There’s some truth to that – remember the surveys where parents said that they could imagine driving an SUV but not a minivan if they divorced & were dating again? – but they were also subsidized. If the price of gas wasn’t artificially low, or they had to meet the same safety and pollution standards as everything else, they’d be less popular. We did at least close the Hummer tax write-off, but we should be doing more on the safety front since SUV drivers reversed a decades-long run of fatality reductions.
I used to drive a sedan and it felt like I was dropping down on entry and climbing out on exit. Along came kids and I've been driving a mini-van instead ever since.
One thing I really like about the van (Honda Odyssey) is that you step slightly up to enter and step down to exit. Very comfortable. And this is on a car that's so low to the ground (good for little kids and old dogs) that it's like a snow plow if there's more than a few inches of snow.
I want something lifted more than a sedan so I step up to enter and also has more ground clearance for snow, potholes, rough roads, etc. But that doesn't mean 44" tires with a lift kit.
Not sure where you live but the popular models around here are the 15mpg types and the drivers are … not driving efficiently so they're unlikely to be reaching that. You will see a few of the higher-MPG models like a RAV4 but at the end of the day it's a physics problem: all of that extra weight, non-aerodynamic design, and over-powered engine add up.
Now, it's true that someone dropping all of the extra cash for one is less price sensitive but we're still talking a pretty big difference going from mileage in the teens to the 40+mpg a decent car gets. High gas prices would get at least some people to reconsider, especially since you have to pay a fair premium as well.
Ignoring for a second that of the top 3 best selling SUVs in the US, the top two share a platform with sedans that weigh nearly the same amount, have the same engine options, and have very similar Cds ...
None of those physics issues are specific to SUVs. Even full size SUVs end up on shared platforms with full size sedans, with "reasonably close" weights (essentially take a well optioned sedan and it weighs around what the base SUV version does)
With the focus on all of these automakers on modular platforms, we've reached the point where even the largest SUVs could meet the exact same standards their sedan counterparts do and not really change at all.
