The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles from other countries unless they're 25+ years old, is just awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars.
It would be great to live completely car-free, but absent major changes to how we plan our cities, it's just a sad reality that cars are a necessary ingredient to life in the vast majority of America. To cope with this, I'd love to be able to import a kei car or van from Japan, or micro-sized European city cars, or even some of the very small EV city cars that we see in China... but I just can't, unless I want an overpriced pile of scrap from the 1990s.
It's all so much worse when you realize that the 25-year rule is a holdover from a grey-market import scare of the mid-1980s[0]: European carmakers, namely Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche, were having trouble in the US with people importing European models of their cars. There were some valid concerns around inconsistent modifications for US safety standards, but the main issue was clearly that these grey-market imports were cheaper than buying a US model from a dealer, so profits were being missed. Instead of fixing the pricing discrepancy, they just successfully lobbied the government to enact this draconian 25-year ban, and so to this day I can't have a 2020s Japanese kei car shipped to a US port at my expense because it'd be illegal to register it.
There's electric bikes in China that are more like a Vespa than anything. Commuting this way was pretty great when I owned one. The range is perfect for urban commuters, charging it at night is basically negligible in your power bill, it slips right past the cars so there's no such thing as traffic (whatever cars pass you, you pass them right back by the next red light), likewise parking is a non-issue as it takes a fraction of the space, and its so dirt cheap that even if its stolen or totaled or breaks its not a huge pain. It doesn't have trunk space but for an urban commute that doesn't matter much. There's just enough under-seat storage for a laptop and some stationary. Look into it, the import laws on cars probably don't apply, and if they do even with tariffs the vehicle is so dirt cheap to begin with you may as well eat the cost. It cost a low 3-digit US dollar value back when I bought one.
As an American who grew up feeling annoyed and aggressive toward people driving motorcycles, but now drives a motorcycle regularly for the past 10 years, it never had anything to do with how poor someone was. Motorcycles aren't the most practical vehicles on American roads, so I always perceived them as a sport, not a necessity. And motorcycle drivers has a reputation for pulling stupid stunts and causing accidents on the highway. 19 year old kids would buy sporty motorcycles, drive 2x the speed limit on the highway, swerving between lanes of traffic, doing wheelies, etc. Or a gang of gnarly men would ride into town and parade through the streets on their Harleys. When these are your stereotypes of people on motorcycles, any time there is a motorcycle approaching you or blocking you, it's easy to feel annoyed and aggressive. Motorcyclists (and cyclists) are not seen as poor people choosing practical transport. They are seen as hobbyists pursuing a luxury at the expense of others' convenience and expectations.
Of course, I don't see things this way anymore but I'm fairly confident that this is a common mindset.
Cyclists are perceived as the opposite: hobbyists who go too slowly and hold everyone up. By the simple act of riding down a busy street, a well-placed cyclist can necessitate hundreds of questionable overtaking maneuvers as each car has to pass them. "Trail of chaos" in other words.
And most of those cyclists would love to be on a bike lane instead, but those often just don't exist.
From personal experience it's also annoying when I get hate from car drivers who assume I deliberately use the road instead of the "bike lane" which is in fact only meant for pedestrians, but try to explain that in half a second while passing and when the official road markings are only visible with forensic tools.
I think that may be from people who are in a rush. As a novice driver it may be difficult to deal with cyclists, but anyone with sufficient driving experience should be able to easily handle that.
The only time I've ever been annoyed at cyclists is when there was some kind of a parade procession in front of me, with cyclists fanning out across the entire road. It happened suddenly as well, which startled me moreso than making me angry.
While LA is hardly a paragon of bicycling accessibility, it does have a ton of dedicated cycling routes (I’m talking 8-12+ ft wide, dedicated pathways) that can get bicyclists to most of the major hubs throughout the city. Even still, you’ll see the occasional bicyclist(s) who wants to drive down Washington Blvd during rush hours Because-They-Can(TM) and the cycling path is a little too inconvenient for them, holding up hundreds of cars.
I have nothing against the majority of bicyclists, but those occasional entitled few are the only ones people see; which can easily paint their opinions of all of them.
There are lots of roads in the US where there’s no sidewalk and you have to walk along the edge of the road if you’re a pedestrian. What’s silly about this? In general, it is perfectly legal to use roads for cycling and walking (though I'm sure there is some variation between jurisdictions).
It's silly because it's often dangerous. A lot of these roads are busy, and the speed limits can be 35-50 MPH. For better or for worse, drivers are just _not_ anticipating pedestrians on these sorts of roads, but some people have no better choice.
It's silly that you think that this is anything to do with being a person. Why can't I walk in the middle of the road, you know, like a person? It's just such a bad faith argument.
The context was cycling on rush hour Washington Boulevard, which isn't absurd if it's the easiest route to your destination, any more than walking down a road is absurd if you don't have an alternative.
The context (sigh) here is that I'm saying "like they're people" is not a good argument. Drivers are also people. It's not an argument. I don't know why the topic keeps drifting off this.
Being a person is a good prima facie argument for being allowed to access public infrastructure. There may be countervailing considerations, but you didn't provide any (other than by apparently suggesting that it was somehow absurd for people to walk on roads).
But I'm not the author of the "like they're people" comment, so I'm not particularly interested in defending that particular line of argument.
It's almost like, in a society, you sometimes give up some of your personal entitlements for the greater good.
It's why you'd also be called entitled for using an elevator for your personal enjoyment, for defecating in a public pool, for playing around in a turnstile or for refusing to get vaccinated during a worldwide pandemic.
Yeah, you're the one comparing riding a bicycle on a public road to shitting in a pool. I really cant imagine why you think other people are acting entitled.
I also compared it to right-wing antivaxxers...come on buddy, that's the easier claim to discredit!
Or, you could use the rational side of your brain (the portion that most people develop in their preteens) and apply it to the abstract concept of your singular need/want being less important than another hundred's. Especially if there's a dedicated piece of infrastructure built just for you. Kind of like a bike lane 30ft away, or a restroom six feet away from the pool.
In other words, the literal definition of being entitled.
We all paid for the roads too ("we" includes cyclists), and we paid for them to accommodate any vehicles that are legal to operate on them, which in most jurisdictions includes bikes.
But cars can't drive in bike lanes. Therefore cyclists enjoy EXTRA privilege at all taxpayers' expense, which I'm fine with. But if cyclists aren't going to use them, they should be removed and the space reclaimed for ALL vehicles (including bikes).
So, your assumption is that they are all just a bunch of uppity jackasses instead of semi rational human beings? Go give those routes a ride chum, you'll probably figure out whats going on in a hurry.
I think we’re trying to figure out what conclusion you draw from that. Do you think the cyclists are doing it just to annoy you? If not, then why? Isn’t it likely that the dedicated cycling infrastructure is less adequate than you assume?
I don't care why they're doing it. The case I witnessed involved a generously wide bike lane with excellent visibility, and bikers deliberately riding outside it and blocking traffic. Do they all do it? No. But it happens.
Except that I gave a specific example (Washington Blvd) which has a notoriously well maintained and accessible bike lane 30ft away; to give a specific example of the entitlement I was referring to.
But then why do you think the cyclists are not using it? Again, do you think they are doing it just to annoy motorists? This doesn't seem plausible on the face of it.
I can’t answer for what’s going on in their heads, but why do you immediately assume everyone has good intentions? Maybe they didn’t like the traffic in the bike lane and wanted to move faster, maybe they had a chip on their shoulder, maybe they are simply oblivious to the world around them, I don’t know. I can just say that I could literally turn my head and see dozens of cyclists on the bike lane riding with zero issues. The fact that he couldn’t do the same means the problem is his, not mine and the other hundred+ people they were impeding.
You seem to be missing the entire point. This isn’t about the 999 cyclists that use the lane, as expected; but mostly go unseen. It’s about that 1 cyclist that acts in a completely entitled manner being the one everyone sees.
Just go re-read my original post that you downvoted, I wasn’t blaming cyclists in general. My point was an occasional entitled cyclist (who 100% exists, just like entitled cagers and motorcyclists) gives a bad name to all cyclists because the good ones go mostly unseen.
It seems weird to me to think of this in terms of good or bad intentions. The cyclists presumably want to get to their destinations as quickly and easily as possible. In some cases that means going on a road.
Bikes are allowed to go on roads, so I don't really understand why this annoys people. I guess if you really don't like it you should advocate for legislation to change the rules.
The annoyance is that they have a car free road 30ft away, while the cars do not have a bike free road.
It’s well understood that bikes can impede traffic. The world accepts this, especially on a normal day. It’s why we build special lanes for them (in addition to their safety concerns). But if you have your own special infrastructure, just for you and you’re using the other infrastructure, adding 15-30mins to hundred’s of people’s daily commutes for your convenience, that’s the literal definition of entitlement.
Yes, you’re allowed to do it; just like I’m allowed to get into the elevator and press all of the buttons for my own joy. In either case, we are assholes to most people.
>It’s well understood that bikes can impede traffic.
I haven't seen this myself. Here in London there are lots of cyclists on the road, and it doesn't seem to interfere with car traffic. It's relatively dangerous to the cyclists, of course.
cycling is my dominant way around the city during the warm months here. i used to take complicated, meandering routes to stay on the residential roads during my trips so i could avoid that type of passing. but at a certain point, i step back and realize that it doesn’t make sense to radically inconvenience myself in order to make auto drivers’ lives more convenient. we both pay for public roads: i have as much right to the good routes as any other resident; if it’s not working for you then vote for better infrastructure (in this case, perhaps a bike lane).
also FWIW this same problem exists in dense residential streets, just with the roles reversed. all those narrow intersections with no clear right of way and so many cars parked by them that you can’t see far: cars have to slow down way more for that whereas cyclists have maneuverability that lets them go a bit faster — until they catch up to a slow car on the same street. so anyway, don’t think that slowing down other classes of vehicles is a problem exclusive to bikes: on a mixed-use road every class of vehicle, including yours, will at some point require another vehicle to slow down for you.
I get annoyed at cyclist and I am one! I just won't ride a bike on a road without a bike lane because it terrifies me and morning commuter traffic on a road with a half-meter shoulder with barely awake hurried drivers going 50+ miles an hour is the worst place to bike.
Eventually I just moved within walking distance of work but would have loved to be able to get exercise biking 5-10 miles each way.
Once on the way from NYC to a long island beach, I saw about 10 or 20 on crotch rockets just splitting traffic and doing crazy stunts down the parkway. I'm pretty sure some new stereotypes were born in me that day, but I never saw that happen again (though I didn't live in NYC for very long, just a few months).
Theres this weird animosity, people in cars like to get outraged at people on bikes. I can't pinpoint why, but its almost like a xenophobic reaction? Some people see a bicyclist and launch into a tirade about how aggravating the 'bad ones' are. Real self righteous stuff.
Conversely being on a bike there is a real sense that people in cars are out to do you harm. Theres the people who try to rattle you - honk their horn at you to vent their outrage, completely unaware of how fucking loud those things are, or run you off the road, that sort of thing. The real unnerving stuff is the people who come close to murdering you by accident, just not paying attention as they maneuver their vehicles. One time I made eye contact with a woman while I pulled my bike out from under her SUV (just a foot or two under, right between the wheels on the passenger side, real lucky break for me) as she sped away - people do hit and run but I never experienced it as a driver and don't think a car ever stopped to see if I was alright let alone exchange details when I was on a bike.
I never got the impression it was a class thing. I think part of it is that a bicyclist is not at all threatening and rather vulnerable in fact. The other part I suspect is just regular old 'not one of us' shit - if you listen to people they'll basically tell you how they think they should be allowed to wantonly mistreat bicyclists because they felt mildly inconvenienced at one point.
There's also big in-group out-group thinking going on here. People generally see members of the in-group as individuals like themselves, and the out-group as some kind of monolith. They have some empathy for the in-group but none for the out-group.
If a driver runs a stop sign, it reflects badly on that driver. If a cyclist runs a stop sign, it reflects badly on ALL cyclists, etc. It works the other way around too.
One of the unwritten rules of driving is to try and not hold up or inconvenience the drivers behind you. People get aggravated with large farm machinery holding people up but understand that machinery has a purpose and needs to get from A to B.
The same people think Bicyclists aren't trying to get from A to B but are just out for a ride and happily breaking the unwritten rule. That is where the outrage comes from, they think the cyclist doesn't care about the irritation they're causing the drivers so the drivers decide to take it out on the cyclists.
Americans are aggressive as hell. I'm willing to bet that cyclist are maimed and murdered hourly by aggressive drivers and get away with it. I was personally ran off the road by an SUV because I apparently angered the driver, because yeah, killing me totally teaches me a lesson.
My sister moved to the US for her husband to study there, he was murdered by a NY city garbage truck white riding a bicycle last year.
Apparently this is not uncommon, almost routine. The driver ran off, and the next day another person - not the real driver - turned himself in to the police. Apparently the Mafia has sone exchange program with the garbage companies, they do each other favors. Somebody will now sit in prison for decades, for a murder the detective knows he did not commit, apparently to repay some debt. And my brother-in-law's murderer is still driving garbage trucks on roads with cyclists.
He was not targeting by the Mafia. Rather, he was riding a bicycle and a garbage truck served into his lane, running him over, then sped off.
I have been told that these NY garbage trucks _often_ intimidate cyclists. They are known for reckless driving and accidents. In any case, there are two reasons that the police are treating this as murder. One of the reasons is that the driver left the scene. I forget the second reason.
For some reason in Australia this got picked up by the media who made a small culture-war type conflict of cars vs cyclists. It's now open season on cyclists by car drivers (and very occasionally the other way around) - every regular cyclist has a tale to tell of car drivers being openly aggressive (I had a beer bottle thrown at my head by a passing car - luckily his aim was as bad as his judgement).
I mean, I've seen plenty of jackass drivers threatening or acting aggressively to cyclists in Europe. Even the Netherlands, of all places.
The biggest difference is there are more protective laws / dedicated bike lanes and the critical mass of cyclists means you might be swatting at a bee swarm.
Interestingly in Spain cyclists are well-protected and ordinary drivers who otherwise might drive pretty unsafely, take care of them. Coming from a different place it's so weird to experience someone driving 35 km/h behind a cyclist on a country road because there is a solid white line and a "no overtake" sign. Even if they do overtake (legally) they always keep at least 1.5 meters. There was a huge awareness campaign about this and it is working.
Is that true? 30 years ago I heard that Spain was notoriously unsafe for cyclists and some car drivers might intentionally endanger or hit cyclists in ways we now hear from the US. If that was true then, and now the attitude in Spain has changed so much, I dare say there's hope for the US as well.
The law protects the cyclist but he/she has much more skin on the game. There are still accidents resulting in deaths and not all find the culprit car.
Note that in Spain it is legal to cross the solid white line to take over a cyclist.
Sure, It is sometimes annoying but having more cars would also created more traffic.
Taking a school trip to Tunisia was a huge eye-opener how liberally people can interpret driving rules. Think of: tourist bus driving on the wrong side on the road to avoid traffic. On a highway, exiting from the left-most lane without signalling etc. Interestingly, they told us that this is still nothing compared to how it is in southern Tunisia - Sfax. I don't really want to go there, I value my life too much.
Not to mention failing to stop at the clearly marked lines at intersections. They seem to stop either a car length behind the line or a car length over the line in the crosswalk.
Also related to both, cutting corners (literally) when making turns, american drivers seem to have a real problem with tight turns. One reason why it’s risky to stop over the line incidentally, as a car making a shallow turn is very likely to step into your lane if they don’t take an over-wide turn instead.
These are not necessarily the same thing. In Indonesia, people completely ignore lanes, and instead fit cars and other vehicles into the available space as if it's a tetris game. But they have a lot of mopeds and surprisingly few accidents, because when it's that crowded, they go slow.
It’s complicated. If you lose your license for drunk driving, you can still drive a moped, so there is a reputation that the person driving the moped has a bad past.
