I would argue that their hands were somewhat tied because raising the federal gas tax during a recession would have been an extremely unpopular thing to do regardless of the reasoning. Maybe we should expect our representatives to make the right choices anyway but we would probably still punish them for it.
The IRA has a similar problem, its all climate change 'carrots' because all the various forms of carbon taxes necessary to go the 'stick' route would be deeply unpopular despite probably being more economically efficient. I'm sure in a decade we will be talking about all the bone-headed perverse incentives that came out of it, but I'd rather that than us talk about how we missed the chance to pass the biggest climate bill in US history.
All that said, they definitely still could have crafted better legislation that had fewer side effects than the footprint system they went with.
Hopefully in the next boom time we'll do the sane thing and finally tie the gas tax to inflation, or at least increase it at the same rate as we do federal wages. Making it a fixed amount of pennies is about the dumbest thing we could have done.
As profit in the industry has grown, so too has the amount of available credit. We now see 7 year loans on vehicles becoming more common.
The monthly payments are dictated by the purchase price and interest rate. Guess who controls the interest rates?
But the point you're making is missing something: term of the loan. That's the easy way to get the monthly cost down.
When I said "price" that recognizes the fact that cars are financed. It's like the price of a home that way, you're not disagreeing with anything, you just didn't know what that word meant in this context, for some odd reason.
My case is that manufacturing vehicles is a public good. We can talk about restoring city centers to human beings and I'll agree with you all day, but if you want to make the case that motor vehicles, cars included, are themselves immoral, we don't share enough values to have a productive conversation.
So these companies, to provide this benefit, must comply with the law. Consumers have choice in what to buy, but strictly limited by price tag and availability.
Note that we don't have a cultural trend of buying cars with enormous rotating blades on the bumpers. It's not so much because this is illegal, as none are available for purchase.
The government decided, correctly, that the fleet should be more fuel efficient. All the reasons for this are good. So they did the obvious thing: imposed increasing taxes on gasoline.
Ok, let's back up: no, they passed insane regulations leading directly to the prevalence of SUVs and the increasingly hostile road profile of pickup trucks.
The law allows them less fuel efficiency if they make the wheelbase bigger. That's insane. Shall we apportion some of the blame to the car lobby? Ok. Sure.
Ultimately the government is responsible for the law, and the manufacturers are responsible for following it. End the insanity, and the problem goes away over a decade or so.