You should probably be angry at the CAFE regs too. It's what (supposedly) had prevented all the manufacturers from selling a small pickup, which is why Ford stopped selling the Ranger. They basically switched to making the F150, then making it larger (actually, I have suspected without proof that what they did was move models downline - sometime post 1990s, the F150 became really larger - the size of that era's F250, and the F250 became the size of the F350 - Ford's re-introduction of the Ranger? About the size of the 1990s F150...again, I have no proof of this).

Lots of people want a small pickup like the Ranger (Toyota also followed along - compare sizes of the Tacoma of the 90s vs today - I suspect they all changed in size), but they can't buy one. It has something to do with CAFE rules, plus some weird calculation of area - so the larger the vehicles footprint, the more it'll pass or offset or something; I'm not sure how it works.

But something changed in the 1990s - and now we have this.

Yeah I remember something vague about CAFE and EPA rules from that era. It created a lot of perverse incentives do to poor planning. Like Hummer H2s were classified as work utility trucks and didn't have to adhere to the tight emissions rules of smaller vehicles. So you had soccer moms and realtors slap a magnetic sign on the back and, TADA!, commercial vehicle. And your "work truck" with heated leather seats was now eligible for all kinds of tax deductions.

The 500e is an underwhelming compliance vehicle but they seem to have already changed their mind considering that next year the Fiat 500 won't even be available as a gas model, it'll be electric only.