Plus, there just aren’t very many on the road so they stick out as unusual.
And there is a cultural obsession with big vehicles being tied to masculinity.
Which means that many (15%?) drivers would feel happy or even a little justified to blow past a moped on the road.
> And there is a cultural obsession with big vehicles being tied to masculinity.
This is definitely regional. In California, social status (/"masculinity") is tied to luxury brands. Especially in the metros, if you were driving a giant truck you're going to be laughed at (more often than not) as parking is going to be impossible for you and you're going to be spending 150usd/5days to fill up.
In Cascadia/Northern California, eco-drivers (Prius, Tesla, etc) are seen as the self/entitled assholes.
And in Colorado, it's people with AWD/4WD cars (especially, Subarus and Jeeps).
"Trucks" as a social status signifier is confined more to more rural and Southern states.
This is a weird cultural thing about the US. I once read about an experiment were people were sorted from rich to poor, and were then given an amount of money to give to a person next to them, either just a bit richer, or just a bit poorer.
In practically every country in the world, this experiment resulted in people giving money to the poorer neighbour. Only in the US did they give it to the richer neighbour.
America's really big. The part I'm in, ebikes are en vogue, with people giving up cars to get ebikes, and car drivers give them right of way. I'm sure elsewhere in the US it's different yet again.
You mean fat-tired e-bikes? I see them a lot in Amsterdam too. They're definitely more like mopeds and scooters than bikes, unlike regular e-bikes that pretend to be bikes. I'm not sure which ones I prefer (I'm not a fan either way), but they're both a massive improvement over the old fuel-burning two-stroke mopeds and scooters. (By Dutch law, two-stroke engines didn't have to meet the same pollution rules as 4-stroke engines, so these things were pretty dirty.)
These are terrible. Frequently modified by the seller to work just by squeezing the throttle. In any case, even if they don't do that, all it takes is for people to lazily flop their legs to trigger the sensors just enough so that the engine can kick in. These are, by all practical intents and purposes, scooters without plates and without mandatory helmet.
I also dislike that these modified ebikes (not just the fat ones, but also some older models of vanmoof) can do 35-40 silently on a bike lane. I've had a couple close calls because they caught up to you almost three times as fast as a regular person on a regular bicycle do and, unlike the dirty mopeds, they are noiseless so you don't hear them coming with enough notice.
the speed thing isn't something that can be easily regulated without proper enforcement; it's trivial to convert a bike to an e-bike, and the open source firmwares and controllers out there are free of mandatory or regional speed-limiters.
it's nice that vanmoof tried to help on their side, but it's something that should be enforced at the local traffic/policing level.
I don't have a good impression of chinese electric bikes. They don't make very much noise behind you (unless they have a speaker) and the people driving them are often doing dubious things that maybe the bike shouldn't be doing, like balancing a bunch of empty water bottles.
But I guess I feel the same in SEA where instead of electric bikes you have to contend with a sea of gas mopeds.
That rule ain't changing unfortunately. Regulatory capture is STRONG with automotive and the US sees it as a matter of national security (car makers would be pivoted to other ares in times of war).
This isn't necessarily regulatory capture or protectionism.
Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular brand of car sold in the US.
So, yes, you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them.
If you didn't block them as imports, we'd have lots of people just go to Mexico and buy highly-polluting vehicles to save money, and our problem with smog in the border states would be much worse.
The interesting thing is Japanese companies generally manufacture cars they sell in America entirely in America, while “American” car companies manufacture their huge polluting machines in Mexico and maybe add one final part in the US so they can claim some work is done in the US. Japanese cars in the US aren’t imported while US cars are.
> The largest automobile manufacturing facility in the world for Toyota, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. (TMMK) is able to produce 550,000 vehicles and more than 600,000 engines per year. Two years after breaking ground in Georgetown, Kentucky,
> Where are the majority of Toyotas produced?
> The majority of Toyota vehicles you see on the road are made in your own country.
This does read like marketing material from Toyota itself so I don’t know if it’s the most trustworthy. So I look at [2]. Toyota makes 8.1M cars globally.
> the assembly of Toyota vehicles in North America came to around 1.75 million units.
So nearly 20% of worldwide production is assembled in the US. 2.3M cars are sold in the US [3]. So doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that the vast majority of Toyota cars are assembled in the US. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s more broadly true for other Japanese manufacturers.
Do you have a better explanation of your viewpoint?
Same for Honda. What's fascinating is the fact that Ford's manufacturing is less American than Honda, thanks to NAFTA but far be it to think a good ole fashioned American company like Ford would ever act like a corporation that's in it for the money, and move manufacturing out of the US.
The chickens came home to roost though, when the SEC declared a $196 million penalty in 2020 in import fines for the Ford Transit Connect, which was imported with a back seat, so it was considered a passenger vehicle for import tax reasons. Upon recieving the vans in the US, Ford removed the seats, turning it into a work van, and avoiding the import tax on work vans, something like 22%. Regardless of if it was clever of Ford or dishonest, the real point of my bringing up this story is those vans were made in Turkey.
Much of this has to do with tariffs and point of final manufacturing can be key - so the question becomes if the car is shipped as a almost complete product and finalized or if it is sent as parts or if it built from local components. “Made in America” is not a simple question or answer.
At my previous job, I made the robots that Toyota, Suzuki, etc use in their manufacturing lines and directly installed them inside their factories. My experience is, for the most part, first hand.
The vehicles Japanese companies make for the American and US markets have no overlap. Nothing sold in America is made in Japan, and nothing sold in Japan is made in America. A lot of those vehicles are loaded up into tractor trailers and hauled off to their destination—Japanese tractor trailers that those manufacturers use aren’t large enough to haul American vehicles in Japan. Furthermore, the economics for manufacturing huge vehicles in a tiny country that can barely build for its own needs and shipping across the world wouldn’t make sense. The raw materials, energy, and real estate needed for the factories are simply far cheaper in the US.
Toyota can't import trucks with such a small footprint. That would screw up their fuel efficiency metric. That could lead to fines from the US government. That is the primary issue here that prevents the sale of small trucks in the US.
With the current regulations, it makes the most sense to sell trucks with the longest wheelbase and largest width.
Can you explain this a little more (I dont live in the US and a preliminary search is failing me).
It sounds as though the 'regulations' are preventing US consumers from having a choice in trucks, which.. kinda makes no sense from what I've seen in the wide range of oversized trucks in the US.
Bigger vehicles are "trucks" and smaller vehicles are "cars". They have different standards. So while a small Japanese truck may have more efficient than a larger truck, it is legally a very inefficient car.
This is also why SUVs exist, they are legally trucks for fuel efficiency/etc.
These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us [1] explains in detail how "trucks" overtook "cars" as the most popular vehicle in the US, and legislation that lead to that.
(Quotes because the words refer to the legal definition of trucks/cars.)
I read an article recently about the growth in sales of such "trucks" in Australia. In there people were complaining that the existing parking spaces aren't big enough for these vehicles, so there should be a review into parking regulations to make spots bigger to accommodate them.
In my mind I would like to see the opposite happen, and instead have a review into these "trucks" to see if they are actually what we want for the road.
There's been diagrams produced that through the ages these vehicles have been getting bigger but with less actual cargo space in them. While some in the country might want them I don't believe for a moment they are as necessary nor as useful for the cities and suburbs where parking space sizes would matter.
I have seen some of them prevent people from fueling their vehicles at local service stations. The current sizes are not compatible with size expectations.
I want to say there was a Ford which had a fuel port on the rear of the vehicle which had to position the car further forward than usual, blocking the traffic exit while filing up the vehicle.
Putting the truck vs cars issue aside, there is still an incentive to make large wide trucks. The fuel efficiency allowance is based on the vehicle's "footprint" which is the distance between the wheels side to side times the distance between the wheels front to back. This metric comes out to some number of square feet. The fuel efficiency allowance is proportional to the number of square feet. Larger trucks are allowed to consume more fuel without penalty.
Now it turns out that making a truck, say, longer by 10% does not increase the fuel consumption by 10%. If you are a manufacturer, you want to maximize the ratio of the allowance based on the square footage divided by the actual measured fuel consumption of the vehicle. The sweet spot comes out on the large side. So the fuel efficiency regulation, ironically, is causing a trend that leads to more total fuel consumption.
> Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular brand of car sold in the US.
I misread this bit, so for clarification for people like me:
Toyota's numbers are 1,144,722 vehicles produced in the US, vs a total of 2,333,262 vehicles sold.
So while Toyota is a Japanese company, half is locally produced, and the rest is imported in alignment with the US standards (that they of course have no issue to understand and meet)
If emissions were the concern they’d just require the cars to pass emissions.
Although I strongly favor allowing import of recent foreign cars, safety features are a much better practical objection for folks who love objecting to good things. Non-US cars would lack many many mandated features and there’s no workaround
That exemption exists for car collectors, who generally have a different set of safety expectations of their cars than you would buying a used car at a corner lot.
Kind of weird that car collectors in the US can't collect modern foreign cars, though. Why not instead just have "accredited collectors" like there are "accredited investors"? Wouldn't that be simpler? "Get the piece of paper waiving your right to car safety, and then you can buy whatever stupid cars you like, as long as you don't drive them very often."
Collectors are in luck and don't need an accreditation: "A vehicle may be permanently imported for show or display. Written approval from DOT is required and should be obtained before the vehicle is exported from the foreign country to the U.S."[1]
>you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them.
This really is the crux of the issue, those kei cars simply do not meet US car regulations by the very nature of their small size and light weight.
Even in Japan, where they hail from, kei cars are a distinct category regulated separately from the rest of the car market with different build, safety, and emissions standards.
It's not some grand conspiracy to favor the domestic market or disenfranchise the used car market; the simple fact of the matter is those kei cars do not meet US regulations to be cars proper.
Nor do they meet Japanese regulations to be cars proper.
Trying to drive one on a highway (100kmph) strains the poor thing to it’s limit, and if you are ever in a crash with a real car you better prepare to be completely crumpled.
> Even in Japan, where they hail from, kei cars are a distinct category regulated separately from the rest of the car market with different build, safety, and emissions standards.
It's more like mopeds to motorcycles. If your moped went slower than 25mph and had an engine smaller than 50cc, they were treated more like a bicycle than a motorcycle.
> If you didn't block them as imports, we'd have
> lots of people just go to Mexico and buy
> highly-polluting vehicles to save money, and our
> problem with smog in the border states would be
> much worse.
In Australia there are a set of guidelines required for vehicle imports, they even outline pollution and safety requirements that must be met before it can be registered or driven on public roads.
On-road non import vehicles can also fail these tests and the car is not considered "road worthy".
If vehicles in the US need to be registered, why isnt this a valid solution ?
America's standards for road worthy are just that much higher. IF you: start a car company, buy a bunch of them so the NHTSA can crash test them (thanks Mercedes-Benz for that one), fix them up so they meet modern Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) (which includes backup cameras, among other things), fix them up to meet smog standards (for California), which means it'll also need a compliant OBDII port (and a Japanese OBDII port returning Japanese characters instead of ascii codes won't count), then yeah, it can be considered road-worthy and as a bonus, you can sell them.
It's just that all of the above is very expensive and a lot of work, if not impossible. Having to buy a bunch of cars just to get them crash tested is probably the most expensive part, but the rest of that isn't easy either.
Coming back to the kei trucks discussed in the article, there's basically no way they're going to pass crash testing.
So it's not that it isn't a valid solution, just America has much higher standards for "road worthiness".
It's been "done" by MotoRex for R34 GTRs, though there is a bit of fuzziness as to their legality as they got shut down by the government. That's a whole other story though.
But if you're not going to use the vehicle on the road and just as a show car, or drag race car, it doesn't need to be considered road worthy and the import journey is much easier.
US states control registration. Also older vehicles especially kei cars aren't nearly as polluting as one would think especially if only used for work rather than daily use, with mpg in the upper 50 to low 70s though fairly crap nox by comparison to modern 2020s cars.
They also encourage lower speeds which could be a plus in every way.
That scales with distance. If you're driving 30kph slower for 2 hours, it makes a difference. If you're heading 10-15km to the shop or the creamery, it's not so terrible. Speaking as someone who was a speed freak as a new driver, and sets my cruise at 78 in an 80 zone today...speed ain't everything. You wouldn't want to drive one of these kei vehicles on long trips, anyway.
The 25-year exception is intended for collectors and restorers. It is aligned with many states allowing historic/vintage/"horseless carriage" plates with limitations and reduced fees for vehicles over 25 years old. These rules are often something like must be driven < 1000 miles per year except trips to/from exhibitions and shows. The federal standards don't get so specific about restrictions on collector vehicles, they just get a lot looser about what can be registered after 25 years.
Thanks for the links. Why is the phrase "conspiracy theory" used for that though?
Sounds like it's a value-judgement free decision from manufacturers to follow the incentives from the policy as we'd predict:
way cheaper and less work to make those (now pretty popular) vehicles bigger than R&D and re-tool factories to make smaller and/or more efficient. It would need to be made more efficient to get smaller otherwise you lose power. Truck owners are comparing power (even if they dont use it, and it's sometimes just brand bragging rights) so that sounds like a worse option if you're making and selling them.
It's value-judgement free if they had no hand in crafting or maintaining the loophole, but undermining popular policy with a loophole is a very common strategy for dodging regulation. If that's the case here then they aren't simply honest corporations just trying to sail the sea of incentives, they are more like a schoolyard bully who has grabbed an environmental cause by the hand and is doing the "why are you punching yourself?" maneuver.
I don't disagree with you on that component of it existing.
The thing about policy is usually somebody big is warning the public ahead of time that the "affordable healthcare bill" (for another example) isn't actually affordable healthcare (it's mandated health insurance), get called debby-downers/negative/hateful, and then it happens that way anyway due to lawmaker and corp PR pushing it through while everyone else cheers. Actually reading the bill and thinking/wargaming how it will apply deterministically with basic thought experiments is discouraged. And all "sides" do this, from incentives.
I question the validity of the spirit of bills when it repeats like that so often. At some point that is the spirit of the bill.
This is of course ignoring the revolving door, regulatory capture, and lobbying angles, which are always in play some (maybe huge) %. Also predictable and deterministic, from incentives.
Ok, without resorting to insulting you as you are me, according to you, is the 10th Amendment a loophole or not?
More generally, are people doing things because they aren't stopped from doing so a loophole or not?
Are loopholes a feature or a bug? Does it depend on intentions or how it's used to be called this, or not?
More importantly, why don't judges tend to rule in the "spirit of the law" over what's actually the law, if that's so obviously the thing that should matter the most?
Are you willing to sign contracts with me on that basis? And see which philosophy wins?
Or do you just want to complain and show your disapproval of me?
There's how things are and how they "should" be and simply describing it in terms of a constellation of competing actors and overlapping interests at different layers and forces that motivate them (not always easy to tell, and I've already left open and taken into account the whole spectrum of characterizations: intentional v not, malicious v not, passive v active. I have my own not-strongly held opinion on the car one while acknowledging all of that) means I'm not reasoning (unlike you). Got it.
If you are an individual who has a vote but not enough vested interest to fund a lobbying effort for expected positive ROI, loopholes are definitely a bug. If you are a corporation that wants to undermine regulation by pulling purse-strings rather than by defeating regulation attempts in the arena of public opinion, loopholes are definitely a feature. However, a corporation that pulls the purse-strings to subvert a bill makes itself morally culpable in the bill's intentional inadequacy. You seem awfully sure that this isn't what happened with the car size loophole. Why?
I am not awfully sure. Point is I threw you a bone in my first response to you, you know -- "opposite" sides to synthesize, which I now know I shouldn't have done, and you shat all over it. Which is why the conversation with you is over.
I was a bit tongue in cheek and playing off the previous comment using the phrase "conspiracy theory".
