Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other thing Automakers haven't got yet is that like 80% of people want a cheap fuel efficient vehicle. I would rather pay $4000 for a vehicle and have nothing except a 4* safety rating than pay $20,000 have a 4* average safety rating with a bajillion gadgets all priced at like $500 for something that costs $5 max to make. Everybody on the fucking planet knows a 5 disc CD player with a line-in doesn't cost $500 to…
The numbers say otherwise. 51% of all vehicles sold in the US in December 2008 were pickups or SUVs. [1] Average vehicle sales price is $25,000 [2], despite the existence of nice cheap fuel-efficient cars like the Yaris at $12,000. Dagres' suggestion that cars should be more about electronic gadgets is wrongheaded. Cars last 10 years, gadgets are obsolete after 3. You want a car + an iPhone, the second of which you'l…
Actually, the numbers don't say that.
If you only have one car, that car has to satisfy almost all of your car needs. The Yaris doesn't for a lot of people. (The Scion xB does for a lot more people.)
If you're going to buy an "extra" car for its mileage, it has to be cost less than the amount of money that you save by using it instead of your "all uses" car. A $12k extra car usually doesn't do that.
A 10mpg vehicle will use 10k gallons over 100k. A 15mpg vehicle uses 6.6k gallons. A 20mpg vehicle uses 5k gallons, 30mpg uses 3.3k, a 40mpg vehicle uses 2.5k, and a 50mpg vehicle uses 2k gallons.
At $4/g, the 10mpg vehicle's gas costs $40k, the 15mpg vehicle's gas costs $26.6k, the 20mpg vehicle's gas costs $20k, 30mpg costs $13k, the 40mpg vehicle's gas costs $10k, and the 50mpg vehicle's gas costs $8k.
Note that gas isn't the only cost - the "gas saver" extra car also has license/registration, insurance, maintenance, time value of money (the gas cost is over time while the purchase cost either isn't, or requires paying interest), etc.
So, if you're already getting 15mpg, the gas savings from an extra vehicle that gets 40mpg are considerably less than $12k.
If you're already getting 20mpg, it's even harder to save money by buying an extra vehicle.
In other words, the guy who wanted a $4k gas saver may have been at the upper end of economic sense - the "extra car to save gas" probably needs to be less than $3k.
Yes, the ability to "rent" big vehicles for occasional usage can let people have smaller "main" cars, but only if the rental cost is sufficiently low. I note that the zip car people seem to have gone the other direction. Hertz and the like charge a significant premium for big vehicles.
And the loss of flexibility is important. I can (and have) gone diving with 15 minutes notice. If I had to rent a car....
And, yes, many families have multiple vehicles. They still have to satisfy simultaneous users so the above analysis applies. (Yes, many can, and do, make do with a "big" and "medium", but that means that a 3rd vehicle to save gas must cost even less than the above suggests because they're already using the big vehicle less than their average.)