Inelasticity means that people will keep buying gasoline no matter how expensive it gets (up until a reasonable point) because we need it for our everyday life. (wisestockbuyer.com)
As more saturated fatty acids enter the cell, those islands grow in size, creating increasing inelasticity of the membrane and gradually damaging the entire cell. (sciencedaily.com)
Thus your analogy is misleading as it represents the «collisions» as elastic, whereas the heating effect is entirely dependent on inelasticity. (wattsupwiththat.com)