If the goal was to reduce fossil fuel consumption, then fossil fuels should have been slapped with a huge tax.
Immediately the automakers would have been incentivized to produce more efficient vehicles.
Of course, it’s politically impossible to do the right thing due to the general public wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
I think a lot of "environmentally conscious" people don't realize that more and more of these types of environmental regulations will come at some direct cost in terms human-safety.
And also that a surprising number of politicians/activists/people are so committed to the dogma that they don't have any problem with that.
So net result of indirect regulations to decrease fuel consumption is increased fuel consumption, and more dangerous vehicles for everyone to contend with who is not inside as large of a vehicle.
Simply making people pay more for fuel would have incentivized them to prioritize what kind of vehicle to buy, and make it possible for smaller pickups to still exist and/or a rental market for pickups to flourish.
The automakers have determined that this is not practically achievable, and so you can't buy a truck like the old S-10 or a pre-Tacoma Toyota pickup anymore.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
EPA regulation and govt overreach/ unintended consequences are what led to these design changes, not market demand.
The blue-book price for my 12 year old steel-framed truck has gone up every year since I bought it used.
>before they turned into a political/biological/emotional statement piece
The anti-truck crowd, which supported all the regulations that led to the current state of vehicle design, are the ones that made this a political/emotional issue, whether they realize it or not.
>In other words, the regulations put in place to get better mileage out of vehicles also led to an increase in truck size. “There was kind of an incentive to maybe stretch the wheelbase a couple of inches and set the tires maybe an inch [farther] apart, because you get a bigger platform and slightly smaller target,” said Edmunds. “Now, the bigger vehicle would be heavier and might use more fuel, so it’s not as easy as just doing that. But certainly there was a feeling that if they did need to make it bigger to accommodate more passengers, the fuel economy target wouldn’t be onerous. They could do it.”
That statement is not very convincing that the regulations lead to bigger trucks.