Unused power surge compromises U.S. road vehicles sustainability
Abstract
Material and energy flows underpin sociotechnical metabolism. However, despite growing sustainability concerns over expanding material stocks and declining stock productivity, the link between material use and energy consumption remains poorly understood. This gap reflects a limited distinction between structures and the activity they enable, and the lack of quantification of the installed power of energy consuming structures. Here we reconstruct the long-term growth dynamics of U.S. road vehicles, distinguishing professional and consumer assets. We show that installed power, mass, and fuel energy use follow divergent patterns within and across vehicle categories. By introducing the usage factor as a metric linking structure to activity, we quantify decoupling mechanisms such as engine oversizing and fleet redundancy, which drive up material immobilization. As electrification requires large-scale fleet replacement, our findings highlight that avoiding power oversized vehicles could reduce material demand, emphasizing the need to account for structure-activity decoupling in energy transition policies.
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BibTeX
@misc{perraut2026unused,
title = {{Unused power surge compromises U.S. road vehicles sustainability}},
author = {Hugues Perraut and Joseph Le Bihan and Eric Herbert and Petros Chatzimpiros},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.24543},
eprint = {2609.24543},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24543},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Unused power surge compromises U.S. road vehicles sustainability
AU - Hugues Perraut
AU - Joseph Le Bihan
AU - Eric Herbert
AU - Petros Chatzimpiros
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.24543
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24543
AB - Material and energy flows underpin sociotechnical metabolism. However, despite growing sustainability concerns over expanding material stocks and declining stock productivity, the link between material use and energy consumption remains poorly understood. This gap reflects a limited distinction between structures and the activity they enable, and the lack of quantification of the installed power of energy consuming structures. Here we reconstruct the long-term growth dynamics of U.S. road vehicles, distinguishing professional and consumer assets. We show that installed power, mass, and fuel energy use follow divergent patterns within and across vehicle categories. By introducing the usage factor as a metric linking structure to activity, we quantify decoupling mechanisms such as engine oversizing and fleet redundancy, which drive up material immobilization. As electrification requires large-scale fleet replacement, our findings highlight that avoiding power oversized vehicles could reduce material demand, emphasizing the need to account for structure-activity decoupling in energy transition policies.
ER -