and mass transit and gas and electric vehicles abound,  little if anything popped up comparing energy consumption between electric vehicles and mass transit.  So we must make due with what we have.

But what do we have?  We have BTUs per passenger mile courtesy of the Transportation Energy Data Book -2010…

• Transit Buses – 4,348 BTUs
• Cars – 3,437 BTUs
• Personal Trucks – 3,641 BTUs
• Certified Air Route – 2,995 BTUs
• Rail – 2,541 BTUs
• Motorcycles – 1,875 BTUs

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