Cars used to weigh /less/. The weight is the price of all of our drastically improved safety systems. Either way, you're stuck with a lot of that infrastructure if you want to move food and other goods between cities. All of that is the price of flexibility in our logistics.
The great wonder of our time is that we can do all of that _and_ start the long process of deprecating using fossil fuels. Now, if we can build the cars to last much longer than we currently do, we're really starting to win.
> and better/more public transportation.
I feel like there's a hidden trade off here as well. I think the "better" and "more available" you make public transportation, the less dense your ridership gets on certain lines, and the less likely you are to truly gain any efficiency across the system.