You know a car without any safety features could be even cheaper. Petrol with lead and sulphur is cheaper. Houses with asbestos are cheaper. Why do you feel entitled to a certain price on cars?
That's absurd hyperbole. $25K gas vehicles or $27K Hybrids represent Toyota, not "vehicles without safety features."
Also, you're putting the cart and horse in the wrong order, nobody felt entitled to anything, we were discussing EVs making sense without states needing to push/mandate them which means competitive pricing that's affordable relative to other offerings in the existing market.
Your whole argument feels like a way to shut down discussion.
> $25K gas vehicles or $27K Hybrids represent Toyota, not "vehicles without safety features."
I agree, but I think their point was something along the lines of: gas cars are cheaper, and there are ways to make cars even cheaper than those cars (ex. removing many safety features), so where do you draw the line for how cheap cars should be vs the minimum level of responsibility they should comply with -- safety, environmental, morality, etc.
I'm sure before the government regulated a lot of safety features, had they asked the public if they would want those responsible features forced on them if it was going to drive the base price of cars way up, they too would have said no. But today, it seems absurd in hindsight not to have seat belts, the same way it will probably seem absurd in 35 years that we have minimal environmental regulations in place right now.
That doesn't make it right, but it's an interesting dynamic to think that we've exhausted the low hanging personal safety fruit and now we need to address more environmental safety features.
I think you misunderstood the point there. That $25k gas vehicle would be much cheaper without its required safety features. We are fine with the government mandating an increase in price in order to guarantee safety features. It isn't that much of a stretch to have them mandating an increase in price in order to guarantee zero emissions.
