As a comment to the Chevy Volt announcement of 230 mpg, Chartguy says:

"At $40K each, with a battery range of 40 miles, that's $1000/mile of range.

Who would buy this? Maybe somebody who commutes less than 20 miles a
day, over relatively level terrain, and cares more about image than
money. 

Advanced calculus won't come up with a way for the Volt to make economic sense.

"Houston, er, Detroit, we have a problem!""

People says stuff like this all the time. I want to take this thinking to its logical conclusion:

The Nissan Versa in base configuration with air conditioning costs $11k. It gets 28 mpg. 

I did some rough calculations. If we assume 10k miles/year driving, and we want to keep the car for 5 years, then:

-- At $3/gallon for gas, a 50 mpg car only makes economic sense if it costs less than $14,000 (a 230 mpg car makes sense at $17,000)

-- At $6/gallon for gas, a 50 mpg car only makes economic sense if it costs less than $17,000 (a 230 mpg car makes sense at $22,000)

There are no cars that meet these criteria. So:

-- Everyone should buy the Nissan Versa

or

--  People are choosing cars mostly based on non-economic criteria (or at least non-mpg-based economic criteria)

Since the Nissan Versa base represents far less than 1% of vehicle sales, I conclude the latter is the case. Chartguy's purported problem really isn't a problem.