Part of being rich is that you become shielded from the realities of life and unaware of what is going on in the real world.
The USA is currently embroiled in overseas conflict because of the profligate use of oil by Americans. This has involved other nations in the cause as well.
I disagree with Australia's involvement in the Iraq war, but since we are I think this gives me the right to criticise the US.
I am astounded at what americans accept as frugal motor vehicles. 35 mpg!! You have to be kidding. The little Volkswagen of the 1950s was getting that level of fuel economy, and by 1970 I had a little Fiat (500cc) that was getting 60 miles per gallon.
I am currently driving a 30 year old car that gets 6 litres per 100 kilometres, which is the same as the modern hybrids. (equates to 50mpg)
Ah, you say, but we can't determine what manufacturers make.
Yes you can. Change your politics.
The role of government is not to govern the people, but to act on behalf of the people. Let me stress that - act on behalf of THE PEOPLE. Not the corporations, not big business.
So it is legitimate and required that business be regulated. What the corporations want is a free open unregulated market, which essentially means having the ability to plunder at will. Freebooting, robbing, piracy are the words used to describe such behaviour.

Take the example of the film "Who killed the electric car?" GM justified its scrapping of the electric car because although it had a waiting list of 40,00 only 400 committed to buy. (These figures are not exact, but of the correct orders of magnitude.)
What the film did not highlight was that it was not in fact a pruchase they were offering but lease deals. Most people don't want to lease their cars. They want to buy them outright.

I don't think electric cars will solve the problems of global warming, in fact in the short term shifting to electric cars will aggravate the problem. But the answer to manaufacturers not delivering fuel efficient cars is to regulate. For example just change the regulations regarding registering cars.
If your car does not provide fuel efficiency of at least 0.1 litres/100 kilometres (490 mpg) then you may not register it to drive on our roads.
Experimental cars are getting this level of fuel efficiency, but no-one will build them because it is not economically viable.
US citizens instead of thinking that they live in the godzone and that nothing could better what the United States do, would do better to look outside and start following others instead of bullying the rest of the world to follow them.