This thread title is unfortunately about what "you think will" not "you hope and wish and pray will", so super hard disagree. Electric cars are actually going bigger to account for huge batteries, and heavier because of them. Given that's the upswing I find it hard to predict a sudden shift to smaller cars.

The only way it happens (and 20 years is a very long time, so it's possible) is if cars become so expensive and mostly subscription model based like everything else, that car ownership goes down. If driverless electric cars become fleet vehicles in cities, you'd definitely see smaller cars becoming more common to have more on the road and privately replace public infrastructure because we can't invest in that in the USA. So like Uber just illegally ran taxi services in many jurisdictions until it became too popular to fail, expect the same thing from driverless car fleets, a couple of which will get bought by Uber or Lyft. Young people are driving WAY less, so if they prefer to hail a direct driverless taxi to their destination and not pay to own a car, then the bulk of vehicles on the road could downsize. Private passenger cars though, would start being used for more long haul driving instead of the 99% short trips they're currently used in, so I don't see any downward size pressure on those.

yeah right americans will totally overcome car-based infrastructure brainwashing and learn to hate the thing that they base their identity on totally

just like the confederate flag, totally died out when racism became uncool. and I think you're especially accurate that a widescale global disaster will definitely change people's thinking, that always happens and never redouble their biases with insane conspiracy theories driven by billionaire backed media campaigns