It has a bad connotation, but I guess not all things that sound like conspiracy theories are false. Another car themed topic is when Standard Oil and Firestone Tires colluded to buy up trolly lines and shut them down.
Things can be a conspiracy of common interests (and not even necessarily be bad), whether or not that's what this is, without involving "smoky rooms" (also known as boardrooms; but for fun on that topic, check out full history of NCR, company was nuts).
> I thought the standard conspiracy theory was that they started making them larger to avoid environmental regulation (which is pretty ironic).
Why is it a conspiracy theory?
I'd love to cite GA's Clean Air Act as an example but the rule around qualified vehicles has been amended 11 times since it was enacted in 1996 and I can't figure out how to see previous versions of the rule.
Check out US history during WWII. Auto manufacturing was even pivoted to airplanes. Things must be more specialized now but I assume it could still happen quickly.
My personal belief is this also explains American bias towards planes over rail.
It's not really the same. Fiat were an industrial concern that made planes, tanks, cars, trucks, etc. from before the war, and did so during the war too. Afterwards they split up, with today Iveco (a merger with a bunch of others) being the successor for buses and trucks, Fiat remaining the car brand, CNH Industrial for industrual (tractors and co) stuff, the aviation business being split between GE Aviation and Leonardo, etc.
Meanwhile in the US, Ford had a small aviation division that made one plane, closed their aviation business in 1936, but during the war converted their factories to mass produce bombers (most notably the B-24).
Today manufacturing is vastly more specialised, and today's planes are drastically more complex than their predecessors. Nonetheless, even basic trucks are a very important component of modern wars(for logistics), so in case of war any automotive factory could be useful.
Regulatory capture sucks and seems like one of those problems that's deeper and more prevalent than people realize.
I'm interested in learning where it was actually _curtailed_ in some measurable way e.g. due to the public pushing back, or other reasons. If you know of resources/studies on the pushback story, assuming there is one, would be appreciated.
Microchips for million dollar smart bombs are important but the ability to give every able-bodied person in the country a machine gun or a tank shouldn’t be underestimated. In the end war is about controlling land and infantry are the best at that.
They are. Foxconn and Quanta both have a presence in the US due to incentives. TSMC is building in the US. Intel gets subsidies to stay in they US. Etc...
Yeah the US surprisingly sees things as a national security issue only when they don't interfere with corporations profiting, and fuck it if they make stuff more expensive for the dying middle class.
We love our quirky, slow 1993 Mitsubishi JB500 campervan (https://www.instagram.com/finnthejb500/), but the experience is not for everyone. We were able to register it in Washington without too much hassle. It definitely pays to do some research and try to find a local-ish mechanic willing to work on them before you make the purchase.
Is that an unusual campervan to you? To me it looks like the most archetypal standard campervan there is. I've seen tons somewhat like it, although this looks like a particularly nice compact model.
> [...] awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars.
I currently drive a small efficient car, but I'm seriously contemplating buying an electric SUV for my next car, even though I've no use for it. I don't drive a lot, but every time I drive, I see drivers on their phones, drivers who don't signal, drivers who race the lights, drivers who don't turn their head lights on at night, and other general poor situational awareness, etc. etc. And about once a month I see someone run the red light by a _large_ margin.
By absolute measurements SUVs are worse in most metrics including safety, but alas prisoner's dilemma prevails. No amount of defensive driving on my part is gonna trump physics, if / when my tiny hatchback gets T-boned by a lifted truck.
Yes and no. Let's say everyone drives compact cars, then my risk level -- completely made up number -- is 20. However, if everyone's driving para-tanks while I keep driving my compact car, then my risk level rises to 60, due to aforementioned physics. Now, if I join everyone, then my risk level falls to 40, so I'm safer. But compare to the initial case, I'm still less safe. Hence the prisoner's dilemma.
I’ve been downvoted over this before but really we just need weight limits on cars. Efficiency is pretty closely aligned and we seem to regulate that just fine.
Versus distance and that is an issue of just the geography of the US, we are insurmountable large, even a high end bullet train would take 8-12 hours crossing the country. Stopping absorbs a lot of time for charging compared to ICE or hybrids.
It isn't an issue for everyday driving though. Most folks never take that trip at all, and they surely aren't doing it for a commute. Truck drivers are an exception.
IIRC, the average commute in the US is about an hour. Realistically, you probably are only going to need a few hours of charging daily.
Of course, the real problem in the US is infrastructure. It does no one any favors if you can't charge your car at your apartment, while at work, or can't find places to charge along the way. I haven't lived in the US for nearly 10 years - I moved to Norway, where electric cars are popular but the infrastructure for them has been growing too and there are places to charge your car. And that's just not possible in the US, and I doubt this is going to change in the current political atmosphere - again, rural and poor areas will be left behind at best.
Weight != size. Battery powered cars tend to weigh a few hundred pounds more than comparably sized gas powered cars, which is more efficient? Weight doesn't give you an answer on efficiency.
That could be one way to reduce the desirability of these "trucks" and SUVs by making anything classified as a truck require a truck license to drive. Though I believe as in Australia in the USA drivers licenses are on a per-state basis. This makes it much more difficult to get enacted, though I imagine California and New York might be places where it could get traction.
The Mini Cooper is bigger than you'd think -- same wheelbase and height as a Corolla, although the cargo area and hood are shorter. But the wheelbase of the Smart car (no longer sold in the US, by the way) is 2/3 that of the Mini.
Smart cars are no longer sold in the US. In general options are limited. Previously compact cars like the Civic are now midsize. And even then they produce them in low volumes so they are always sold with a markup.
You can still find plenty of amazing vehicles, in great condition in the South of Europe. The weather there is great and cars don’t deteriorate as much. I see plenty of Toyotas and Hondas from pre 97 models. They still cost around 3-4 K EUR probably because they are such an easy maintenance that they will still drive for another decade and that’s priced in.
Please, don't buy our cars here in Spain. Most of people here, specially young people, cannot afford a new car with our 1100€/month after taxes of mininal wage and our 350€/room /month (in cheap places) on the flats we usually live.
With that situation, we usually buy cars before 2005 or so, and we pay those 3k to 4k euros in those, and usually with over 250 000 km (155 000 miles). Depending on the model, they even can be more expensive than people would think: A late 90s Nissan Terrano would cost from 6k to 7k, and my current car, a Korean one that cost about 13k in 2012, now cost from 9k to 11k (unless it has too much mileage or isn't in a decent shape).
That sounds extremely high for what it is. The second-hand car market has probably gone insane over there as well though
Here in Australia I bought a 6 year old Citroen DS3 for about EUR 5.5k, and it had around 60k km on it. Now I was looking at ~3 year old Golf GTI/R, and you can get them for about a 5% discount over buying a brand new one... Why.
This was at the end of 2021 or beginning of 2022, so the Mk8 wasn't out yet. Mk 8 models are also a bit more expensive, so the discrepancy would be a bit better in that case, I would imagine. Out of curiosity, are the Mk8s not too well received, or are Mk7s preferred?
I don't mind the change, but my current car works and I might as well hold out for an EV like Cupra Born or Peugeot e-208 personally.
Japan has very high taxes to keep old cars. Here in the US, we have a "JDM" or Japanese Domestic Market where people import older engines and transmissions compatible with American market Japanese made vehicles. This is why people in the US seek out old Japanese market vehicles and parts.
It is just cargo cult. The value of these old Toyota and Honda makes no sense. I was looking to buy an old Toyota because of the hype on internet, but there are not a lot of them being in Europe, and 70% of them had an engine issue (threads holding head gasket were missing, common issue on aluminium engine).
At one point, I pondered buying a Toyota previa with this head gasket issue for 3K and planed to repair it myself. Fortunately I got my sense back and bought a Renault Scenic with no issue at all, 2K and I managed to have also the timing belt replaced.
Yes, internet thinks that because it is a French car, it will crumble. Well internet, so far it had no issue and its head gasket is intact.
Yep, the post pandemic cars from Toyota and Honda especially have been having terrible quality and QA issues.
I've seen a new 2023 4runner with weird panel gaps, unnecessarily stiff handling (compared to a 2020 model), and sunroof motors stopped working after rain.
You can import new tiny cars and drive them all you want on a farm or private grounds, you just can’t take them on roads if they don’t meat road safety standards.
Even the advocate highlighted in this article (Economist) admits his would probably be a “death trap” on a busy highway.
Maybe the US should create separate standards for city streets and roads with low speed limits, that could be a good way to bring down vehicle sizes. But just allowing these things just anywhere seems like a recipe for increased fatalities. For every HN reader who would use theirs wisely there are 10 average Americans who would risk maiming.
> Maybe the US should create separate standards for city streets and roads with low speed limits, that could be a good way to bring down vehicle sizes.
> You can import new tiny cars and drive them all you want on a farm or private grounds, you just can’t take them on roads if they don’t meat road safety standards.
If they don't pass emissions, they cannot be legally imported. It doesn't matter whether you want to use them on private property; that private property is still within the US, and subject to EPA regs.
People think the same thing about not having to register their snowmobile, ATV or whatever if they're hooning around on their farm or private property. Nope. State environmental cops will happily step onto your property, chase you down, and cite you.
Not true as it depends on the state. Perhaps your state cops will do that, but mine will not. In PA you can import such vehicles for off-road use as long as they are modified to have a maximum speed of 25mph. In MD, it's up to local jurisdictions.
The 25-year import rule serves as evidence of how the United States has struggled in competition and developing vehicles over the past several decades.
Toyota and Subaru are present in the United States because there is an incentive to manufacture them locally, which serves as a valuable learning experience for the US.
Thus the United States' car manufacturers are either perceived as being of low quality or lagging behind their competitors, leading to the country being utilized as a third-party for inexpensive assembly.
A) most cars manufactured by European and Japanese brands are built in Mexico and direct imported via NAFTA/USMCA. The fact that Toyota and Honda choose to continue to do manufacturing in the United States is probably seen as a boon to those local communities.
B) the "low quality" image of American brands is pretty limited to the United States, like a lot of American products (California wine, for instance, is generally bottom shelf in the US but well regarded internationally). In Russia, Ford used to be their top marquee. Ford and GM are both huge in Oceania. In LATAM, they're seen as a step up from Japanese and Chinese brands and Volkswagen. In Europe, they're not generally perceived as low-quality; instead, the perception is that they're too large and fuel inefficient for most European roads/cities.
> In Europe, they're not generally perceived as low-quality; instead, the perception is that they're too large and fuel inefficient for most European roads/cities.
The only American brands I see in Europe are either old Chevrolets (manufactured in Germany by Opel when they were part of GM) or Jeep/Dodge/RAM trucks and similar which are owned by Stellantis (the merger of PSA (Peugeot, Citroen) and FCA (Fiat, Chrysler)) and manufactured in Italy. So they aren't know for their poor quality because they're made in the EU, in the same factories that make other known models, on the same bases (e.g. an Opel Ampera and a Chevrolet Volt are the same car, from the same factory, different badge, slightly different interior, slightly different exterior), but they are known as shit inefficient cars that mostly assholes buy.
The only American American cars (not built in the EU with an American badge slapped on the front, but produced in Mexico) that I can think of that I have seen in Europe are Chrysler PT Cruisers which are universally known as shit.
Ah true, forgot about Ford, they're rare but present; also built in the EU though, even if Ford are a one-brand company (after the sale of Volvo/Jaguar/Land Rover). In Bulgaria there's a joke along the lines of "Do you know why Fords have such wide windshield/windscreens? So that everyone can see the idiots that bought them.", but I'm not actually aware of them having a bad reputation (unlike say old Opels that are known as very rust prone).
Teslas are a new phenomenon and indeed getting more and more prominent in some niches, but it seems it's mostly taxis and uber drivers, at least in France. I suppose the theatrics of Tesla's prominent CEO will significantly hamper their expansion, and pretty much most car manufacturers have caught up. Around where I live I see more Renault Zoe and VW ID.3s than Teslas for personal use.
I’m suspicious of your claims in B. I can’t speak for every country you mentioned but in Australia (which constitutes most of the Oceania market), Ford/GM are not huge here at all. I also didn’t think I’ve ever heard people speak favourably of their reliability over Japanese brands. Tesla is perceived quite differently though and is gaining popularity.
Historically GM (under the Holden brand) and Ford were popular because they sold locally designed and manufactured v6 sedans and utes (like small pickup trucks). These cars were always perceived as Australian, not American.
They don’t locally manufacture anymore and have lost most of the Australian market.
> They don’t locally manufacture anymore and have lost most of the Australian market.
Ok, sure. Rephrase that to "historically, as of a decade ago", if you like.
The point was more that the low-quality association was a more American phenomenon than anything. Internationally, they were either perceived fine or unpopular for other reasons.
For some reason there’s a niche of people that drive RAM Vans in the Netherlands. Not sure why exactly that brand and model but it’s the only ‘Murican style trick you see on our roads.
That 25+ year rule also guarantees that the models are not going to be up to date to modern standards regarding pollution (though I'm not sure they've been updated in 25 years in the US) or safety (but extremely unsafe oversized trucks for personal use are allowed anyway, so apparently nobody really cares about safety).
I think the US needs to update a lot of rules regarding the sale, import, pollution and import of cars, including trucks. Require commercial licenses for the big stuff, have US manufacturers manufacture these practical small cars in the US according to modern US standards, and allow the import of vehicles that US manufacturers refuse to make.
Here in NZ we import a lot of 2nd hand Japanese vehicles (helps that we drive on the same side of the road), in the city I live the most popular EV is a 2nd hand Japanese Leaf - we have one for an around town day to day car (complemented by a 20 year old Prius)
This is called the "kit car" loophole, and some people have successfully used it (e.g. the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R in The Fast & the Furious movie was brought over like this)
Nothing. If you're only going to use it non-commercially on private property, there's almost nothing stopping you. You can even have an entire tank shipped in as long as it doesn't have any shells [1] or secondary guns, and you don't have to take it apart or anything.
The question is: is it street legal and can you legally get it registered to drive afterwards? Once you ask that question, tons of regulations come into play ranging from axle weight to emissions standards to safety requirements.
[1] you gotta have an ATF destructive devices license and follow state specific laws if you want to fire the main cannon
> you gotta have an ATF destructive devices license and follow state specific laws if you want to fire the main cannon
Okay, now that’s a rabbit hole if I’ve ever seen one. Because: tanks are operated by a crew, not just one person.
So who on the tank crew needs this certification? Presumably, at least, the gunner—i.e. the person actually pressing the button to fire the cannon—would. But how about the owner of the tank? How about the driver, if that's a different person? Can the driver/owner of a privately-owned-and-operated tank just be a regular dude, and call in an expert (maybe someone from the National Guard) to sit in the tank alongside them as its gunner?
I know that ATF explosives experts are usually called in by e.g. YouTube science content-creators, to handle the actual "explosives" parts of explosives demos. But in such cases, the ATF fellow doesn't just set off the explosives; they also set them up, in fact usually sourcing the explosives themselves rather than trusting explosive materiel given to them.
In the case of a tank, the tank is already there on-site when the expert arrives; and its cannon shells are probably also already there on-site, as finished explosives. Would a destructive-devices-licensed expert insist on calling in an engineer for an audit of the tank's soundness as weapons platform, to ensure e.g. the cannon barrel will still be able to take the strain of firing after sitting unmaintained for decades? (And would that person need to be specifically trained and certified in Weapons Engineering to be able to sign off on the tank's soundness?) Would they insist on sourcing their own shells, or, if that's impossible (vintage/foreign tank where shells of the required shape can't be locally sourced), perhaps having them refurbished (opened, cleaned, re-filled with a known explosive mix, re-packed) by a trusted factory?
And do the rules change if the driver tells the gunner when to fire? In fact, would the answer to the licensing question be different depending on the type of crewed weapons platform we're talking about? Would you, as a vehicle owner, need a destructive-devices license to e.g. captain a gunboat in a private pond, given that it is usually understood that the captain of a ship has overriding authority for any decisions anyone else who has boarded their ship makes while on board (and so, in other words, can tell a gunner to fire off a missile whether the gunner thinks that's a good idea or not)?
