Europe and other places don't face the same problems we do. I just drove 5 and a half hours to my home town from del rio and never passed a town with over 15k people. In the states there is some very serious distances to be crossed with no means to do so.
Not to mention we have things like F-350's ect that require a lot more fuel than those suitcase size cars. And yes we need them. I couldn't pull 35k lbs. of rice seed behind anything less. Not to mention our farm tractors ect sucking down 20 gal an hour. There's a reason why we feed the world and the world doesn't feed us. And we're about to get screwed with our pants on very quickly by this gas and lack of agriculture support. Average farmer age is 56yrs old. In another 10yrs we'll be paying through the nose for food too.