With the US government deep in Detroit’s pocket, we’ll never have anything close, here.

i think it’s more like the US populace is deeply brainwashed by Truck and SUV marketing. If we (collectively) wanted efficient vehicles and purchased based on that, that’s what they’d make. But they make sure that’s NOT what we want.

Yes and no? The reason for that marketing is that they can sell pickups and SUVs at way higher margins because they’re seen as luxurious. Because they have higher margins, every non-pickup sold represents a pickup or SUV not sold to the car company and dealerships. This is dumb as shit, but its how business types think.

The SUV version with the same engine gets 50 mpg, but costs 60% more.

well yeah they are able to sell SUVs an higher margins because they have conviced us that’s what we want. If we wanted smaller efficient cars they could sell those at higher margins instead. supply and demand, except they are artificially creating the demand.

Official dealership lobbying.

A plug in hybrid and for a certain distance, I’d presume. You can’t really get 104mpg on a highway with a normal hybrid. I at least can’t really imagine it exists.

It does, and its not a plugin.

youtube.com/watch?v=2SyONV_EruQ

Tldr, the ICE engine produces barely enough torque to move the car from a standstill while producing enough hp to charge the batteries, and letting the much more powerful electric engines do the work, whereas previous hybrids don’t go all-in on efficiency, letting the engine provide an appreciable amount of torque to the wheels.

That’s pretty insane and awesome. I’m surprised I missed this. I love “driving 4 answers”. That guy is awesome.