@Rufus_T_Firefly Well, the reality is that the automobile market is largely made up of an oligopoly, there’s fierce competition since the ability to sell a car to an individual is difficult when that person owns a recent car, but at the same time, few of the automobile companies compete directly with each other, which is why the race is actually to the bottom. Engineering and design has never been better, yet cars these days require more babysitting and don’t last particularly long, and that’s on purpose—there’s no reason for them too. Each car company monopolizes its own little niche market and has little direct competition, just other complimentary competition. We have nearly one car per person in the USA, so that’s a saturated market. People aren’t first time car-owners too often, these companies have to be able to continue moving 10 million vehicles or so a year to people who already own vehicles. Markets like China aren’t wealthy enough for people to buy cars en masse and there’s less demand for cars in other wealthy places in the world, like western Europe.
For what it’s worth, Hummer is gone. =)
However, the automotive companies aren’t going to make decisions for their customers, and it’s arguably not their place to do so. They’re not going to say “I refuse to make you a gas guzzling car”—remember that people like these cars. People like big SUVs. They sell like crazy. The Ford Explorer has been one of the best selling cars in the world for almost two decades, and SUVs are still the craze. This stupid “crossover” fad is living proof of that. People don’t like guzzling gas, but if you think they’re going to give up using their military grade roving land base to drop the kids off at school, commute to work on a highway, or pick up groceries, you’re going to have to pry it from their cold-dead fingers. It is really okay for a company to decide that people shouldn’t be allowed to drive them, or is it the responsibility of the people to choose to do something for the environment? Making social decisions by controlling the availability of a bad product is questionable.