I'm painfully aware that I'm a minority in terms of the social acceptance of small size, vehicles that is. Personally, I do think small vehicles can have all the creature comforts and safety of large ones. My previous car was a 2003 MINI Cooper S, and stiff sports suspension aside (on purpose), it was the best vehicel by far I have ever driven, in terms of seat comfort, ergonomics, creature comfort, and for many reasons I felt much safer in it than in much larger vehicles (not just active safety, but the way it was built, 6 airbags, etc..). In terms of driver comfort and space, I'm sorry to say it far outranked my beloved Pipsqueak II. I do agree with you that by and large it would be nice to allow people to chose what they prefer. However, there are obvious limits to that idea, as we would for example not allow people to drive tanks on public roads (ok, we do, but they are called SUVs for political correctness, but you get what I mean). And yes, mass matters in terms of energy required to accelerate, largely not relevant at highway cruising, but size does matter for highway cruising, since larger vehicles create more drag, and require larger tires, which create more drag, etc.... Generally, size and mass are corellated afterall.
The last point is interesting, and I'm glad you bring it up. I don't know enough about the development cost of the Pipsqueak and HSD, and when most of those efforts were started vs when Toyota started making major profits from trucks and SUVs. I agree, in some ways it is disappointing that Toyota is pushing trucks and SUVs as much as hybrids. I would feel better about my Pipsqueak II if it hadn't been developed using profits from guzzlers. Still, it's better than nothing!
Good post though Wayne, thank you!