Consumers don’t want tiny cheap cars. In the past few years, people have financed progressively more expensive cars over much longer periods, suggesting they don’t want the cheapest options.
Americans view cars as status symbols, not just transport. Hence, car companies sell cars as status symbols, not just utilitarian commodities.
The tragedy of commons is that if everyone bought a lighter car, everyone would be safer, not just the drivers but pedestrians and cyclists as well. Especially if "crash compatibility" was regulated and enforced.
That's, at least, how it seems to me while not actually living in the US - feel free to let me know if I'm completely off.
The great irony of that arms race is that the bus or tram will almost always win.
Suggesting that they have no financial education... The average loan duration is something like 70 months right now, with a mind boggling 7%-10% interest rate.
People make dumb decisions if they don't have the knowledge/education, by the time they're done paying their 40k car loan they paid 60k and the car is worth 20k.
That _cannot_ be the singular or even primary driver of a movement. Car manufacturers don't just make a car in a vacuum. They make what the market is asking for, and _then_ marketing steps in. Very few companies, like apple and Tesla, can foist weird stuff on consumers and have them like it. And even in those cases, they are really just building something they believe to be the faster horse.
There's a reason Tesla wanted to build and SUV and a model 3. There's a key target price point in the US for a car. No amount of marketing can make people buy a car they simply cannot afford.
But after owning it for 2 years I realised totally organically that what I really wanted was almost the same car but for £12,500, with some extra unnecessary features.
I'm so glad VW stepped in and delivered what I had been secretly desiring. A heavier, more complex car at a higher price. Thank you, VW!
And yet here we are and marketing has convinced people in the US to borrow $1.6 trillion to buy cars they cant afford.
Nobody forced these people to take our loans. The auto industry bends to trends, it doesn't create them.
The fact is, with or without marketing, people want nice things. And people have historically been willing to buy them on credit/loans. At least for our current capitalist society, that seems to be ab inherent feature.
I believe there is an ad guy from the 1960's (an old pro copywriter, a Greek, named Teddy) who managed to convince the world of just that.
SWEs view laptops as status symbols, not just tools. Hence, tech companies, like Apple, sell laptops as status symbols, not just utilitarian commodities."
You probably are thinking about a different group of people.