> Nobody wants to drive what feels like a Prius

I'm quite happy with my Prius. I think it's a skill issue. Roof racks and a tow hitch on a normal sized car handle the vast majority of cases where people imagine they need a truck or SUV. But I remember a young couple showing up to buy a mattress from my roommate, and being flummoxed when the mattress wouldn't fit inside their Subaru Forester with built-in roof rails. I had to show them how to tie it on the roof. They never did return my rope... If you can only imagine putting things inside the vehicle or in the bed of a pickup truck, then having a truck or a big SUV must seem essential. What makes it even weirder is that the Prius has more interior space than a lot of SUVs.

> light-duty vehicles are unpopular

I think by "light duty vehicle" the OP meant ordinary passenger vehicles. Under US law, essentially every vehicle with four or more wheels, under 10,000 lbs gross weight and no more than 10 passenger seating positions counts as one: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.3 That includes everything from smaller vehicles like the Mazda Miata or Mini Cooper all the way to large vehicles like the Cadillac Escalade or a Ford F-250.

Correct. I was referring to how almost everyone seems to want an SUV or a Truck. We can discuss the merits of that, or why that is, another time - however, forcing people to go back to small cars would breed resentment and turn EVs into a national political issue overnight.

Edit: And by "force," I mean "price out of the market" relative to gas-powered vehicle prices.

Almost every company making EVs these days has truck or SUV models planned if they do not already have them for sale. Even the most recent round of US subsidies for electric vehicles favors trucks and SUVs over cars by having a signficiantly higher price cap for those types of vehicle to qualify for the subsidy vs cars. For better or worse, the EV transition (in the US) is not going to force people to buy smaller cars.

I agree its an uphill battle against the lizard brain. Onward. Can't fix the human, can only engineer around it.

I actually even reject that premise, because that comes with an implicit "I know better than you, because I read the science."

Science is only a small factor in everyday decision making for most people. Art is not scientific. "Feel" is not scientific. The feel of "safety" is not scientific. Etc.

I'm unsure if the climate cares how one feels about science. Like gravity, the hard stop is ambivalent to a position on the topic.

When 37% of Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency expense, there are other things that need to be fixed first. Make Americans feel like they can afford more expensive vehicles - and they will buy expensive vehicles.