Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Having 2 seats is NOT a compromise, it's a design feature that is very much wanted by a segment of the buying public. Seen any 4-seat Miatas or Lotuses lately? Nor can I think of any great functionality which the Insight lacks that I'd actually want. Maybe map pockets in the doors?
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It
is a compromise though. Two-seat cars can only carry two people, and because of this have
never sold in large numbers. The Miata is a drop in the bucket in terms of Mazda's yearly sales-- 8,591 cars out of 319,184 in 2015 in the US; Mazda has never sold more than 17,000 Miatas in a year. Lotus peaked at 2604 cars sold in 2007, about twice as many as they sold in Europe that year; last year, they sold 908 cars worldwide.
It should go without saying, but we here on this site are not representative of the preferences of the car-buying public as a whole, so arguing that compromises we would be fine with should be adopted by OEMs as a matter of course isn't very productive; they aren't going to do that because there isn't a business case for it. Honda already demonstrated that with the original Insight, which fell far short of its sales expectations precisely because Honda misjudged the market by introducing a two-seat hybrid that fell to the four-seat Prius, which outsold it more than 10-to-1 the year it was brought to the US, and more than 148-to-1 by the time Honda finally killed the Insight. It's fine that the Insight works for you, but the vast majority of people--whom Honda wants to sell cars--don't feel the same way, so you aren't likely to get another one. If that means we get cars like the Ioniq instead, which are as efficient (more efficient, going by EPA rating) but less space-compromised, that's fine by me.