I don't see how wanting these features in a vehicle is a "problem", per se. Yes, we want to be able to bring our entire families and enough stuff with us to enj

I don't see how wanting these features in a vehicle is a "problem", per se. Yes, we want to be able to bring our entire families and enough stuff with us to enjoy an outing. Yes, that means a slightly bigger vehicle; but yes, we need to be able to use it to commute as well. This desire has lead to the creation of a thriving segment of the market where you can get a vehicle for ~25-35k that gets reasonable gas mileage while offering AWD and a lot of space. It works well for a lot of people - jack of all trades. Only urbanite bugmen with no families really see this as a "problem", because that type of person never actually has all the seats in the car occupied, or bothers to load a boat on top and drive out to go camping and fishing somewhere, or otherwise actually utilizes the capabilities of the vehicle. For you, there are small electric jellybean cars. I would have one of those too, but insurance costs make that prohibitive. Give me an insurance-follows-driver model so I can own a shitty cheap old pickup, a family SUV, and an electric commuting jellybean car, and I will happily do that and use less fuel overall.