Agree. One can argue about whether it's the fault of the manufacturers "convincing" the consumer that they need those things, or whether it's consumer demand being what it is and the mfrs just selling what folks are wanting to buy. None of this stuff would sell (including the $100k pickups) if people were not choosing to spend their/the bank's money on them -- no one is forced to do that. Although small wagons and diesel engines and such are not prevalent in the marketplace, they have existed as alternatives over the years when automakers have experimented with what might have interest. (Beyond TDIs, thinking about GM's Cruze and Equinox diesels, Jeep's CRD models, etc.) None have found a big audience. We can say options are limited for things outside the mainstream, but they're not nonexistent; alternatives do come and go. The fact that the public mostly gives them a shrug is what I think gets us where we are. At some point the automakers can't be blamed for producing the products that sell, like any business needs to.
As you point out, cheap fuel is a huge driver of this, since unlike folks in Europe/elsewhere, those on this continent don't have as much price incentive to be smart about what they drive. (Though I would argue that gas and diesel here are still plenty expensive enough to make a big difference in folks' monthly finances if they are putting a lot of miles on a Tahoe vs a Jetta so there should be more respect for efficiency than there is.) Needless to say, cranking up fuel prices to send an economic signal that will change consumer choice is political suicide so we'll never see that done intentionally.
Availability of extreme long term auto financing is also part of the picture here, I think, but that's a different conversation.
We talked about this in another thread already, but the other key point when it comes to EV's, IMHO, is that not all of them are created equal. I don't think it's fair to compare a "heavy EV" to a Polo, any more than it's fair to compare a Suburban to a Polo. What we lack here for EV choices is the same thing that we have always lacked for ICE vehicle choices: excellent products in the smaller/lighter end of the range that find wide enthusiasm from consumers. In the ICE world the benefit is they use fewer materials to build and use less fuel in operation; in the EV world, it's far less use of those rare minerals, which can be spread out over three or four small 100mi range cars vs one Silverado EV or Cybertruck, and then less consumption of electricity in operation, less hogging of charging resources, etc. Those smaller options -- call them the Polo TDIs of the EV world -- have existed in the market, actually were more or less the most prevalent variants for a while there (Leafs, e-Golfs, Fiats, Focuses, Sparks, etc) but never sold well and mostly failed quickly and disappeared.... Whereas heavier and more wasteful options have found big markets. Sounds familiar eh.
New car buyers are either dropping a massive amount of cash and/or signing up for a lot of interest under financing, on something that will depreciate quickly. I think part of their unspoken/unthought logic is that if they're gonna accept all that financial pain, at least they want to buy something that will happily perform for ANYTHING they MIGHT conceivably do. They're not buying the most logical means of getting to work and back -- they're buying something that has the ground clearance and AWD to get through the one snowy day or trip to a trailhead they might see in a year, or to tow the one heavy trailer they'll ever tow, or to take the 3000 mile road trip in their EV that they'll do once during the years they own it. It's the same sickness whether we're talking gassers or diesels or EVs.
. Because of "modifications" many used vehicles were typically exported. After that they removed them before export. The export or destruction part isn't that uncommon, even UPS does it too.
