Consumption of both products is a choice made by the consumer.
The difference is that people buy more gas than they do water, and also people feel that they have to buy gas in order to properly run their lives. Evian water is a purely discretionary product, and anyone who thinks it is too expensive simply doesn't buy it, as there are many alternatives. There aren't any short-run alternatives to buying gas. Consumers simply have to accept the prices that they are offered. That is why people get riled up about gas but not Evian.
No, it's not, not by a longshot. The US consumes about 20 million barrels of gasoline per day. That's 840,000,000 gallons or 6,720,000,000. Get back to me when Evian sells almost 7 billion bottles per day. The cost of water would plunge to pennies, just like it is for any industrial consumer of water, aside from specific distilled/De-ionized grades.
If you compared Municipal Water systems to Gasoline, you might have a closer comparison. Municipal water generally costs about a penny per gallon. Both pumped from Resevoirs, both delivered to you in bulk lots, at .01 per gallon VS $2.10 per gallon, Gasoline is indeed expensive.
I think it's a messed-up world when water sells for more than fruit juice, cola drinks, and even beer or wine. Or Milk! There are alternatives to water, just people have allowed themselves to pay what they do for bottled water, due to claims of a higher purity. I saw a liter of bottled water at a movie theater for $4.00! That's ******* crazy! The stuff falls down from the sky four months out of the year! It comes out of faucets in nearly every house in America. And every public building. And it's drinkable. Beer, wine, soda pop and fruit juice are less pure than water, and they are cheaper.