Everybody knows about the suffering the animal industry inflicts on billions of cows, chicken and pigs.
The awareness of these problems does not seem to lead to widespread and lasting changes in behavior.
The taste of a burger and the sensation of driving a powerful car seems to trump moral considerations for a majority of humans.
As an example: Green party members in Germany are the ones who fly the most
And nowadays I and many people in this group are probably adopting the mindset of "well, we're all going to die and it's too late to change anything anyway!".
Although actions like "paper straws please!" don't really have that huge of an effect anyway, it just fools social media activists to think they're helping...
It seems the change will come when it comes through societal shaming, like smoking in the USA. But it'll be a long time before people look down at someone saying "oh your car is still internal combustion?"
I also would like to stop eating meat, but I find my "addiction" to meat consumption to be unlike anything else. I could give up coffee and alcohol no sweat but meat is like a whole other level.
Realistically, it seems to me that much of the economy and the way cities and populations work and interact need to be redesigned from the ground up to have a much smaller footprint...
Today's F150 is made out of mostly aluminum - not steel.
Today's F150 only comes in 4 and 6 cylinder models. 8 cylinder was dropped, and I think the smaller engines are turbocharged to make up for the difference (what if anything this does for emissions or fuel usage, I am not certain).
There are probably more than a few other differences as well that might make the vehicles objectively better than their forebears.
That isn't to say they are better than other options, just that they are possibly and likely better than what they used to be - but are still frequently used as "scare fodder" for a public who doesn't generally follow or understand how the vehicle has changed.
That's incorrect, you can definitely still spec it with a 5.0L V8. The twin turbo V6 is the range topping engine, however. And it isn't especially fuel efficient unless you never ask it to do anything hard. We have an F150 with the ecoboost 3.5L and it's fantastic when towing our RV, but it gets 10 mpg while doing so.
In the end you can't really get around physics. Heavy pickup, takes a lot of fuel to make it move, even if you try to reduce pumping losses with smaller engines.
Should be interesting to see the adoption rates in urban settings. Rural would be more difficult for long haul applications, but a contractor traveling 50-100 miles a day in a metropolitan area could easily go electric.
During the recession and auto industry bailout, Ford was the only auto company to almost immediately repay their TARP funding and was also giving out loans to people. They were practically unaffected and didn't even need the TARP funding in the first place.
Clearly, not everyone believes in the idea of climate change. (In fact, if that factoid is correct, a plurality of automobile consumers don't? That's a "wow" moment for me.)