People want one car to be the jack of all trades. Big enough for 7 people and carry a house's worth of furniture in one go while towing a boat, and travel 800Km on a charge. So it ends up being truck sized, 2500+Kg, to carry 1 person on their 5Km commute to work 99% of the time.
But it would be a death trap to drive around other 2000kg vehicles, and it wouldn't be comfortable.
>5Km commute
Almost no one in the US has a commute that short.
If that's a death trap around the "real" vehicles, should cyclists and pedestrians expect 90% mortality rate should they ever decide to go out on the streets? Is that normal?
> Almost no one in the US has a commute that short.
It's all relative. You just multiply that (avoidable) waste.
Do you really need to drive a "tank" just to survive? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21609767
People with families who regularly take them out aren't going to fit in a subcompact particularly if anyone is tall or there are car seats.
You could design a very lightweight car that could hold 4-5 people comfortably with 1 or 2 carseats and fit tall drivers. But no one does--it's not really an option.
You could buy and maintain multiple vehicles for different purposes, but it's expensive especially when you consider the additional insurance.
>100Kg dingy or a 2500Kg fat-mobile?
No obviously not, I'm saying that 2600kg vs 2300kg is basically irrelevant. And that when you say 2300kg is a waste of energy that statement only makes sense in the context of specific design goals.
>If that's a death trap around the "real" vehicles, should cyclists and pedestrians expect 90% mortality rate
No but motorcycles have an almost 30x higher fatality rate per mile driven than cars do, so I'd call that a death trap.
It's a prisoners dilemma. Everyone else is driving 2000kg+ cars. To make very lightweight vehicles that are safe around those huge vehicles it's very expensive. The solution is regulation, not begging individuals to drive smaller cars.
This looks like a solution in search of a problem. People are buying stuff they don't need then finding a good justification for it (from their perspective). But almost anything can be justified this way. Even driving an 18-wheeler will have advantages you never thought about but this doesn't negate the downsides. Mainly that you carry around 4000-5000lbs (over 2000Kg) of metal mainly just to move 1 or 2 people and nothing more. This is a lot of wasted fuel and a lot of space taken in the street.
Coal also has advantages but few people would dare defend it with this argument.