For example, the formerly beefcake Landcruiser went from a beastly guzzling v8 in 2021 to a weaker v6 in 2022-2023, and now, in 2024, a weak 2.4L supercharged 4-cyl sipper.
R.I.P. Landcruiser of old, you were an ultimate vehicle in your category.
If you drive a new Tundra or 4runner with a lead foot in the city, you're probably going to get 10-ish mpg. Of course, that's just talking about stock vehicles. Plenty of modifications you can do a car to make it less fuel-efficient ;-)
A car getting 10 MPG consumes, in just 60 miles of driving, the energy equivalent of a household's monthly electricity usage, and can travel less than 200 meters on the energy generated by four hours of running on a treadmill.
Please explain to me how thinking that this is absolutely atrocious speaks to my limited worldview?
Sorry, I didn't state that very well. Permit me to retry.
For a lot of people (I'm not actually one of them; I don't even have a car, but I know many of them), the energy efficiency of their vehicle isn't one of the top concerns — or even a concern at all.
Gasoline is available everywhere; they make enough money that the cost of gas doesn't matter to them. They care more about things like: How comfortable is the car to ride around in? How fast can it go from 0 to 100kph? What is the top speed? Does it look cool? Is it bulletproof? Can it connect to my phone without me fiddling with it? Does it have a premium sound system? And so on.
Their response to your comment would be something like, "Whatever, hippie."
It's literally something that a lot of people don't think about even once. This forum doesn't skew that way, I reckon, but I'm pretty sure sure that the vast majority of people who care about fuel efficiency of vehicles care because their financial situation means they have to think about the cost of gasoline (and that is a lot of people, perhaps most). Then there are some people who care about it because that's just their nature, or because they've thought through the consequences and external effects of these inefficient vehicles (a small sliver of people, although energetic about expressing their opinions).
Do you consider the electrical power usage of your computer's GPU? Given your comment, I suspect you might. There is likewise a sliver of GPU users and enthusiasts who compare the efficiency of GPUs, and think about that when building, say, a gaming PC. But most gaming PC builders do not think about that much, and certainly not enough to sway their purchase (let alone feeling "ashamed"). They just care about how many frames per second they can get in their game, and if the drivers are going to be reliable and games will run well.
That's just how it is. Most people don't care about power efficiency until they have to care, because of the money.
Having said all that, now that I have been forced to think about it, yes, a brand-new vehicle that gets only 10MPG is, in fact, atrocious. Absurd, even.
If I did have one, "ashamed" might be overstating it, but I would at least be a little embarrassed — if I ever thought about it. But most people don't, and I think that is the answer to your question.