Chickens, and spite. That's the official story.[1]
Unofficially, it's indirectly how we got the Civil Rights Act passed as a quid pro quo:
> In retrospect, audio tapes from the Johnson White House, revealed a quid pro quo unrelated to chicken. In January 1964, President Johnson attempted to convince United Auto Workers' president Walter Reuther not to initiate a strike just before the 1964 election and to support the president's civil-rights platform. Reuther, in turn, wanted Johnson to respond to Volkswagen's increased shipments to the United States.
The US has a huge internal market. But their reliance on international trade is small. Exports amount to less then 10% of their GDP [1]. As a comparison, France has the lowest amount of exports per GDP in the EU, and theirs is almost 30%. Germany's is 47%. For many smaller EU countries, it's even higher [2].
The US cares a lot about keeping international shipping lanes open (mainly because they used to rely on imported oil). But they are very protectionist, and always have been. International trade is just not that important to them.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/258779/us-exports-as-a-p...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?end=2021...
Conservative US politicians (especially Trump) consider the economy is a zero sum game.
Whenever you buy from aboard, that's money and jobs that are lost to the USA.
So they want to export, but not to import!
And instead of banning the imports, they just set technical standards.
Like requiring specific bumpers and car height, and pollution standards, despite the fact US roads are deadlier and the US pollutes more than anywhere else.
Other countries are a bit more optimistic about international trade, and recognize they can't do everything.
Western Europe, for exemple, has focused on high added value engineering and office jobs, to outsource production to Eastern Europe and Asia.
And everyone has an engineering degree in here, so good luck to live on your factory job.
Do you have a source for this claim? In my limited searching China exceeds the US in pollution. My sources could be biased, so I would be happy to take a look at yours.
But it is the Biden administration that has pushed forward with the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies.
Western Europe has the issue of much lower wages though, and they keep importing cheap labour to offset the "aging crisis", rather than embracing it and labour-saving technology like Japan. Like I'd definitely rather be an engineer in the USA, if I could magically get a green card.
From the California DMV's web page on direct imported vehicles:
"If your direct foreign import vehicle was not originally manufactured to meet California emissions standards and DOT FMVSS, the vehicle cannot be registered in California, unless the vehicle is modified and tested under CARB’s direct import program."
Based on research that I done years ago, my understanding is that the modifications required to get many foreign vehicles to conform to California's emission standards, combined with the testing fees (which is far more expensive than the cost of a traditional biennial smog check), make it prohibitively expensive for casual buyers to legally register imported vehicles in California.
Some people get around this by registering their vehicles in other states where only the EPA 25 year rule applies; occasionally in California I do see cars with their steering wheels on the right side with Nevada or Oregon license plates. However, California generally requires its residents to have their vehicles registered in California.
One thing I'm curious about is whether California allows direct imported vehicles to be converted to run on battery-backed electric motors as a legal modification. If this is the case, then the vehicle would certainly pass the emissions test.
Emissions, sure. If you're someone deeply involved in the car industry, you'll have a DMV person (not officially, just from having spent that much time there), and they'll help you work through the process, which includes an inspector examining your car in the DMV parking lot. The harder one to meet is Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) you mentioned above, which includes crash testing.
It's one thing to work on your car and get it to pass smog. It's another thing entirely to buy a dozen of them.
I believe the point is that older vehicles are exempt from newer rules, regardless of where they are from. Is why I can legally drive my 2000 truck, despite it almost certainly being less than up to current standards.
I think there is a reasonable logic that scrapping the truck would probably be pretty bad for the environment, such that some of the standards are "water under the bridge", as it were. The rest of the logic almost certainly falls on the numbers just not mattering? I don't know.
Besides 25 year limitation, the regulations are a main pain here as it can be difficult to comply with the letter of multiple overlapping regulations, and have the certifications for those. I know headlights end up being a pain for people trying to import cars to the US as all headlights must meet DOT standards. Rinse and repeat with every regulation affecting every part of the car.
The key is often that ALL vehicles are exempt from various regulations past a certain age. CA doesn’t smog check vehicles older than a certain date, for example.
The amount of those vehicles will obviously be limited.
Removing it would allow people to buy cheap cars in places like Mexico, that have loose emissions standards, and drive them around California, which has some of the most stringent emissions standards in the world. Not to mention the safety requirements issues...
That's already the case. You can legally import a modern kei car if you can modify it to meet relevant safety and emissions standards. You can import any modern car. I imported a 2001 BMW from Canada a few years back and it was a breeze because it already had the EPA stickers and BMW NA signed off on the safety stuff. You can import a non-compliant car (e.g. some carburetted kei car with minimal safety equipment) if you bring it up to the US standards that were in effect at the time. Nobody wants to bother does not mean that nobody can.
The 25 (well I think DOT is 20 years and EPA is 25 or vice versa) means you can import shit without it having to meet relevant federal standards. States (e.g. California) will still want to see proof it doesn't pollute too much, and CARB tests are expensive. Sates like Washington will let you register pretty much anything with wheels which is how you see a lot of non-US. market cars for sale out here with Washington plates.
In a similar vein, I have a Canadian market '02 Highlander that was imported by a dealership to shuffle stock around back when it was new. It helps that AFAIK there aren't any physical differences between CDM and USDM Highlanders.
More importantly it also allows us to import reasonably-sized 4WD trucks from other countries instead of having to decide between a mini-van or a station wagon.
Easy, DOT headlights, literally stopped innovation for 30-40 years from the 1950s to the mid 1970s. It is still an issue and is one reason why motorcycles have a very different stateside vs rest of the world design (till recently). Just one of several regulations that...can't be fixed if the car doesn't have parts shared.
If it’s legal for BMW to import it’s cars and sell them, then it should be legal for Toyota to import it’s kei cars and sell them in the US right? You just can’t do it as an individual.
I would suspect that Japanese kei cars would not pass the safety requirements. Road speeds really are much slower over there. IIRC, the warning alarm on my kei car in the 90s would go off if I exceeded 90 km/h (about 55 mph).
The highways speeds are the same though. I drove a kei car on the highway in Japan. It was fine, but not a great driving experience. I wouldn't have wanted to drive a regular/full sized American car in Japan though, the roads are really narrow.
Why stop there? If the Toyota Hillox is good enough for Al-Quaeda, why not import it for Americans? It lasts longer, is easier repaired, and is tougher than an f350.
Haha, if my country had a 25 year ban then there would be very few cars on the road and Germany would have to find some other place where to dump their used cars.
> but absent major changes to how we plan our cities,
People make this excuse all the time in australia too. I have never had a problem living all over, including small country towns, without a car. Excuses are bullshit for most people.
The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles
from other countries unless they're 25+ years old
That's not what the rule is. That's the end result because nobody wants to spend money to get a foreign market car to meet the relevant safety and emissions standards.
Yeah, that's completely right, but as you said in another comment, there's some real bullshit in the FMVSS that to me, a complete layperson, seems like it has the sole effect of blocking the certification of perfectly safe and clean modern vehicles from other advanced nations.
Of course we shouldn't be allowing people to import some pollution-spewing deathtrap that doesn't have seatbelts--the FMVSS regulations do exist for a reason--but I think we should be taking a more critical look at our regulations, especially as compared to other places at the same socioeconomic level.
perfectly safe and clean modern vehicles from other advanced nations
A lot of what's being discussed are neither perfectly safe nor clean by American standards.
The UK, for instance, allows pretty much anything with wheels to be registered (e.g. the Peel). Euro NCAP is merely advisory, you can still sell/buy a death trap. Pollution as well. Want an early 90s Figaro or S-Cargo or a late 00s Hijet? Those were sold without cats or fuel injection. Want something cheap and Euro? Cool. The cheap shit is often cheap because it pollutes so much it can't legally be driven in city centers any longer.
A lot of the bellyaching is over cars that the manufacturers couldn't justify fixing up to meet American standards.
Yet the UK (and most other developed countries) have far fewer fatalities per vehicle or kilometre driven, as well as cars that output less pollution per kilometre.
Obviously there are many confounding factors, but the point is if the USA really cared, it'd federally mandate more effective measures like safety inspections and emissions testing. The import restrictions are protectionism.
Technically anyone can pay the money to do this certification, but it's not cheap and also would require that you crash multiple cars for crash testing. Also if it fails in some aspect it's not like then you can ask the manufacture to change things.
Also these kei class vehicles would not do well on some of the highway speed collision tests.
Moreover these Kei Trucks still have to deal with the 25% chicken tax =(.
I've seriously contemplated getting one of these. Street legal, fuel efficient, simple, but when I started researching them I started to see a pattern. It's hard to find anyone in rural areas willing to work on them and not all mini trucks are equal. Some are not shipped correctly and have frame rust issues. There are YouTuber's that cover some of the models and the gotchas and things to inspect. I would never buy one without inspecting it locally. I've seen a couple of them in town and the owners somehow manage to keep them running.
I am leaning more towards a street legal side-by-side as there are a few dealers here and they have people to perform more advanced repairs. Downside is they cost more especially if I want a fully enclosed cab with windshield and heater, something that is a must during the winter here. Upside is I can take it into the mountains and also use it to run into town for groceries.
An upside to either of these options is that these are the remaining vehicles that do not as of yet have any of the telemetry, dashboard infotainment systems, pay-as-you-go for subscriptions for standard features, etc...
The trucks have all just gone through auction and have inspection reports. Mine I bought for $2k was grade 3.5 and what I’d consider pristine for a 25 year old truck. The Japanese are pretty trustworthy people to do business with, and they build great vehicles.
One thing the author left out was the fascination I had with the whole process. Watching auctions, assignment to a ship, tracking it through the ocean and storms and watching on video as it passed through the Panama Canal. Then the customs and importation paperwork with CBP, going to the port, the driving 200 miles home in my new “truck” that had road manners more akin to my golf cart than anything actually on the road around me. I-95 was terrifying— I barely got off the on-ramp before looking for the next off-ramp to find backroads for the rest of the journey.
These are still made and sold brand new starting at around $6000. The interest in 90's ones is due to the 25-year rule on hassle-free importing into the US.
I seriously miss compact trucks, like the Mazda B-series, Ford Courier, Ford Ranger (before it became a mid-size in 2019).
These kinds of trucks might more to your liking. Sure they aren't as small and cute as the imports, but your local auto store can still get you parts for them.
They are fun to drive, fairly fuel efficient, and are capable of hauling material from the home center. I learned to drive stick, and how to pop the clutch when you have a dead battery, in a Ford Courier on the high plains of west Texas.
I still drive a manual 2002 Toyota Tacoma and you'll have to claw it out of my dead hands for this exact reason. I really love the utility of a pick-up truck, but I absolutely despise the size of any of them in the US in the past couple of decades.
I wish they still made mid-sized pick-ups that were actually mid-sized.
A Tacoma is nearly the size of Tundra was twenty years ago, and a Tundra today is like the size of a damn schoolbus.
I drive past a 1970s Ford truck daily and nothing has changed with sizes in the same vehicle category. Newer cars are just more bulbous and thicker. Full-size pickups have been just short of 80" wide since regulations in the 1960s on clearance lights. What _did_ change is the compact truck category vanished for a while (and those compacts were then re-designed as mid-sized). The category is making a comeback now with unibody trucklets like the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz.
But no, a new Tacoma isn't even close to the size of an old Tundra (212 vs 230 inches length, 75 vs 79 inch width). Also a new Tundra is right there with the size of an old Tundra (233 vs 230 inches length for double cab, same width)
- emissions and efficiency regulations that vary with the footprint of the vehicle. Vehicles with larger footprint (= width x length) are allowed to have lower fuel economy numbers, which perversely means that one solution to a truck having poor fuel economy is to make it… bigger.
Another driver is everyone getting pickup trucks and the resulting market distortion. Farmer that needs to haul equipment? You need a pickup truck. Family of four that needs to do the school run? For some reason you’ll also be getting a pickup truck. And there are a lot more of the latter to market to.
There's a lot of room to talk yourself into a pickup. They aren't cheap. If you can afford one, you can also probably afford a boat or a trailer. If either is of more than diminutive size (even theoretically, as a planned future purchase), that basically narrows you down to a pickup or equivalent size SUV. If you also want to carry home improvement goods (concrete blocks, plywood, drywall, or anything longer than 8'), it's way easier to get those in and out of a pickup.
I don't think most people use their trucks this way most days, but it's easy to convince yourself you will.
I’d also add that they became a lifestyle accessory. Once SUVs started getting identified with soccer moms, the size and macho styling of pickups started going up along with the price. That makes a lot of sense financially for the manufacturer since a business user is going to be a lot more price sensitive, especially for stuff which isn’t durable, and there are a ton of people who don’t really need one but like the image so moving in that direction can grow your market significantly as long as you don’t drive away your original audience.
If you want to actually carry passengers in your truck, you want 4 doors and a full back seat. The new Tacomas are great trucks, because it's practical to carry cargo or people in them. Old single cab Rangers, Luvs, Tacomas, etc, were fine, but not as broad market.
If you need to carry passengers, a truck probably isn't the right choice. Four doors and a bed make for an oversized and inefficient vehicle for hauling either people or cargo alone. You say "broad market", I say "ill suited for most tasks."
> If you need to carry passengers, a truck probably isn't the right choice. Four doors and a bed make for an oversized and inefficient vehicle for hauling either people or cargo alone. You say "broad market", I say "ill suited for most tasks."
It's a fine choice, as long as the truck has 4 doors. And the super cabs don't really affect gas mileage much at all.
When I was growing up, my dad had one of those tiny Rangers. There were 3 of us kids. My dad was a part-time plumber and also built our house when we were younger. We'd make regular trips to Lowe's or whatever with him when my mom was working. There weren't even 4 separate seat belts. It wasn't really safe, and it was a tight squeeze that was only possible because we were quite young. Anyways, many reasons why you sometimes need to do both.
Yep. It's a big reason I stuck with a Fit (can still cram in a decent amount of stuff) instead of a small pickup.
Aside from the fact that there don't seem to be small pickups anymore, the closest ones I've found all seem to have 4 doors and a really short bed. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had more than one passenger in my Fit, but I frequently need to pick up large items at the local home center or haul things to the dump (old home renovation).
But since most smaller trucks seem like large cars with stubby beds, I settle for having my 4x8 plywood sheets ripped at the store or scoring/folding drywall sheets so I can slide them in from the hatch to the passenger seat.
Nothing has happened -- new trucks are within the dimensions of old trucks +-5% for similar configurations. This is very easy to validate with a quick search. The real question is how this myth got started.
It's so bizarre to me as an Australian that these are considered "compact". Here they are the standard utility vehicle for every tradesman (although the Toyota Hilux is perhaps most popular). Coming from my hatchback I find these long and awkward to park / merge.
Sadly Dodge Rams and other stupid big US cars are starting to rear their ugly faces, although they look hilariously out of place on our roads. A popular term for them is "emotional support vehicle"
I'm utterly baffled why Toyotas like the 79 Series LandCruiser hasn't taken over the United States yet
It is the most American vehicle ever made
Next to no electronics, far stronger than a Hilux, all standard dirt cheap parts that are all entirely serviceable in the middle of no where and most importantly for Americans: a massive V8 diesel engine
Out bush I see quite a few 6 wheeler modified ones with double 220L (63 gallon) fuel tanks
US Regulatory capture shooting themselves in the foot I guess
A couple reasons might be the chicken tax (25% tariff on all imported trucks) and if it's "too small" it might be in the category of light trucks where the EPA imposes very strict fuel economy standards.
I blame regulatory capture for both of these things. Gotta protect American big truck manufacturers from competition from smaller, lighter, possibly cheaper vehicles.
