Ed Huntress wrote:

However, the energy consumed in manufacturing a vehicle, as we said above,
is a miniscule part of the total life-cycle energy consumption of any
vehicle. There's an interesting, easy-to-read white paper that will show you
what the trends a

A number of years ago a LLNL study put the manufacturing portion of
total life cycle energy consumption of an automobile at close to 50%.
Increased use of plastics, thinner/recycled steel, and greater lifespans
have reduced this somewhat, but it is still in the same order of
magnitude with roughly 1/3 of the total life cycle energy being used
just to build a car. Not what I would call minuscule, but headed in the
right direction.

--
jeff