You know whose hurt by high prices? Poor people. Guess whose not hurt by them? Rich people.

Exactly. Based on this, and based on OP’s other responses, OP is basically saying “I want poor people to suffer so rich people can make more money” (off of new car sales with more efficient engines, or electric).

So my question for them is: is the income divide not great enough? If not, when will it be?

That’s mainly a problem for car-brained people. There are other modes of transportation, you know.

People in dense cities who only drive are car brained. People who live where there are zero other options are simply getting to the store or to work the only way they can.

People who live where there are [legitimately] zero other options – i.e., actually rural – are a negligible minority. 80% of the population has no excuse, and trying to “whatabout the other 20%” is a strawman argument.

80% sounds very high. Do you have any data to support that? I see rough estimates closer to 50/50. Mass transit isn’t viable outside of Metro areas and a lot of people live far from big cities.

www.census.gov/…/urban-rural-populations.html

Despite the increase in the urban population, urban areas, defined as densely developed residential, commercial, and other nonresidential areas, now account for 80.0% of the U.S. population, down from 80.7% in 2010. This small decline was largely the result of changes to the criteria for defining urban areas implemented by the Census Bureau, including raising the minimum population threshold for qualification from 2,500 to 5,000. The rural population — the population in any areas outside of those classified as urban — increased as a percentage of the national population from 19.3% in 2010 to 20.0% in 2020.

They’ve even tried to prop up the rural population counts by changing the definition, but it still only manages to be 20% anyway.

You can live in a densely populated city and still need to travel long distances regularly though… Especially if you’re poor.

But the key is that that isn’t a legitimate need because driving is the only reasonable way to solve the problem; it’s an illegitimate need caused by a failure of politicians to allow correct city planning and infrastructure.

I work in many different locations. Some of them remote. I often bring large equipment with me. More than that, my work days tend to be anywhere from 10 hours to 16 hours long, typically with a lot of manual labor included. Some of my commutes can be 2 hours one way. I’ve worked plenty of those 16 hour days with 4 hours of driving added on top. The thought of riding a bike or running the public transit gauntlet (which, will typically double or quadruple the commute times in my area) is repulsive.

I think you’re massively over-simplifying this issue.

Guess what: you’re that special snowflake who has a legitimate need to drive. The vast majority of people are not like you.

Just like pearl-clutching about rural people, bringing up arguments like yours to try to make excuses for why the majority “have to” drive is bad-faith whataboutism.