Comment by cosmic_cheese

I dunno, as someone who was raised in a pretty rural area and has since lived in both cities and suburbs, I think the need for long distance driving is dramatically overstated.

From my rural hometown, the drive to varying degrees of civilization (just big enough to have a small shopping center up to the state capital) is about 25 and 75 miles, respectively. Cities sized in between are around 40-50mi out. The drive to the nearest tiny town for groceries and such is about 2 miles.

I currently live in a suburb and everything one might need, including an international airport, is within a 30mi radius, with the majority of that being within a 5mi radius.

With that in mind and remembering that the bulk of the population lives in cities or their surrounding metro areas, "city cars" are viable for more people than they aren't. Sometimes they'd be better suited as secondary vehicles dedicated to errands, which at first glance might seem more expensive, but the dramatically better fuel economy of e.g. a tiny hybrid or even plain gas car quickly adds up, and in states with cheap electricity combined with scheduled charging at off-peak times, the scales are tilted even further if you have a plug-in hybrid or full EV. The up-front cost is higher, but you quickly make that back from not having to haul the big gas hungry SUV or truck around all over the place.