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I already cited examples... Audi pushed the A2 for years without success. Honda has been pushing and pushing to keep their engine sizes low. The Fit is an economical car, and yet sales are suffering as people go on to bigger, more powerful ones.
The only way to make people buy is to take a hit on profit for the initial batch (or batches) to get them interested. And even then, with the Prius, they still needed government incentives to sweeten the deal before it finally went mainstream.
GM tried, and failed. Most pure electrics of the time failed because of the high cost of the battery systems of the time. The EV1 would have cost over $100k... over a decade ago. It's only with better battery life and controllers that we are seeing pure electrics dip under the $40k barrier.
Not that I'm accusing GM of being ultra-efficient at self-sabotage (and there are many that claim that the EV1 program was one big self-sabotaged publicity stunt embarked upon by GM as a way of forcing the removal of the ZEV CARB mandate), but really, there are easier ways to lobby against legislation than spending over a billion dollars on a handful of cars...
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