Very interesting article.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/07/23/070723ta_talk_surowiecki
The very, very short version: Although only a small percentage of people make the choice to buy more fuel efficient vehicles, a large majority of people are in favor of higher fuel efficiency standards. The author discusses why this might be.
[Side note: The first paragraph talks about the industry being resistant to change, to the point of declaring the death of the industry itself:
"In the nineteen-twenties, Alfred Sloan, the president of General Motors, insisted that the company could not make windshields with safety glass because doing so would harm the bottom line. In the fifties, auto executives told Congress that making seat belts compulsory would slash industry profits. When air bag came along, Lee Iacocca told Richard Nixon that “safety has really killed all our business. "
This same cycle has played out, and is playing out now, in the music ("record") industry. I think something similar is happening with real estate and the emergence of online tools which, as the Freakonomics authors would say, reduce the information asymmetry.]