The early 90s was mostly a perfect storm for fuel economy.

You had the computing power available to make use of CAD and develop more aerodynamic designs with less significant overhead (i.e., doing it by hand).

EFI technology had matured and carburetors were broadly defunct, allowing more efficient operation in a broader range of environments.

The US had updated its archaic lighting regulations to allow for more aerodynamic headlight shapes.

A lot of the safety technology that adds weight to modern cars either hadn’t been developed yet or hadn’t trickled down to the average vehicle.

So you had a confluence of more efficient engines, more aerodynamic vehicles, and cars that were still small and relatively lightweight.

Extra cost for no real benefit

The kicker is we already do the “price at point of sale including taxes” thing at gas stations. If it’s $3.09 or whatever per gallon, that’s including state and federal sales tax.

We already see the line item thing on most receipts anyway. We basically do everything except roll the sales tax into the sticker price.

To be fair, if I don’t get off on a tangent I usually end up going around in circles.

Between needing to be able to service warranties on new cars and parts commonality across different models, it makes sense for a manufacturer to contract their suppliers to continue to produce parts outside what’s needed for initial production (to a point).

After all, if a warranty outlier or defect develops down the road, it’s a lot more expensive to reinstall old tooling and restart production than to just have extra parts on hand.

The aftermarket also plays some role, especially when you get into vehicles with longer service life applications (trucks, emergency vehicles, taxis, etc.)

I mean he might have some idea of what he wants to do, no good/sound plan to get there, and enough money to just keep failing forwards. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Like the OceanGate guy. Money and an idea don’t make you a visionary genius mastermind, but they can let you cosplay as one.

I don’t think he ever planned to be bought out the first time.

Per a coworker who has paid much closer attention than me, the “plan” (if you can call it that) was always to build an independent financial system that is presumably less regulated than the current one.

The same coworker believes he bought Twitter solely for its established user base and nothing more. The “free speech” aspect was to attract people who would probably be interested in a deregulated financial system.