OmegaPaladin – “There is a trade-off to efficiency, and that is safety. These new vehicles will also cost more – especially plug-in hybrids, with their brutally expensive batteries.”

Total nonsense. I am not talking about hybrid vehicles or any other sort of exotic technology; I am talking about smaller cars (which does not necessarily mean smaller passenger compartments) with smaller, higher-compression, more fuel-efficient engines – the difference between the standard Detroit tin and a Nissan or Volkswagen.