The author of the editorial says not once, but twice that decades of cheap gas encouaged people to buy large inefficient vehicles.  Maybe this is just me, but I can't understand how the author can think that.  When electricity was cheaper, that didn't encourage me to leave all the lights on downstairs when I went to sleep upstairs.  It didn't encourage me to leave the lights on during the day for now reason.  The only thing that relatively cheap gas did was it didn't discourage people.  I like semantics.  There is a big difference between "not like"'ing something and "dislike"'ing it.  Similarly, something that doesn't discourage me doesn't necessarily encourage me.

Take a look at the big gas guzzlers, and compare them against say a Geo Metro.  The sticker price on the entry level guzzler would have been at least 2x more than theMmetro was.  However the metro didn't come with all the great niceities and features that an Escape has (and that's one of the lower guzzling SUV's), and thus the only people who would buy a Metro are the people who are looking for the cheapest car.

It's the auto industry which has upsold inefficiency.  Up until the Smart car, there's been no high end efficient car in North America which was made to help drive demand towards efficiency.  The efficient cars were pushed into the corner and forgotten.  The more people wanted to keep up with the Jones, the more people had to sacrifice to efficiency, not just sticker price.

They have a quote from Ford's CEO saying that the era of cheap gas is over.  Well, what's Ford doing?  When they have a comfortable car which gets at least 40mpg and one can get all the seat-warming-demand-driving options, I'll believe that they actually care.  Until then, Ford is duckspeaking.