The MY2022 Maverick is what the new Ranger should have been. And the Hyundai Santa Cruz also was introduced in MY2022. Finally some steps in the right direction, at least.
I wish they would roll out a two (or two and a half) door version of the Santa Cruz like the original prototype [0].
My 2001 Ford Ranger hit this sweet spot beautifully but it was a DOHC and when the timing chain came apart it wasn't worth doing an engine swap. I can't find a replacement currently but am holding out hope for the Toyota Tacoma electric in a year or two.
Checked em out, but again...more seats and less bed is not what I need. I just want a car-like light truck for me to drive around the city alone or with a single passenger during the week and pick up sheets of plywood or drywall on the weekends. Don't want a big truck, don't need to carry a family of four.
But Santa Cruz is at least a step in the right direction.
The brazilian Ford Courier model was an amazing pickup. Its 1.6 engine was a beast for the weight (~1000kg if I remember correctly, you’d lose traction on launch very easily).
I’ts kinda crazy that cars like that are not even made anymore. You can barely load a couple boxes into most of the currently popular extended-cabin abominations.
I used to use an old Ford Ranger on a farm as a teen and it was a great truck. It was tough in its own way, easy to fix, and took alot of abuse. I rolled it once (not in it fortunately), and got it stuck in a stream. We dragged it out was a tractor, rolled it upright, waited for the carburetor to drain or something and got it back on the road.
I still long in my heart for a pickup that is as small as possible while having an 8 ft bed, but honestly once you also need to take children with you wherever you go, the compromise of a shorter bed with a good sized back seat (to accommodate car seats) really begins to make a lot of sense.
I ended up just attaching a trailer hitch to my Chevy Volt and buying a lightweight 8ft trailer. As long as I just need to move big and not heavy, it's perfectly adequate, and the mileage when I'm not hauling is a lot better.
And it cost me about $2k while keeping me out of the insane used truck market.
the people that depend on these vehicles are particularly tuned in to how to keep them alive...
Years ago, when my wife and I lived in a 'rural adjacent' community we had a ~20 year old manual transmission european sedan sitting in our driveway for about a year, tires slowly deflating, until one couple stopped by to enquire about it. My wife told them that if you can get it running you can have it, the husband came back a few days later to sign the paperwork, and after popping the hood and turning a few knobs was able to get it started and drove it away :)
Very happy that the vehicle had an extended life with someone that could put it to use.
They probably share a lot of the same drivetrain/engine/etc. parts from vehicles of the same era. If you are mechanically inclined and have the right tools, you might be able to do some of the work yourself. Most auto mechanics familiar with older Japanese branded vehicles should be able to work on them like they would on a regular US import.
The biggest issue I have is that they are right-hand drive. I'd be hesitant driving a mini-truck on streets and highways, even if it's licensed. This would be a non-issue if the intent is to leave it on private property, unlicensed.
I wish mini-trucks had a bigger demand here. I'd like a pickup, but I don't need the monster trucks that are on the market these days. Just something to move furniture, appliances, and junk around town.
The problem with the Maverick (as others have mentioned) is that they squander valuable bed space by adding a cab to the design.
To me, a pickup truck is a pretty utilitarian thing. I don't need a cab. I have other vehicles if I need to take passengers.
I remember pricing out a pickup a few years ago, and it was hard to find one that wasn't already configured with a cab. I guess the market demand is larger for people who have kids but still want a pickup for whatever reason.
>I guess the market demand is larger for people who have kids but still want a pickup for whatever reason.
Or people who buy trucks for their business. It's much easier to put a whole crew into one-two vehicles instead of driving each man in his own truck especially if you do residential work, where worksites might not have ample parking or any parking for that matter.
Perhaps consider a visit to New Zealand and buying one there if you can’t import one from Japan (keyword “direct import”), although your total costs would be high. We are friendly buggers over here, so you are not likely to get ripped off unless you are a numpty. Buy an unregistered spare one for parts - used farm ones without plates get sold much cheaper.
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/suzuki/carry/search — all used imports from Japan. Note prices are in NZD, reduce prices by 1/3 to get to USD. You can get GST (sales tax) refunded on exports but it might not be much money because second hand goods are zero-rated?
I really wanted a 1.3 litre 4WD Suzuki Carry a few years ago, but they really hold their value so they were not cheap enough for me. USD8000 for a 20 year old ute! They are in high demand in NZ.
I personally would avoid the Subaru mini-truck: I think mechanical issues and access to parts are problems. I also looked at the equivalent Hyundai mini-truck, but the Suzuki is probably the best bet.
Japan has regulations that make old vehicles expensive to keep, so they export them before they get really old. New Zealand buys a lot of second hand car stock from Japan. If you need something 25 years old, then New Zealand might have more stock.
We don’t salt our roads. Anything that has spent all its life in dry areas like the Canterbury Plains would be best - don’t buy if it has been long periods in wet climates. Avoid anything that has been on the coast - avoid sea-spray rust damage (don’t buy from my local area, New Brighton).
Yeah, but this thread seems to mainly be talking about left-hand drive imports.
If someone does their homework, they could bring over a big American Ute to NZ (buy cheap in US, sell for heaps in NZ). Need to be extremely careful about NZ regulations though - complicated and relatively costly/risky. Ideally find someone in NZ that has done it for the model you would import into NZ.
>It's hard to find anyone in rural areas willing to work on them and not all mini trucks are equal.
Living in a rural area, I first saw these popping up at least a decade ago. The typical farmer / rancher has to be mechanically skilled and one of the benefits of these vehicles is that they are relatively simple mechanically speaking, IE: assuming availability of parts you could do the work yourself.
I’ve also found that many rural mechanics (try the tractor/large truck guys if the car mechanic is skittish) are perfectly willing to work on them for time+materials; they want to know that you know it may take more time and cost more. Once past that they’re quite capable.
So if you can source the parts for them, and be willing to have it take some time; you’ll find help.
I’d recommend looking for a reputable dealer who does a proper shipment and inspection. Here in Seattle we have https://sodo-moto.com who works with fvej.com to bring vehicles over and ensure the quality.
Too bad you aren't inclined to work on them yourself. To me a key truck is a "hobby car" and I have no compunctions about learning to wrench on one. (YouTube certainly has plenty of how-to videos on it.)
isn't it getting hard to get any kind of car worked on in rural areas?
It is. I can do some mechanical work but I have no idea what special tools and tricks are required knowledge with these trucks. At least with side-by-sides there are a myriad of dealers and mechanics near me as so many people use them around their ranches, to go into town and to go into the mountains. There is probably some little shop that would say they could work on the mini-trucks but my experience with the small businesses here as that most of them fake it until they make it, but they never make it. So I would be taking a bit of a gamble. If I found one that was cheap enough it might be worth the gamble as I could just write off the loss if it has some obscure problem. That is why I am still on the fence.
For me, European multipurpose vehicles (sprinter vans?) were a revelation. An old Renault Kangoo is cheap to buy, cheap to drive and cheap to maintain. It's a small, simple car that drives and parks like a small sedan, but carries as much as a small pickup truck.
I can fit a bed, 3 months of luggage and a bicycle in mine. In a pinch, it's a brilliant microcamper. It's a big box on wheels. You can do what you want with it.
It's not a nice car, but it was designed to serve real user needs. That's why they're everywhere from Morocco to Poland.
I think this is true unless you're hauling something that you really don't want in a closed space with you. Lawn equipment, motorcycle, fertilizer, that sort of thing.
I think in America we'd just call that a "flat bed truck" or something, which is a catch all for those that do indeed have flat beds as well as these with short sides around the bed.
That got me there with a little extra searching. "Flatbeds with side gates."
Here they are very common on construction sites for the messier work (building roads, railways, walls, roofs, forestry etc) but normal vans with a roof are more common for the cleaner work (plumbing, electrics, painting, carpentry etc).
This made me realize why I see so many Kangoos in Japan, despite them not really being cheap here! A bit of a nicer version of a Kei truck, without being a full minivan!
Yeah, sure. If you're running some successful bakery in Kagurazaka having the nice-looking truck feels like a "fine" decision. My mental image is that Townaces are bigger, but maybe that's just my impression from the Kangoo's curves
Yup Kangoos are quite expensive in Japan. They start at JPY 3.8M [1]
The Toyota Sienta, which starts at JPY 2M, seems like a much better value for a passenger car - and I think they borrowed from the Kangoo's styling a bit for the latest iteration [2]. Or for business use a Town Ace, NV200, HiJet, etc.
There is this amazing Twitter thread comparing the Citroen C15 (a design from the 1980s) to a modern American pickup and a modern British SUV, with the Citroen blowing them out of the water in most scenarios: https://twitter.com/jmaris_/status/1570889945551863808
Aha that's amazing. It would be nice to retrofit them with electric engines, but I doubt that would be commercially feasible, as much as I love them I wouldn't want to crash in that above 20kph
Yeah, Stellantis just need to release a new one. They quote the C15 in the "more than 90 years in utility vehicles" press releases for their new (optionally electric) Citroen utility vehicles: https://www.media.stellantis.com/ch-fr/citroen/press/citroen...
The US equivalent is a minivan; which everyone seems to agree is absolutely impossible to admit buying unless you’re a housewife with small kids. But they’re incredibly practical.
Missing the point. Many people buying inefficient oversized pickup trucks don't care that there's smaller and more efficient options out there, but they do it for the status simbol and ego lifting, not to be utilitarian and efficient.
I see these monster pick-up trucks more and more in European cities nowadays too, F-150s, Dodge Rams, with some fancy paintjob and big wheels but who's bed hasn't seen any actual use carrying anything because the owner is usually some middle-aged Ray-Ban wearing divorced dad with money, using it as a toy, trying to look cool. Power to him I guess, but those monster trucks are horrible for visibility and safety of cyclists, pedestrians, small cars, etc.
Most utilitarians here, blue collar workers, people for whom their vehicles are a tool for the job, mostly drive white vans here, as they're a lot more practical and economical than big trucks.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. I live in Dallas and this is 100% true.
What’s fun is when you notice that the biggest, flashiest trucks are all concentrated in the fanciest suburbs. Once you get out in the country, off the main roads like where I’m from, suddenly (1) pickup trucks make up a lower percentage of the traffic, and (2) they are generally* smaller, more utilitarian and more beat up.
* except for the occasional F350 dually pulling an actual horse trailer
Probably because nobody is missing the point. They understand that huge vehicles are largely bought as a status symbol and they're mocking those people for buying an unnecessarily enormous hunk of metal.
Another factor is safety. I don't share this point of view, but I have seen others purposely choose large, heavy vehicles for family members so they stand a better chance surviving a bad collision.
If you've ever sat in traffic driving a small car surrounded by large vehicles it definitely starts to sink in that you are at a distinct disadvantage if anything goes wrong. So this trend is also at least partially about this weird arms race of wanting to feel safer in the presence of ever larger vehicles.
You're at a safety advantage in a smaller vehicle more often than not. If you're in an accident going fast enough for the size of your vehicle to matter, you stand a very high chance of getting severely fucked up no matter what you're driving. You need to not be in the accident in the first place, and driving a large vehicle with worse handling, longer stopping distances, and a tendency to roll over does not help.
Your average person is not mechanically inclined enough to assess the safety of vehicles, usually to the detriment of the safety of everybody else on the road. Another example of this is people's perception that they're safer with AWD in snowy conditions when all it's doing is getting the vehicle moving faster and giving the driver the confidence to push it way beyond its ability to brake in those conditions.
> If you're in an accident going fast enough for the size of your vehicle to matter, you stand a very high chance of getting severely fucked up no matter what you're driving.
The most dangerous, a head on collision, will always be safer for the heavier vehicle. It's simple physics.
Rollovers are also extremely bad, and vehicles like the Tahoe have a ~25% rollover risk as assessed by the NHTSA. It's simple physics!
More than anything, you need to just not be in the accident in the first place. Buying a vehicle with dogshit braking and handling characteristics so you can "win" in a crash you could have just avoided is dumb, especially when you consider that you carry that increased rollover tendency every single second you're driving that vehicle.
By doing everything you can to not get in a head-on. Ditch it, land it in a yard, etc. Just about the only thing I wouldn't do is dump it in a flooded ag ditch, but that's a situation most people don't find themselves in. If you're in a city where you have literally nowhere to go, nobody is going fast enough to the point where the size differential between the vehicles is going to matter unless you're in something exceptionally small.
There are multiple times where I've had to drive on the shoulder to avoid people out of their lane and they would have been a hell of a lot scarier than they were if I had to do it in an SUV/truck. I've been in multiple fairly severe vehicle accidents and I can tell you from first-hand experience that you're not appreciably safer in an SUV.
Sprinter vans are more practical than modern pickups. You can fit a few sheets of drywall into it, lock up your stuff, and keep everything out of the elements. If you have a windowless van, you have everything out of sight, as well.
Do you live in a tent? Would you make the same comparison about your house?
We live in our RV for 3-6 months a year, in weather from -10 in Colorado blizzards and 120 degree California summers. In rain snow and sleet. I work remotely from it.
A tent is not a home. An RV It is for many of us.
Before you throw more stones, it's far more eco friendly and lower carbon Footprint to own an rv and travel and stay in it in various places than to own several properties and fly between them.
> it's far more eco friendly and lower carbon Footprint to own an rv and travel and stay in it in various places than to own several properties and fly between them.
It's considered worse to drive (vs fly) unless you have more than 2 people-- and that's for a normal car. With a truck+trailer the break-even point would need more passengers.
The info you posted doesn't include the property and accommodations, it's only the travel, which of course is higher, the savings overall is in the stay, so you have to compare it to flying AND accommodations, not just flying.
For the comparison parent post is making - leisure travel - I think there's a big difference in that flying enables much larger distances, thus much more emissions.
You can easily fly 1000 miles each way for a weekend trip. Not as easily with a car, the travel tends to be much shorter.
And also doesn't take into account economy of scale, a family of 4 has 4x the emissions in the plane example, same as 1 person in the car example. So if you do the math as a family of 4 it really changes things.
Owning multiple properties and flying between them is something rich people do that wastes an astronomical amount of resources, and the fact that it wastes more than towing 13,000lbs of RV around doesn't make either of them any better.
Or any worse - you apparently didn't notice, but I wrote that there are good reasons to own an RV, and want to reiterate that. Probably in your heart of hearts you know whether your ownership is justified, and I don't need to tell you.
TONs of non-rich people also have 2 properties and go between them. You can buy a cabin or vacation property in the rural US for a surprisingly affordable amount. I know many folks who are certainly not rich, but do spend time in various locations.
Think traveling nurses, seasonal employees, etc. Also look up the term "snow bird"
There's nothing more utilitarian than an extended-cab truck if you're a "divorced dad". You're hauling kids, furniture, trash, tools, etc. And if you need to move cross country guess what...You can tow a trailer. And I'd argue "ego lifting" is buying a 15k carbon fiber bike and riding in a traffic snarling peleton with your euro bike buddies...Everybody's guilty of some form of ego.
Not even necessarily ego or whatever. Some people just like trucks, and a car's "reputation" is part of the purchase decision for many buyers. It's why men don't buy Beetles or Priuses as often as women and women don't buy trucks as often as men for instance. Many people express themselves with their car.
The /r/fuckcars folks are being a little dishonest here. As another commenter mentioned, this is like asking a vegan for steak recommendations at a restaurant.
Ford F-250 Shelby edition towing capacity: 24,200 pounds
And that's just one additional dimension where these vehicles significantly differ.
These vehicles are utilitarian workhorses great for contracting, construction, farming (eg. hauling livestock), towing (eg. other cars, trailers, mobile BBQ, etc.), boating, leisure [1], etc.
I live in an urban area close enough to the forest, lakes, and pastures to see all of these uses frequently.
The electric version will power job sites, camp sites, and help with disaster recovery. It's going to sell like hot cakes.
> The /r/fuckcars folks are being a little dishonest here. As another commenter mentioned, this is like asking a vegan for steak recommendations at a restaurant.
