You ignore one more thing: white cars are popular because they are often the cheapest. You need to pay more for most color options -> so in poor countries people choose the cheapest model (white paint can be useful in a desert, but in most environments it is harder to clean). Even "boring" colors like silver or black can require an additional fee.
Companies often choose white cars as well for their fleets: you can easily put a big company logo on a white car - and it will probably look good.
I bet lots of people would choose different colors, if this didnt require to pay additional 1000-2000 dollars. (Also again practicality comes to mind: if you buy a car in an uncommon color you will have problems to get spare parts). This additional fee might be not much for a software developer from Silicon Valley who earns 300k per year, but is a big thing for most of the world.
As far as I know, when you want a non-standard color, for many cars it is cheaper to partially disassemble the body and wrap it in those plastic stickers than to ask the factory to paint it (not to mention that it will take few months before you get your car delivered, why you probably want it now). Only a small section of people does this though.
I bet if the prices of uncommon colors were lower, one could see much more unusual cars.
In fact in some ways the manufacturers are the ones who set the palette (probably based on market research), some colors come in unusual colors straight from the factory. So you 'have' to choose the fancy color, since the car does not come in boring ones. Or at least the unusual color is cheaper (few hundred dollars -> still a lot for many people). For example every now and often a manufacturer comes out with some variant of orange, or orange-red: https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2021/12/orange-cars-you-...
In many ways car color is an illusion of choice: if you dont want to pay 2k dollars and wait few months, you have to take one of the boring colors that are available on the lot for you -> and those 'boring' were selected by the manufacturers, since their market research showed that they will sell. Tons of people cant afford to pay more to have a car that looks different. But judging by the amount of stickers you see on cars, perhaps they would.
Dealership economics also play a big part, at least in the US. If the dealership stocks cars in bright colors, some people will love it, and others will hate it, so selling the car will be hit or miss. If they get lucky they can use the color as a selling point, if they aren't they get stuck with a difficult to sell car at the end of the year. On they other hand, if they stock neutral colors like white, people may not love the color but they won't hate it either - it will rarely make/break a sale.
Of course customers can order customized cars, but the dealership will always prefer to sell the stock that they have on hand. So while special ordering a colorful car might be only slightly more expensive than special ordering a white car, special ordering anything for any reason will loose you all negotiating power and cost you thousands of dollars in the final price. I might want a colorful car, but I don't want to pay that much more for a colorful car, so I settle for white.
Companies often choose white cars as well for their fleets: you can easily put a big company logo on a white car - and it will probably look good.
I bet lots of people would choose different colors, if this didnt require to pay additional 1000-2000 dollars. (Also again practicality comes to mind: if you buy a car in an uncommon color you will have problems to get spare parts). This additional fee might be not much for a software developer from Silicon Valley who earns 300k per year, but is a big thing for most of the world.
As far as I know, when you want a non-standard color, for many cars it is cheaper to partially disassemble the body and wrap it in those plastic stickers than to ask the factory to paint it (not to mention that it will take few months before you get your car delivered, why you probably want it now). Only a small section of people does this though.
I bet if the prices of uncommon colors were lower, one could see much more unusual cars.
In fact in some ways the manufacturers are the ones who set the palette (probably based on market research), some colors come in unusual colors straight from the factory. So you 'have' to choose the fancy color, since the car does not come in boring ones. Or at least the unusual color is cheaper (few hundred dollars -> still a lot for many people). For example every now and often a manufacturer comes out with some variant of orange, or orange-red: https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2021/12/orange-cars-you-...
In many ways car color is an illusion of choice: if you dont want to pay 2k dollars and wait few months, you have to take one of the boring colors that are available on the lot for you -> and those 'boring' were selected by the manufacturers, since their market research showed that they will sell. Tons of people cant afford to pay more to have a car that looks different. But judging by the amount of stickers you see on cars, perhaps they would.