I beg to differ and I've been building show cars and Harleys for years. Very familiar with the car business & have owned 2 body shops. Americans do like big cars but that isn't the point. The point is gas will continue to become more expensive the way it always has and we need to and are adjusting. FACT: Prius sales up 38% last year alone. Also smaller cars can be great. My girlfriend just bought a brand new Wolfsburg addition Jetta and it's an absolutely great car. Big inside... highway mileage low to mid 30's.
FACT: American car companies have profit margins built into there small cars (the Aveo is not the only small car... Colbalt... Focus... there are many and you know that.) American small cars just aren't up to the competion from Japan & Germany yet... but they could be.
The rest of what you say is apples to oranges. CVT does save gas over a regular automatic. VVT saves gas overall also. And Hybrids will come down in price as they become more available.. and there has been tax write offs in place to boot.
First, let me tackle the tax write off. I completely disagree with tax breaks for rich people. That's what this is. If we are equal under the law, then there should be no exception where one person pays a tax and another does not. If I get a tax break, you should. If you do, I should. If I do not, you should not. It's amazing to me how we talk about equality, and how rich don't pay enough taxes, and yet here you are advocating exactly that. Just because someone else has more money than me, and can afford to buy an expensive car, then he should get a tax break? If you believe that, don't ever complain about rich not paying taxes again. You are the cause of it.
Sorry, but
10.9% drop in sales of the Prius hybrid over last year.
I never said small cars can't be great. That's all nice and peachy. I may buy a Jetta if they come out with the Diesel. 50 MPG and it's no more expensive than a regular car, I may go for.
GM loses money on every Cobalt last I read. If you can find otherwise, please post. I wager the Focus is the same.
CVT does not save gas. I went to college for automotive technology, I worked through a GM training course, I worked for 2 years at a Cadillac dealership. The information I got straight from GM was CVTs do not save gas. Nor does VVT which is old tech as well. You bought into a marketing gimmick.
If Hybrids do come down in price, great. Remember, companies do not offer options unless they can make serious cash from those options. If they made the same profit margin on a regular car as a Hybrid, why offer the hybrid? So they are going to charge you coin for it. Further, Hybrids require expensive parts, expensive batteries, expensive regen brakes. So major cost cutting break through will have to come about in order for the price to decrease.
But as a warning, I wouldn't put money on that. Very dreamy optimistic people have been saying that about a lot of thing, and it doesn't work out that way. Like the NickelMH battery that Hybrids use... people said oh the price of that will drop as more become available. Oop... the price of Nickel has skyrocketed. The opposite is happening. They said the same about Solar panels, and they haven't come down in price either. They said the same about tons of things, and most have not turned out that way.
Again you just seem bitter and off base. Small cars can be fine safe & affordable cars. I cite the Jetta yet again. By your reasoning no car is a safe car because WOW they might get hit by something bigger... like a Semi. As vehicles across the board get smaller the regular cars on the road start matching up just fine. How many 62 Cadillacs out there now compared to say a Camry or Taurus? 
You seem off base. Look at history. When the CAFE standards were imposed, there were huge safety issues all across the board. After years and years, we finely got it manageable where cars are not 'complete' death traps. Now we are increasing the CAFE standard. I would wager, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
The only other possibility I see is for GM and Ford to almost abandon North American plants, and move operations for all of these type of autos overseas.
And again you miss the point. I was pointing out hybrid technology can be moved upward to larger vehicles. The Yukon is not your run of the mill hybrid. It's still a big boat. Why live in the past. There are plenty of good gas mileage vehicles out there. My Lexus for example. Total luxury... big 5 passenger car... 30 mpg highway. The days of the 17 mpg highway car is toast my friend... need to adjust.
Ok... good point. A over priced, under performing, fiscally inept technology, can be adapted to larger vehicles where it will exemplify the same negative qualities. Oh please please sign me up. With all due respect, if living in the past, means making wise money saving choices, I'll live there for a long time.
WOW dude... windmills have been used for hundreds of years to do things without electricity. And now there are wind farms that charge batteries that produce electricity... where have you been.
The wind mills I'm talking about are the government subsidized connected to the grid, not really helping much, but costing tons of money, useless mills. Not farmer bob with a wind mill charging up his old tractor battery. That's fine. I'm not paying for farmer bobs mill. I am paying for the useless mills.
I'll tell you what won't work. Thinking you'll just continue forever to drive a gas guzzler and not evolve from early 20th century thinking. Hey have you seen these new things they have out now? These little boxes about half the size of a pack of smokes. You talk into them and people somewhere else can talk back to you... it's AMAZING!!!
Nor will factually ignorant posts, devoid of logic or reason, work on convincing me. Auto technology will continue to evolve. But until something that actually works comes about, I'll keep the 82 Buick
