It’s true. According to Bill Colton, a VP at ExxonMobil, a single gallon of petrol (3.8L) has enough energy to charge an iPhone once a day for 20 years. Of course, that’s never going to happen but it’s a point ExxonMobil uses to stress the fact that there is a lot of energy in gasoline.
That number is striking though. 20 years? And then you think about what petrol is used for, fuel for our cars, and it all makes sense (kind of). Our cars, which are 1,500 odd kilos and can hit upwards of 150kph for miles upon miles, rely on petrol to work. If petrol has enough energy to power that, it definitely has leftover resources to pump up our phones.
ExxonMobil goes on to say that gas is one of the lightest and most energy dense fuels there is, which I could care less about because all I want now is somebody to figure out how to transform a gallon of petrol into a chargeable resource for my iPhone. [ExxonMobil via @wirecutter, Image Credit: alexmillos/Shutterstock]