Sounds to me like he missed the common use of the "low hanging fruit" phrase.

The idea behind low-hanging fruit is that it's low hanging (easy to get to). Not that it's the "best" fruit, but it's the easiest to reach.

Not one of my favorite Godin articles, by far.

I love Seth's blog, but this one seems a bit obvious. I think I might have to pull out the 'no duh' card on this one.

Geez, this is hacker news, how about some data backing up this claim. A much better explanation (including reasoning and calculations) is here:

http://www.andrewfarmer.name/2008/06/on-fuel-efficiency.html

It's called "Amdahl's Law" in the computing world. The law of bottlenecks and efficiencies. Even if those cars went to infinite efficiency, you'd still benefit more by raising the 10MPGs to a higher number.

(No upvote from me though, this is way too obvious!)