I'm super in favor of smaller transportation and in fact don't own a car, but there are a lot of practical reasons you're ignoring. The size of an SUV isn't suc

I'm super in favor of smaller transportation and in fact don't own a car, but there are a lot of practical reasons you're ignoring. The size of an SUV isn't such that it only helps in moving compared to a golf-car. There aren't golf-cart sized vehicles that are road-legal in the US and if there are, they're not well-known so who would think to buy one? Golf-carts would actually be less safe on roads where others are driving SUVs (there's a tragedy of the commons here but it's not impractical for each person making that choice). If you need a full-sized car 10% of the time, then you have to buy a golf-cart AND a full-sized car, so it'll always be more expensive to have a golf cart until there are viable alternative ways to access a full-sized car (ZipCar, I suppose). Current golf cart-sized vehicles are mostly open-air and do poorly in inclement weather.