Now if your argument is that the industry is at fault for not having trucks with better fuel efficiency, I agree.
They make them because people buy them. They don't drag down the company's average gas mileage as trucks (and other big, heavy vehicles such as SUV's and Hummers)
are exempt from the CAFE standards.
They make what sells, and what squeaks under EPA requirements.
There's a couple ways (for the Government) to reduce the sales of such low-mileage vehicles. One is to directly mandate that they must have better gas mileage. The other is to raise the price of (taxes on) gas. The latter happened (due to market forces rather than taxes) for a short time with $4 per gallon gas, and that definitely reduced sales of such large vehicles for personal use. But I heard a recent news story that sales of large, low-mileage vehicles are up substantially from a year ago.
Automotive technology HAS BEEN improving over the last several decades even as gas mileage "cafe" standards haven't really gone up much, even for smaller cars. The improvements have been in making smaller cars that meet the gas standards and have higher acceleration than earlier models, rather than in making cars that still perform as before but get even better mileage than the gas standards mandate.
Even with smaller cars it's the buyer's attitude and the price of gas, and "what people can live with." The manufacturers just make what they know will sell, and better acceleration sells a lot more cars than does better gas mileage.
Um, yes. It's an urban car - built for commuters that live in cities and which today spend parts of their days sitting in gasdrinkers.
Part of the problem is, of course, that it's not a guy's car. You'll never get guys out of suv's and into that thing. Not until the petrol runs out, and the Tesla comes down in price.
I agree, it's attitude more than anything else. Here's an interesting article with a provocative title:
Why the New 35-MPG Fuel Economy Standard Is a Bad Idea
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/4235773
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The problem is that gasoline is too cheap, and it always has been. Diesel, too. I know, that might sound preposterous to someone who's just dropped the best part of a day's pay to fill up the pickup, but hear me out. Really.
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When gas is more expensive, the marketplace will realign the mix of vehicles on the road, as it has in Europe and most of the rest of the world, where gasoline can cost double what it does here. We just haven't reached that point yet.
Around the same time, I had a VW GTI that got in the low to mid 40's on the cheapest unleaded. It was a stick. Where'd they all go?
Dunno, but I don't think manual transmissions beat out automatics anymore in gas mileage, as was always true decades ago. Modern automatics have up to 6 or more "speeds" (gear ratios), and have computers that calculate efficient shift points.
Of course, it's all designed to give better acceleration while maintaining the current "good" gas mileage, rather than to increase gas mileage any further, but you get the idea.