The subreddit is specifically named 'fuck cars'. How exactly are they being dishonest? This is more like r/vegan showing how a vegan meal is better than a steak meal along some dimension, say, environmental impact.
> I live in an urban area close enough to the forest, lakes, and pastures to see all of these uses frequently.
In fact I would say that you are the one being somewhat dishonest by (implicitly) claiming both the benefits of being able to use it as a utilitarian workhorse, and in an urban area. If the trucks have the majority of their utility as contracting, construction, or towing, they should require being licensed as a commercial driver, and potentially be banned from being operated on city roads due to the danger they pose to smaller vehicles and pedestrians.
Think of the argument from that subreddit (and me) this way -- if you are driving a huge farm tractor, you cannot also bring said tractor into the city center. Not all heavy machinery needs to be allowed everywhere. Obviously you might not agree, but I think the argument is fundamentally honest.
They're comparing on a single dimension and laughing at F-150 owners.
> This is more like r/vegan showing how a vegan meal is better than a steak meal along some dimension, say, environmental impact.
Not when evaluating a purchasing decision, overall utility, or customer demographics and needs. I'm showing that morally opposed parties inject themselves and their biases orthogonally.
> In fact I would say that you are the one being somewhat dishonest by (implicitly) claiming both the benefits of being able to use it as a utilitarian workhorse, and in an urban area.
Have you ever been to a city that's half an hour to the woods? Or perhaps somewhere it's typical to find people owning acres of their own land right next to a major metropolitan? Not everything is SF or NYC.
If you want to tax an externality, do so. Many state gas taxes tax vehicle weight via the proxy of gas mileage. Right now it's the heavy EVs doing the damage that are slipping through the taxation cracks.
> they should require being licensed as a commercial driver
Okay, now we're getting into yucking other people's yums.
Some people own boats and full hog smokers, like getting muddy on the weekends and going fishing. There are millions of these folks in America.
If you want to regulate what you perceive as a negative externality, we should do it evenly against everything. Tax and regulate broadly and fairly.
Consider sex. It spreads disease and causes all sorts of relationship drama. Kids can be a nightmare. Think about all the lost productivity! Who's paying for that? (I'm joking, of course!)
In the scheme of things, these vehicles are much more good than bad. They sell like crazy, satisfy their consumers, get a lot of productive work done, and on the weekends are spent as leisure devices - getting folks muddy and smelly with beers and fish and sun. A good diversion for hard workers.
> potentially be banned from being operated on city roads due to the danger they pose to smaller vehicles and pedestrians
You can vote for that in your own district, and maybe that's correct, but other places and populations will feel differently about how they live their own lives.
> if you are driving a huge farm tractor, you cannot also bring said tractor into the city center. Not all heavy machinery needs to be allowed everywhere.
On the spectrum of farm tractor to kei car, the F-150 is tightly clustered in the middle with the rest of the "street legal" vehicles.
I grew up in agricultural rural America in the 80s and 90s. Tons of pickup trucks and, later, SUVs! Subjectively, though, I'd say:
* The real farm families would have a pickup for pulling a horse trailer, moving mulch/manure/hay bales/equipment, but also have a regular sedan for, like, driving places.
* The suburban families would have a pickup or SUV as a daily driver.
A quick Google search seems to back my impresssion:
"According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less."
As you say, taxing the externality is reasonable (and currently imperfect, in a few dimensions). One reason to look especially hard at SUVs and light trucks is that they have externalities in a number of dimensions (road wear, emissions, accident safety for other cars) and seem to have very limited utility (most people who buy them aren't really using them for their supposed purpose).
I know a lot of people with those ridiculous big trucks, and 2 of them use them for utility, one has a boat and one has a 5th wheel. The others just...have them. So until there's zero people driving them for vanity or aggression reasons, it doesn't feel dishonest at all. Your response feels like a typical US response to social ills - turn a blind eye to a problem because a) the thing causing the problem is fun/popular/profitable b) there's a handful of hyper specific potentially valid reasons for the thing that have nothing to do with the people causing the problem (most of the giant trucks in my area can't even haul anything because of the vanity lifts and various "upgrades" - they would make the argument you are as to why they should be allowed but they would not support anything that would restrict them to those purposes).
I know a lot of people who drive big trucks, and all of them regularly use them for: hauling building materials, towing RVs, towing boats, towing four wheelers/dirt bikes/UTVs/snowmobiles, pulling utility trailers (for trash pickup, job site cleanup, lumber & metal, piping, furniture, landscaping, tree service, etc), tailgating parties, hunting, mudding, off-roading, barbecuing (towing a smoker), etc.
Literally don't know one person that drives a truck "for vanity" and I gotta know at least a few hundred truck owners.
I drive a F350. It will tow a mountain. I pull a fifth wheel with it. People are often surprised to hear that it gets 20 miles per gallon when it's not towing anything.
While I love the truck, I miss my old Tacoma. The Tacoma was a smoother ride and far more practical for urban navigation. But Tacomas have a bout a fifth or even less as much tow capacity as an F350.
Big trucks aren't causing social ills for anyone except people that have nothing better to do but complain about other people enjoying their own lives.
> Big trucks aren't causing social ills for anyone except people that have nothing better to do but complain about other people enjoying their own lives.
Just one of many reports from the past 20 years documenting the correlation between vehicle size and deaths/injuries to those on the receiving end. You'll find similar conclusions from IIHS, NHTSA, etc.
I drive a 2016 F150 crew cab, my first truck and generally speaking I love it. Aside from the usual utility (being able to haul large things like plywood/drywall for home projects or 25 bags of mulch every spring), my son and I play ice hockey and the equipment bags are large, plus the hockey sticks themselves are up to 5 feet long. I see many families at the rink struggling to store a bag or two into their SUVs and it’s a tight fit at best. I didn’t buy this truck as some kind of manly status symbol - it’s a comfortable and versatile vehicle and I make no apologies for owning it.
As I get older I’ve grown less tolerant of people trying to tell other people how they should live. Feel free to live your own life as you see fit as long as you’re not directly hurting other folks.
The transmission overheats after 3-4 hours going uphill with no load. They made it too heavy for the powertrain!
It’s also depressingly easy to trigger the overload light on the dashboard by doing things like buying bricks at Home Depot.
Seriously, WTF? Do we need a 2500 class to replace our old pre-fuel-injection GMC 1500? It had better fuel economy and was also lower to the ground. It could even handle mountain freeways!
(The newer GMC was even worse than the Ram, FWIW.)
I’d definitely look into one of these little japanese trucks if I could get a new one and have it serviced. Bonus points if it is an EV.
Sorry to hear that. The modern Ford PowerDiesels are amazing though. Mine has towed 20K+ pounds through a 10% grade in the Grand Tetons without breaking a sweat.
The point isn't that the smaller truck is an equally capable vehicle. The point is to make fun of people who don't need a truck but are getting an overkill vehicle as a status symbol, all the while people who actually need to transport goods can still get a lot done with a tiny kei truck.
When did “need” become a requirement for having things? Who gave you or anyone else the authority to decide what other people “need”? I don’t think people “need” motorcycles, private planes, vacation homes, more than a few million dollars in the bank, etc. But who am I to tell people what they should have? Live and let live.
My F150 pollutes much less than my wife’s car simply by virtue of me working from home while she commutes every day. Taking up more space is not an issue for people who don’t live in big cities. Trucks are not more inherently dangerous than any other vehicle just because of their size. If that were the case let’s outlaw semis, delivery trucks and anything larger than a VW Golf (a car I had & loved in my youth.)
You folks need to get it out of your heads that one size fits all and everyone needs to have the same values and make the same choices as you. Everything has risks and trade offs.
> My F150 pollutes much less than my wife’s car simply by virtue of me working from home while she commutes every day.
Awesome, but that's not about the car, it's about working from home.
> Taking up more space is not an issue for people who don’t live in big cities.
But it is for those who do. And still for a lot of people outside big cities.
> Trucks are not more inherently dangerous than any other vehicle just because of their size. If that were the case let’s outlaw semis, delivery trucks and anything larger than a VW Golf (a car I had & loved in my youth.)
It's not just the size, also other factors about the design, but there's a reason why commercial driving licenses exist. They should probably be required for all trucks.
> You folks need to get it out of your heads that one size fits all and everyone needs to have the same values and make the same choices as you.
It doesn't have to fit all, but it does have to fit the environment, or at least take it into consideration.
> They should probably be required for all trucks.
In your opinion
> It doesn't have to fit all, but it does have to fit the environment, or at least take it into consideration.
What does that even mean? It's a completely arbitrary non-specific statement. Look - if people don't want large vehicles, trucks or otherwise, they'll stop buying them and manufacturers will stop making them. It's entirely your right to dislike the state of things, but I don't believe it's anyone's job or authority to force people to buy a Fiat 500 (a perfectly fine car for many) when they prefer an F-150.
The problem is that currently people are buying an F-150 when it's not fine for them. People are buying them instead of Fiat 500s because in a Fiat 500 they feel less safe in between all those giant F-150s.
Maybe you should look around a bit through the rest of the discussion here, but lots of people are pointing out that those F-150s exist because they don't have to meet the same requirements as the Fiat 500, which is ridiculous. Especially since they do require the same license. They don't have to meet the same requirements as passenger cars because by some rules, they don't count as passenger cars, but as trucks. But you can drive with with a regular license, and they're used as regular passenger cars. This discrepancy is causing problems with lots of people driving trucks far bigger than what they need.
Also, apparently, US fuel efficiency rules seem to encourage larger cars, which are less fuel efficient. Clearly a broken system.
> The problem is that currently people are buying an F-150 when it's not fine for them.
In your opinion.
> Also, apparently, US fuel efficiency rules seem to encourage larger cars, which are less fuel efficient.
I'm not sure where you get that idea from. We're generally less sensitive to fuel economy because gasoline in the US is cheap - because it's not taxed to the hilt (I'd be happy to pay higher taxes for universal healthcare, but that's another hot topic).
> This discrepancy is causing problems with lots of people driving trucks far bigger than what they need.
Again, "need" is subjective.
You're in the EU and you have your own mindset that's very different from the vast majority of American's mindset (I would know, my parents are EU immigrants.) Nothing wrong with difference of opinions...but you're not going to change people's minds here with these arguments.
I think most people agree that "live and let live" is a good philosophy, but it's also tough to reconcile with the global tragedy of the commons wherein we destroy the earths ecosystems because we all have our eyes set on completely unsustainable standards of living.
Light-duty vehicles, including sedans, SUVs and pickup trucks, are currently responsible for 58% of U.S. transportation sector greenhouse gas emissions. Pickup trucks accounted for 14% of light-duty vehicle sales in the United States in 2020... (https://news.umich.edu/study-greater-greenhouse-gas-reductio...)
The sky isn't falling and pickup trucks aren't that big of a problem from an emissions standpoint (my F-150 gets 19mpg, within 1mpg of my wife's minivan and my neighbor's Toyota Highlander. Passenger car/truck transportation accounts for 7% of the world's emissions. People are acting like buying EVs and small cars is going to make a damn bit of difference.
I wasn't trying to imply people who have less efficient vehicles are somehow wrong or bad, just pointing out that there's some dissonance between the otherwise rational libertarian mindset (live and let live) and the big looming global problem that is unsolvable without cooperative effort. People getting upset about each others personal excesses is understandable, even if misplaced and/or unproductive.
The article talks about using the Kei truck as a replacement for a UTV/Side-by-Side, not for a daily truck. These /r/fuckcars people have never done real work in their lives and are just larping. 1100 pound tow capacity couldn't even tow most empty trailers.
The vast majority of large truck owners definitely do. 1300 pounds is nothing, and your ignorance is telling.
Most people doing real work with trucks are hauling heavy duty construction trailers, or otherwise, but even if you wanted to move furniture you'd quickly exceed 1300 pounds.
Thanks for the useless hit piece, if you can find the scientific data, I'll evaluate it, but when I click into the links on the article, I'm unable to find it.
So we're clear: because surveys are incredibly difficult to do in a scientific way and there's a dozen ways to ask a question that can skew results, there's a hundred ways a journalist can misinterpret the results of that question, and there's a thousand ways you could incorrectly slice the demographics such that your survey skews completely out of sync with the target subject.
We want to know what large truck owners are doing with their trucks. We don't care about small truck owners not towing things because small trucks aren't considered to be excessive and truck beds are useful things on their own.
No, it's literally just a blogger expressing their opinion based on broken link data that we can't independently evaluate, so it's just as valid as an HN comment.
The author has written thousands of car reviews for Car & Driver and Road & Track. I do find a professional automotive journalist citing a source more credible than an HN comment. If you have any better evidence, please share it.
I think many users here would have a heart attack and die to realize how many semis on the road are entirely empty (deadheading) and how many are filled way below capacity.
Most truck owners I know use their truck as a truck quite often. But that’s more rural; maybe everyone in a city commutes in an F150 for absolutely no reason at all.
> realize how many semis on the road are entirely empty
I'm sure semis are empty after they've dropped off a load at a destination and there is no commensurate return load back to where they came from. But given that semis are very expensive to move down the road, both from a human resource cost and an energy cost, I suspect the market is far better at optimizing that than you or I or any central operator could do.
Everyone I know that owns F150s use their truck beds or use their hitch to tow. I'm not sure what the big controversy is, except there seems to be a class of urbanites that are convinced they know other people's own needs better than they do. "They don't need a truck," says the Brooklyn blogger, who then proceeds to snark about a foreign micro truck that's normally used to skirt through the narrow streets and alleyways of Tokyo. The blogger has prob never owned acreage, cut lumber, smoked a brisket on-location, or hauled a load, but they know for sure that these silly Americans don't need a truck that's any bigger than a Prius.
A 24,000 pound barbecue? What does that look like?
I'm pretty sure most people who own these oversized pickup trucks never use that towing capacity. Maybe some do, and if they were the only ones using them, nobody would have a problem with it.
I know they have never ridden kei trucks. I'm a 175cm Japanese and its seat and space is obviously uncomfortable. It's fine for the purpose (carrying farm equipment and other stuff, drive max like 10km at 60km/s) but not comparable with richer trucks. Looks better to compare with 90s Hilux.
I'm a 185cm non-Japanese, and kei truck seat and space has been just fine for me. You can't recline the seats obviously, but that's not why you're in the truck
I rode in kei-trucks and kei-vans with an adult in every seat, up some very steep and long hills in Japan. We weren't exactly in the fast lane, but there was not any mention of the van not being up to the task. It felt just fine.
In fact my friend was SO excited about his new van (for 1998) that for a while, he was bragging about every last little aspect up and down those hills, every time we rode with him. He lived in a gigantic danchi at the top of one of the steepest hills around, and still loved that thing.
(He worked as a furnace-jumper-inner / furnace-insides-scraper at an auto recycling place all day, and had molten aluminum burns on his arms and sometimes face...I respected the heck out of that guy for what he did to support his family. I think he runs an IT business in Brazil now.)
Can you elaborate on what American dirt roads means? Japan has tons of dirt/gravel roads. A typical operating environment for a kei truck might look like this:
I would much, much rather have a new $70k Ford F150 Raptor than a tiny Japanese truck . Honestly a redditor - perhaps the most odious group on the Iternet - recommending the tiny Japanese truck over the F150 is a good enough reason to prefer the opposite; a redditor on "fuckcars" is a GREAT reason to prefer the opposite.
Basically because it's a high-mid-tier, nice modern car. Comparatively it has a quieter and smoother ride will allow me to make phone calls on my commute, using carplay to make the calls, read messages to me, and play music through the incredible sounding large badass speakers. The ride is much, much, much smoother. It'll be much more comfortable for a long road trip. There will be more room in the cab for stuff like say, my wife AND my dog. It comes with a warranty that I can use at any number of locations near me. Parts are still made for it and I can buy them here. It has R17 tires, 4 wheel drive, and anti-lock braking, electronic traction assist, TPMS, it will tell me when there might be ice on the road so I should proceed with caution, it has an advanced cruise control system with radar and lane keep assist, etc., etc., etc.
