You love to see it (unless you're a Detroit automaker): "Even in states like Texas, where bigger is almost always better, kei trucks are flying off lots." Gift link: https://lnkd.in/e94J9uPE
And here is the modern alternative. Electric and used on roads 35mph or lower. https://www.clubcar.com/en-us/commercial/street-legal-vehicles/club-car-urban
David Zipper they make Kei cars and vans too. The demand is there from the public if you allow these on the road. You can get a reported 35mpg from a 4x4 model versus the 13.9mpg I get from a F250 4x4. If you don't need to pull a heavy trailer the Kei Truck will handle most of your truck needs You can even get them with a dump bed (electric/hydraulic pump). Maybe you could help lobby more States to allow these on the roads?
I have a feeling it's less the auto manufacturers and more the SxS manufacturers and retailers that are kicking up a stink with the states. Specifically Maine, which won't register them anymore. Powersports dealers are everywhere, even in places where there are only six people. And their products cost 4x as much as a Kei truck and can't be registered for regular road use. That's why these vehicles are targeted there and not the hundreds of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens and other exotics in Southern Maine that were subject to exactly the same EPA/NHTSA ban as these tiny trucks were.
Where I live in Central PA, I’ve also been seeing a lot of new compact (relatively) pick ups like the Ford Maverick showing up on local roads. Doesn’t hold a candle to the Kei, but worlds better than some of the tanks you see around here.
Awesome. I lived in Japan and those were the perfect truck for the hardworking man. Cheap, it won’t enslave you into car payments, and it does the job. Nowadays, you can’t do anything in large pickup trucks (F-Series). They are huge and costly, endangering children as drivers can’t see if front of them and you can’t even fit a 4x8 plywood anymore as the interior and the weeks are taking too much space. I’m glad to see some are using their common sense.
I, like many others, am utterly fascinated with the kei trucks. Functionally they do what many want a truck for, such as dirty jobs, hauling awkward stuff. It's what they were built for, and nothing else. Cheap and useful. Unfortunately so unsafe. But we let people ride motorcycles. How can we restrict one and not the other?
David, glad you shared this WSJ article, which in my view reveals so much. Remarkable that regulators are arguing that the tiny kei trucks are unsafe ... but motorcycles are? What's really unsafe, as you have written compellingly, are the ever heavier and larger vehicles that kill pedestrians and cyclists at increasing rates every year. To my friends in Detroit: why not offer smaller, lighter, more affordable vehicles? They will say "because they are not profitable", but that is short-term thinking.
Why did that guy spend $80,000 for much more truck than he needed? That might be the most serious American problem reported in this story.
The Kawaii factor (cuteness) of the Kei car helped us lower resistance when, as an experiment, we turned parking space into social space in dense city areas. https://www.thelabofthought.co/punk-parklet
FAICP, Urban Designer & Development Strategist, Fulbright Specialist
4dMost people don’t need monster vehicles, they want them and get them because they can. Clearly gas prices aren’t high enough to discourage the use of low mileage vehicles - yet. We can only hope the rising cost of living will push consumers to become less self indulgent. Moreover monster vehicles are promoted to accelerate and drive like race cars making them high speed projectiles. At 6000 pounds or more they dwarf the 2000 pound bunker buster bombs being dropped around. I hope vehicle safety regulators will someday require speed limiters on them to match purpose with function. Growing road fatalities need us to better tap down all the driver madness out there.