Good Car Fuel Mileage Is Cool
In the future it will be socially unacceptable to drive a vehicle with bad car fuel mileage. You'll be looked down upon like you're a cousin kissing, uncultured neanderthal. Your friends will talk about you behind your back. When you park your bad car mileage vehicle on the road it might be attacked by green extremists. Driving good car fuel mileage vehicles is slowly turning into the new cool.Many people think this change in social thinking is further along than I do. I think its still in its infancy. The day of not being able to drive your V8 for fear of ridicule is not here yet and it won't happen for a while. I actually don't think we're as green as we like to think we are. I think we're fundamentally selfish and still think of ourselves, not of the planet.
An example of our selfishness is when gas prices shot sky high about a year ago. In Australia V8 car sales rose to all time highs. At first this seems counter intuitive but people were worried that it could be the last time they could own a V8. They thought this for two reasons. First of all, with no end in sight to the rising gas prices they thought if they don't buy a V8 with bad car fuel mileage now they won't be able to afford to do so in the future. Secondly they thought that maybe car makers would stop building V8 cars altogether.
Currently when we think about car fuel mileage I believe we're thinking about our wallet. Internet searches for "car fuel mileage" rise and fall as gas prices rise and fall. We're thinking about saving cash not saving the planet. When gas prices are low we're pretty happy with our poor car fuel mileage. I honestly think the majority of people won't buy fuel efficient cars for the planets sake alone.
When the Toyota Prius first came out, movie stars and entertainers flocked to purchase it. Because they wanted to save the planet? Not for most, whose garages also contained Hummers and Ferrari's with awful car fuel mileage. They did it because it was suddenly cool. And this has driven economical cars to new heights in terms of coolness. If you look around the largest cities in the world, the young & wealthy are often driving the latest hybrid or small fuel efficient car. Vehicles with excellent car fuel mileage are becoming extremely cool.
High car fuel mileage vehicle sales are going to continue to climb compared to total car sales. This will be because of rising fuel prices of course, but also there's going to be a social shift in thinking which makes it socially unacceptable to drive non fuel efficient cars. Rather than this social shift occurring because people want to save the planet, I think it will be because people don't want to look uncool! Either way the end result will be better average car fuel mileage.
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