Because people who hate a thing are generally not the most knowledgeable about it and even if they know their judgement is clouded by hate. They only like the alternative to be contrarian.
I'm not gonna ask PETA for tips on raising beef steers, I'm not gonna ask Joe Biden what gun I should buy and I'm not gonna ask /r/fuckcars what car I should buy. And this is on top of the usual Reddit circle jerks and groupthink that make asking for advice there for anything of meaningful stakes questionable in general.
I wish the actual story was “US manufacturers announce line of small, Japanese style pickup trucks”
Importing adds friction both up front and for ongoing sourcing of parts and maintenance. Just give us some options for local pickup trucks utilizing existing repair facilities! Instead everyone bitches about truck drivers having such large vehicles, when that’s all that’s on offer here!
RAM sells a small truck in Mexico called RAM 700 and it’s getting popular for work purposes (specially in urban areas).
I have no idea why it’s not being sold in the US market.
The US market never carries vehicles that executives don't think will sell well in the US market, or that may lower their brand's perceived value, or take money away from a hot-selling model... We always get the shit cars with the shit mileage and less functionality. Some of that is due to regulatory or trade issues, but mostly they just think it will cut into their sales of a more expensive car they already have here. Also, dealerships are bastards.
I knew it seemed familiar. It’s based on the fiat strada, a unibody based pickup that for the longest has been based on a modified fiat hatchback (fiat uno first, fiat Palio later, not sure about now, maybe the argos)
The closest us equivalent in the US may be a Hyundai Santa Cruz, which sells ok-ish, the Honda rigid line, which sells okish too, and the Ford Maverick which sells like hot cakes.
RAM, like Ford, had the reputation. A rebadged Fiat toro may do the trick.
Ford is doing the same with the C pick up truck. I often see Rangers with Mexican license plates around town since I live in south Texas. I think if Ford or Ram can sell $100k pickup trucks in Mexico they would in a heart beat.
Obama era emissions regs make it impossible for (new) small trucks to be economically feasible. The way the regulations work disproportionately punish small vehicles.
We've been importing them to Louisiana for 20+ years now. Although for the longest time they were only legal to drive like a farm truck (up to 40 miles from the farm) and only on 55mph or less roads. They also had limiters installed so they couldn't go over 55mph, not that its hard to remove the tiny flap of metal they installed to keep the throttle from opening fully.
There is one farmer we used to call the used kei truck salesman because at any given time he has 10-20 of these in his yard for sale fresh off the import boat.
This is interesting. I’m from the UK, in the car trade, and setting up in Louisiana. Is there a market for European panel vans (like the sprinter, crafter, ford transit) in Louisiana?
It took a while but people are a lot more warmed up to the European or world vans now. IMO you still see a lot more tradesmen using pickup trucks just because its the culture here. For personal use you mostly see the large religious family types with 12 kids driving 15 passenger vans or RV/camper types using panel vans.
I'm sad that the city van is a dying breed now. Had a Nissan NV200 I used for a daily driver and weekend camper van. Unfortunately the NV200, Metris, Promaster City, and Transit Connect are all killed off and out of production. By 2024 If I want another brand new cargo van I'm stuck buying a $40k+ fullsize.
I’ve looked into one of these and they’re completely illegal in my state, no way to register them without gaming different dmv stations and getting a clueless dmv rep who doesn’t know what they’re looking at, to register it. This is Oregon. Really unfortunate situation as these fit a lot of use cases that would previously require something as big as a gas guzzling Ford F150 otherwise.
I think most people register them out of state for this reason - Minnesota and Arkansas being the two go-to (also for bypassing vehicle road-readiness inspections...).
I wish I'd known this. Oregon's bi-annual "emissions test" where they hook up the inspection machine to the ODB port and let the car lie to it is absurd. When I first heard about it I assumed they'd put some device on the exhaust. They do not.
I really wish it was tailpipe based. I liked the PA emissions laws where you could improve the efficiency of your vehicle and it would pass. Not so in CA, must be numbers matching and CARB certified parts/combo.
> Really unfortunate situation as these fit a lot of use cases that would previously require something as big as a gas guzzling Ford F150 otherwise.
What about the Ford Maverick? The only issue is that the bed is fairly small, but it looks like these minis have small beds and low towing capacities as well? And Ford makes a hybrid version.
(Don't misunderstand: I'm not arguing against relaxing the rules in Oregon.)
The Ford Maverick is better than most modern pickups, but still misses the mark. As you mentioned, the bed is significantly smaller than a 1990 Ranger despite being 6 inches longer[1]. Honestly the biggest issue I have with these vehicles is their height, which is a known hazard to pedestrians[2]. The Maverick doesn't fix that issue.
I have questions about the pedestrian article. The article states that almost 3/4 of all vehicles sold are light truck or SUV. So wouldn't it just be statistically more likely that for ANY accident it would be a taller vehicle?
The actual paper discussed in that article isn't just comparing frequencies of accidents, but rather using them to calculate the odds that a given vehicle type causes a pedestrian accident in a variety of scenarios. In doing so the author determined that these vehicles were overinvolved in accidents relative to their frequency on the road.
The sales of the Maverick have really made a compelling case for an even-smaller truck that is one size down. I don't even think ford thought it would sell that well. The Maverick is still a giant truck compared to these.
I thought the whole appeal for the maverick was that it was a hybrid truck that you’d be able to drive around a city (Ford marketing, itll be fine to drive anywhere probably)?
You could actually probably get this onto a state-wide ballot as a measure to be voted on in Oregon. The bar to get things on the ballot isn't particularly high.
As someone else living in the PNW, I’ve read that people in Oregon permits kei trucks, but won’t allow them to be registered and to work around this, people will register them in Washington and then bring them down.
Someone has to pay to have a vehicle certified (crash tests, emissions, figure out what’s needs modified to meet US regulations, etc). If the vehicle was never sold in the US to begin with, then they can’t be registered until they are 25+ years old. Even then, it’s hard/impossible in some states.
My memory is a bit hazy, but at one point in time an importer company paid the large sums (hundreds of thousands I’m sure) to have a certain GT-R model go through the safety/emission procedures so they could be imported before they were 25 years old. That’s the only case I can think of.
My memory is a bit hazy, but at one point in time an importer company paid the
large sums (hundreds of thousands I’m sure) to have a certain GT-R model go
through the safety/emission procedures so they could be imported before they
were 25 years old. That’s the only case I can think of.
If memory serves, there were a couple people importing R32 Skylines. The one shop stopped doing the necessary work and got caught. Nobody wants to do the work because it's extremely expensive and bureaucratic. The problem with relaxing the rules is that you're either going to accept more pollution or heavily restrict the number of vehicles that can be imported creating an unfair lottery type situation. Keep in mind that other countries, especially Japan, were a lot slower to require pollution controls. IIRC California and Germany were pretty quick to phase out leaded gasoline, but most other countries (e.g. France) were much slower. The safety stuff should be easier to harmonize for imports, but there's still a lot of bullshit in DOT regulations (e.g. everything about US spec headlights).
IMO a step in the right direction would be to carve out some exceptions for EV conversions.
Kinda ironic that big city dwellers are buying larger and larger trucks every year just to take them on grocery shopping runs while rural farm workers are moving in the opposite direction for actual hauling.
While you are correct that urban Americans LARPing ranchers are, indeed, buying larger and larger trucks I don't see actual farmers/ranchers downsizing.
I live on a working ranch and while our truck is very boring ("work truck" - basically a fleet vehicle with no options) it is still quite large as it has an 8' bed, etc.
I think we could make good use of a battery powered vehicle with a small cargo area and we definitely make good use of the aforementioned full-sized truck ... but I don't find these mini-pickups appealing or interesting.
I don’t know how much they’re moving in the opposite direction… my dad was a rural beekeeper for many years and had a series of compact pickups (Toyota pickup, Nissan hardbody, Chevy S10)… and then he changed careers around the time you could no longer buy new compact pickups in NA. I expect that the number of compact pickups in rural areas hasn’t actually been going up in the years since.
My truck has a supercharger and a performance chip. It is a "city dwelling" truck...And I haul thousands of pounds of shit in the city just like I would anywhere else (hence why I have a truck). There's no rule saying trucks have to be for towing bovine.
The local Mahindra dealer also seems to be doing a brisk business with their Roxors - they're almost literally a 1950s Jeep with a modern diesel engine in them. It's the same market niche - small, off highway use, utility vehicles.
And at least out here, you're allowed to run around on the roads at least some with them to get between fields.
> they're almost literally a 1950s Jeep with a modern diesel engine in them
For those who aren't aware, Mahindra secured a licensing agreement with Willys in 1947 to make them. They're actually as close as you can get to a modern Willys Jeep, so much so that they were sued by Chrysler for infringing on Jeep's trade dress by looking too much like a Jeep brand Jeep
I presume you're not in USA - I can't imagine being allowed to import the Mahindra copy-paste Jeep into USA. Those clones are so blatant... Wish they added some more Indian flair to them. I can't believe jeep still bothered to enter the Indian market with that on the roads!
They don't even look all that much like Jeeps. Like yeah, some similar design elements, but that's true of pretty much every sedan or crossover or SUV or what have you on the market today.
It's a shame that Roxor isn't street legal. We live about 2 miles from our city's downtown. I'd absolutely love to have a little car that I take into town.
You do see new minitrucks in certain non-road settings in the US, but yeah, they aren't street legal. Some folks import them for use as UTVs: https://usminitrucksales.com
It's the same somewhat bizarre logic that makes it fine to register say, a 1969 VW Beetle in the US, but not a 2004 Mexican Beetle that's no less clean or safe. The older stuff gets grandfathered in because at that age there's hardly anyone willing to bother. But if new minitrucks were road legal, they'd be everywhere, and there might be an epidemic of minitruck highway deaths, etc.
There's a bit of confusion here: there are modern small cars/vans/trucks that are safe (e.g. https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/euro-...) but efficient and well designed, and then there are new vehicles built for a slightly lower price with safety features like crumple zones entirely absent, commonly sold in Mexico. These are death traps. Many of the Chinese trucks (e.g. Great Wall) were like that too, but they do make safer ones now.
I'll take the theoretical chance of an "epidemic of minitruck highway deaths" over the current reality of an epidemic of traffic fatalities made worse by cars and trucks getting heavier, taller, and deadlier.
It’s completely insane. A new Ford Ranger is considered a “compact” pickup truck. Nothing significantly smaller exists. But it is the exact same size as a 2004 F150.
I've seen a few of these in Maine in driveways and yards/fields, but only recently have I seen a couple on the road. I was surprised to see them. I believe JDM vans cannot be registered here but perhaps that's changed recently.
If made illegal to drive on the roads it's not clear why these would be preferable to side-by-sides, other than novelty or for folks that really like to wrench.
In the US Kei cars/trucks are handled differently by each state. We had to vote to get them approved to drive into the cities here once enough farmers had them and kept begging for the laws to change. Although for us it stems from having them imported as farm equipment.
A lot of people are using Vermont registration to get a title then transferring it to their home state, but I'm not sure how well that works everywhere.
Registering it does depend on the state: I've heard some states will prevent you from registering them due for emissions or safety reasons, even though they're federally legal to import
I own a Honda Acty van and I have met a ton of people with other kei trucks here in Nebraska and outside of the state. It seems like every other person with an acreage owns a kei truck nowadays, they're cheaper and more reliable than an ATV plus you can drive on roads. I've met some people here in Nebraska that make bank importing and selling kei trucks to farmers.
Like the other commenters have said, you have to check your state's laws to see if they can be registered, but I've met people in states that don't allow kei trucks and are just used as ATVs, and it's not like you're going to be fined for driving on back roads between your properties anyway. In Nebraska they're banned on highways, but it's not like you're going to take your 1800lb car which doesn't have airbags or any crash structure that only drives up to 65mph with a tailwind on any highways anyway.
If you're looking to buy one, check state laws and I recommend just eating the ~$2,000 markup to get one already with tags from a car dealer that sells these. Dealerships that sell RHD cars to people who drive for the Post Office will have these in stock and will be the easiest to deal with. It's not worth the risks and effort to do all the paperwork yourself IMO. If the car previously passed inspection in Japan, it's basically guaranteed to be fine because inspection in Japan is very good, they check for rust etc. Parts can either be cross-referenced to other cars (e.g. Honda Civic) or they will be expensive but available. You'll have to do all your own work, but they're extremely simple cars.
I use mine as a van camper, pretty cheap on gas if driven slowly.
I wonder how much of the “Americans want big cars” is just “car manufacturers _sell_ big cars and not much else” … then there’s the whole SUV loophole that gets them around emissions regs.
The Ford Maverick is great and around 20k but at this point I want 100% electric.
> And unlike a side-by-side, it can also be driven legally on local roads
Side by sides can, with a few accessories (horn, license plate lights, turn signals, etc), be driven legally on roads. Most dealers are happy to sell and attach these high profit items for you.
Adding for completeness sake, that site is out of date for my state. Street legal UTV's and mini-trucks are called "Multipurpose vehicles" in Wyoming and can be registered to operate on streets and highways. They even issue these nifty little Wyoming license plates that are UTV sized. The requirements are in the linked PDF.
Funny side note, my state even has a picture of one of the Japanese mini-trucks in the PDF. [1]
I think people should look up the DoT website for their state to get the current legal requirements for street legal UTV's and mini-trucks.
Problem with the Ford Maverick is that it’s only available in crew cab with a 4.5 ft bed, which is really a sub-par configuration if your priorities are in moving stuff rather than people.
Hah, I once built a roof rack like that with my dad for a standard cab pickup to carry kayaks.
Works great for occasional use, but still really sub-optimal to have an extra row of unused seat rather than bed space to put stuff if your primary use of the truck is to carry stuff in the bed.
What state do you live in that rural roads are 45? On the entire west coast they’re at least 55 and the average speed is more realistically in the mid 60s. I think in some of the south west states the speed limit on 2 lane rural roads is more like 70mph
Common lumber and sheathing is 8 feet long, so having a 6.5 foot bed means not having to flag the lumber while you're hauling it. Also I can't imagine fitting a gas generator, 5-gallon can, gas compressor, saws, nailguns, hardware, and nails all in the back of that 4-foot bed. When I was framing people would fill up their S-10s with the gear.
is the Maverick DOA? I see the all over my rural farm area and people are paying $8000 over sticker for the privilege of getting one of the few in stock.
Not at all. They sold 70k Mavericks last year and have 80k MY23s on pre-order. For context, the Maverick outsold the Ranger by nearly 50%. The main issue at the moment is they can't make them fast enough.
I put in a pre-order for a hybrid 6 months ago and have probably another 6 months to wait.
Must be somewhere in the flatlands then. The small(er) truck market is dominated by Toyota, Nissan and Chevrolets and Ford Rangers. Mavericks are mostly city-dweller mom-mobiles at best.
I'd love a Maverick for a weekend automobile for things like going to the countryside for the day, hiking, and picking things up at Home Depot, etc. for the money it seems like a pretty cool thing. I hope to buy a used one in a couple years.
If I was in a rural area and had to do serious things with it and haul then I wouldn't be in the market.
I really do like the Kei Class of cars. Some people talking about the 25 year rule that does not apply if they imported as an off-road vhehicle and some things like governor installed.
However, in some states you can't use off-road vehicles on any roadways, and you would only be able to register such an import as off-road vheicle. Where as you could register 25+ year old on in quite a few states as a low speed vheicle which allows pretty much anything, but highway use.
Man, I wish I could get a car like that in the USA.. I guess I'd probably want something with better crash safety, though, considering how many complete morons in the Bay Area are constantly speeding, weaving aggressively through traffic, running/pushing red lights, etc
People's poor dumb monkey brains just can't handle the speeds/weights involved in driving cars IMO
Also when it comes to pickups they have gotten so large. Even the ford maverick that ford has been making is still bigger than some 90's pickups. Even then "small" (if you can call that any more) are not really made any more.
Also don't get me started on how it's pretty hard to find a regular cab pickup. Like the ford maverick only comes in a 4 door configuration. Good luck carrying any standard length items like 4x8 sheet of ply wood or 8 ft lumber without the thing comically hanging out past the tail gate. What I found funny is on fords website you can see just that https://www.ford.com/trucks/maverick/. This is something you even see on larger trucks, and I am like wtf... It's a truck not a people hauler. You might be able to find some manufactures in their commercial/fleet line of vehicles that is at least sane when it comes to bed length.
Honestly, these days it's just better to get a cargo/work van unless you needing to haul dirt or other dirty things when looking for something new. It just seems like a small truck with a bed that make any sense are not made =(
Jeans started out as super useful and economical clothing worn by miners, cowboys, etc. fast forward n years and people are paying hundreds of dollars for exclusive denim and designs with pre-worn holes and other artificial wear patterns.
Trucks today look like they could be utilitarian and used for work but are really just an overpriced fashion statement.
We can't even buy a legitimate SMALL pickup in the USA anymore. The closest thing is the still-large Ford Maverick, which is nearly useless as a truck because Ford forces a giant four-door cab on every buyer. Where is the two-door version? You see this same blunder on every "smallish" truck sold in the USA today, which is why Rangers from a decade and a half ago are selling for as much as they did new.
While this is a somewhat different type of truck than the subject of this article, it reflects a similar failure of manufacturers to address a major gap in the market. Not everyone is a poser who just wants to drive around in a "truck." Some people have actual truck applications to be addressed, and want an efficient little truck for them.
I find European cities to be well designed. Especially in the Netherlands where I currently live (not Amsterdam). Every city has a city center where all the commercial activity happens surrounded by residential suburb. Everything in and around the city is reachable by bike.I think this is great for a healthy and eco-friendly life.
> I find European cities to be well designed. Especially in the Netherlands where I currently live (not Amsterdam)
Really depends on the city and country, but in general, yeah, urban planning for humans is taken seriously. E.g. the Netherlands' cities are just fantastic for pedestrians and bikes and public transit, and quite decent for cars too (because the alternatives are so good if you do need/want a car, there's not a lot of traffic in your way); meanwhile in Bulgaria, the capital Sofia with an official population at 1.3 million (and lots of people from surrounding cities commuting daily) clearly prioritises cars, with massive works around road works, new ringway, etc.. Even then, there's quite decent public transit (with 3 metro, tens of tram and trolley, close to a hundred bus lines), pedestrians can walk everywhere and there are even bike lanes showing up more and more.
I grew up on a farm and I always thought that modern "off-road" viechles like pickup trucks wouldn't actually be good off-road.
These are the reasons:
1) They are too wide. Real farm tracks are often narrow and overgrown. You want a narrow viechle to fit down them.
2) They are too heavy. When they get stuck you want them to be light so it's easy to pull them out. Ideally a little manual pushing should be enough
3) Off-road "capability" isn't actually that important because you could get a Toyota Camry down 99% of farm tracks. The 1% that's impassible by a Camry is also impassable by most off-road viechles because a pipe broke or a river flooded and washed away the road completely. You want off-road capability to prolong the life of the viechle, not to get down the track.
4) You need good visibility from the cab so that you don't run over your colleagues when doing complicated maneuvers.
I see these all over the place in asiapac, especially at resorts for staff and maintenance to get around on smaller pathways in lieu of golf carts or runabouts. It makes a lot of sense when you consider that they are easy to move around on a small boat/ferry and can be used on the roads. These places also have a much high percentage of motorbikes, scooters and ATVs and the same garages/shops that service those can service these smaller engines with readily accessible parts.
The fact they can't really be driven on interstates/highways is the only thing that would make it difficult to sell them here as new vehicles.
Given how well the ford maverick is selling, and the successful introduction of the hyundai santacruz (and soon-to-be-introduced chevy montana) I think it's safe to bet there would have been a decent market for new vehicles in this segment if the manufacturers could get them highway-compatible.
Yeah, the u.s market does not really support this variety of form factors and motor cars but I think EVs are going to change that because it's a lot easier to vary the size of a battery, the main primary component of an EV vehicle and just slap on any of a range of electric motors.
In Korea, there's a truck called the "Bongo" which is more of platform for cabover small trucks -- which includes box trucks, pickup-style utility trucks, flatbeds, etc. But all designed to be small and work well in tight urban environments.
The stock Bongo sort of vaguely represents an American pickup truck if it was built by somebody who had only ever heard of one described. However, they're ubiquitous, and the boxtruck versions handle a lot of what we in the U.S. would use semi trucks for.
In Korea they tend to be made by Kia, and I think in Japan there's a near identical variant by Mazda.
They can be had pretty cheap, a friend of mine has one for some farmland he has outside of Seoul and he says he bought it for ~$5k.
Wow, my dad runs some apartments and he's always buzzing random stuff from one place to another. He complains all the time that pickup trucks keep getting bigger and harder to use for day-to-day tasks. Seems like something like this would be perfect.
Sprinter is the Mercedes version of this type of vehicle.
In Europe we just call these vans, as 99% of the time what's meant is a panel van. They have a roof, so you can even carry stuff when it's raining!
American-style pickup trucks are hardly ever seen. If you have stuff (like construction equipment, bulky materials) to move that can get wet, and wouldn't easily fit in a van, you use a dropside van as it's much easier to load and unload. It's the same cab and chassis with a different rear end.
I'd love a tiny truck as my primary vehicle, but after watching Doug DeMuro review an imported kei car van (https://youtu.be/yyTJTUNgsVU) I realized I could never feel comfortable driving one of these on the highways around here.
What I _really_ want is something like the Ford F-100 Eluminator concept.
I used one of these - a van - as my daily driver some years ago. It was great! A surprising amount of volume in the back, yet small. It wasn't fast, but it was maneuverable, easy to handle, and economical. And reliable! It never failed to start, even on subzero days, after weeks of standing still.
It was powerful enough to haul serious weight. The engine labored somewhat, and one could definitely feel the increased momentum of the vehicle.
I had some doubts about the front crumple zone - there really wasn't much that could absorb a head-on impact. But it never became an issue..
If I had similar transport needs again, I'd get one of these vans without hesitation.
Another one to consider is a Suzuki Jimny. These are smaller again. You see people who cut off the back and add a tray. Great little things that get around well.
I have a 2002 Hilux in the 2.7L four-cylinder. These things tend to be fairly bullet proof and great for on farm work both in what it does and being a cheaper vehicle you done stress about dings and scratches.
On thing the article didn't mention about side-by-sides is they tend to do better in mud and hills. So in areas like I am where its hilly and slippery clay soils, side-by-sides can offer a decent advantage and safety aspect getting around vs a ute/truck.
Funny, I was chatting with some Rural Americans while on vacation in the Bahamas, and they all were super impressed with the Kei pickups they saw while there. I didn't know you could legally register 25+ year old ones...
Stanford did too (the van kind) to squeeze between bollards. They were able to avoid CAFE and CARB standards because they're their own municipality, and technically they're not licensed for public street use.
This kind of minitrucks is basically the workhorse of the informal Moroccan economy, locally called just "Honda" or "Pickup".
It fell relatively out of favor with the introduction of cargo trikes[0], a.k.a. "triporteur" in the local parlance. Trikes are now used for everything from transportation to cargo, still mostly within small businesses in the informal economy.
The article makes an error in saying it could be an alternative to an F250, which it can not at all. That said it is a damn good alternative to a side-by-side or Ford Ranger or Chevy S10 for farm use.
It's not just rural Americans. Japanese 4WD vans, SUVs, and trucks are super hot among Portland hipsters looking for city-friendly vehicles for cargo or road tripping. There are some importers here locally that this is all they do now, like https://www.javan-imports.com/ The other highly desirable vehicle among this crowd are the J60 series Land Cruisers from the 80s, for fashion reasons more than functional ones though.
I live in a tiny rural town in NY. There's 20 import mini-trucks for sale at the main street intersection. Most of the farms around here seem to have one. They're very useful.
Lots of light duty truck hate in this thread. I'm a rural American who has to plow their own 1k plus foot gravel driveway. I have a used light duty truck and a homestead plow for this purpose. If I didn't have to plow, I would love to have a little buggy like one of these for around the farm. I actually strongly dislike trucks,but you really need one for farm and homestead work! My dream would be something like this that has four wheel drive and a 2k plus pound bed capacity.
My wife was really interested in doing this the last time we were talking about a new vehicle. We looked at a lot of trucks and micro vans. There are plenty of people who have done it. My biggest hang ups were related to the variability of laws about microtrucks across states. Some places I can drive it like any other vehicle. Others it’s limited to non-highway travel and locality.
Also not being able to see the vehicle firsthand before purchasing.
A wide range of electric vehicles are going to invade to fill up almost all these gaps, especially once cheap sodium ion drivetrains and batteries become available
Something I’m not seeing mentioned here: I read somewhere (though i can’t find it) that we don’t have small trucks in the US because fuel economy standards are based on wheelbase.
That’s why you can’t take an F-150 and put it on a smaller frame and sell it in the US. But many of us want one!
I’d love a half-ton truck the size of a 80s Tacoma…
I could use some help fact-checking though. I was digging around for primary sources but it’s tough reading…
Not surprising given how impractical and expensive modern pickup trucks are. There seems to be a market for smaller practical vehicles but auto manufactures want to sell trucks and SUVs because they make the most of them.
That's in large part to light trucks having less stringent fuel-economy regulations.
I moved my belongings in a kei trucks to my new place and I just bought a new kei car. I love them, easier to drive than big cars as well. Fun fact, they are more expensive used in Japan than regular cars since they are more desirable for tax reasons and cheaper on the highway.
The original Toyota Tacoma wasn't quite this small, but it was a heck of a lot smaller than the current model. It used to be a compact truck, now it is midsized. I hope this trends shows makers there's demand for smaller pickups.
These vehicles (mostly their van equivalents like the Delica and Hi Ace) are also popular with rural mail carriers since they use their own vehicles and right hand drive enables them to deposit mail without leaving the car.
It makes a ton of sense. Even a base F150 is like 15 feet tall nowadays. A 2023 Ford ranger is bigger than a 2000 F150. I imagine that the market for small trucks didn’t just disappear completely
Small, fat, knobby tires are actually better for sandy, muddy, uneven surfaces. They apply torque easier, have less unsprung weight, move easier through uneven terrain. Small thin tires work ok too, but tread is more important.
I live in rural Japan (Aomori, Northern Honshu) and I see these cars daily. If they can survive the awful roads and weather here, I'm pretty sure that they can survive anywhere.
If we could finally ditch the light-duty trucks loophole [1], that would probably help when it comes to the incentives to build certain kinds of vehicle.
Europeans do just fine with multipurpose vehicles and regular small cars. You dont need a Straßenpanzer to bring two wee kids and a few grocery bags around.
More like open air hatch back, I don't understand why people want such short truck beds. You can't even sleep in the truck bed anymore on a lot these trucks.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
We've had to warn you about this kind of thing repeatedly. If you keep doing it we're going to have to ban you. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Like you can't fit 3-4 kids in a sedan. Hell most people have 2 cars per family nowadays should still fit easily. Or if you really have a large family a minivan works even better and is less dangerous to other travellers and yourselfs and has a lower gas usage. SUV's and trucks are stupid for 99,99% of the use cases.
We didn't use seatbelts or booster seats. We rode in the bed of the pickup, we rode sitting backwards in the trunk of a hatchback, we crammed in 5-wide in the bench seat in the back of a sedan.
Also, there were proto-SUVs like the Chevy Suburban.
I never had a pickup truck, but I did have seat belts and booster seats. We just didn’t use them as much. But that’s not really relevant to having enough space in a vehicle. We had plenty of space in cars. There was nothing wrong with the size.
It absolutely is relevant. If you don't have to wear seatbelts you can fit four or five kids in the back seat of a sedan. If each kid needs a seatbelt then you have to buy a bigger vehicle.
And the station wagons got killed off by CAFE standards because they were treated as cars instead of as their own category. Taking a sedan and turning it into a station wagon is going to inherently make it heavier and less fuel efficient.
So if the auto makers are already struggling to make their sedans hit MPG goals, suddenly those station wagons have to be phased out.
Though to be fair, minivans start in the mid 80s and were very popular in the 90s instead of SUVs. Comparable MPGs to the wagons but felt a lot more roomy inside.
The big problem came in the 2000s when the auto makers started subtly turning their minivans into SUVs. Even the last wagon hold outs like Volvo took this road eventually.
I kinda want to take a picture of the parking lot at a local (Salt Lake County, UT) Costco. It's almost exclusively "light truck"-classified pickups and similarly sized SUVs. I'm sure a similar image has already been captured for posterity but damn if it wouldn't be useful for pointing to a problem.
You can buy Kei vans too. I've seen them, in the USA. Same import rules as the Kei trucks. When I lived in Chicago, a neighbor had one. It was 4x4 too, so great in the winter.
While I largely agree with you, AWD/4WD minivans seem to be harder to find than AWD/4WD SUVs - so if you live in a place with both snow and hills, you're probably going to be gravitating toward an SUV.
AWS/4WD drive can't be pulled off with a minivan while maintaining the flat floor that people expect. There's not enough clearance for a rear drive shaft.
I mean, it clearly can be, since AWD (and RWD, for that matter) minivans do exist. It's just less common for minivans than it is for SUVs, likely for the reason you mention.
However, practically, it's not. Within the modern minivan sector, it'd be a non-starter to have a transmission tunnel when all of your competitors don't have that.
Cars much bigger, heavier, and with worse visibility than necessary, make the roads more dangerous for everyone else—motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, everyone.
The whole thing's turning into an expensive, dangerous game of prisoner's dilemma. It's best if everyone buys exactly as much car as they need, but anyone who "defects" and buys a bigger, heavier car is safer than everyone else, while making everyone else a little less-safe. Iterate for a few decades and you get the current situation.
However, begging individuals to behave differently isn't going to fix the problem. Certainly not in the US.
Oh, for sure. The old-school conservative solution, from back before "conservative" meant "simply don't try to do good things, at all" (at least, in the US) would have been to try to price in the added risk to others (and other externalities, like extra road-wear) to discourage having too-large vehicles. I think that could work.
Never gonna happen, because too many people think discouraging choices that make public roads more dangerous, or simply paying for costs they impose on others through their choices, is outright tyranny, but hey, it's a nice idea.
Please don't go back to posting ideological flamewar comments. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and you've mostly been doing a pretty good job of avoiding it (thank you!)
> The estimated number of police-reported crashes in 2020 decreased by 22% as compared to 2019, and the estimated number of people injured declined by 17%.
> While the number of crashes and traffic injuries declined overall, fatal crashes increased by 6.8%.
It's at least a somewhat common belief that the 6.8% increase of fatal crashes despite a decrease in total crashes is caused by a perceived increase of the average size of vehicles on the road. A minivan is not an American-sized pickup truck which are commonly seen as unsafe for other drivers.
The American car market is flooded with shitty crossovers because people don't have the balls to just rock the minivan when they hit that point in their life. The entire SUV segment up until you reach 9-seaters doesn't have a great reason to exist at the market share it does, and the situation will continue until people grow out of the delusion that they're not uncool yet because they bought a specific class of bad vehicle.
A lot of the popular models have full-size back seats. They've got more room back there, and are easier to get at (to, say, strap a kid into a car seat, or to add/remove a car seat) than many sedans.
sure, when I was growing up my mom drove myself and my four siblings around in a Suburban. I understand the baseline desire to signal virtue with regards to large motor vehicles, but even a brief glance at the photo in the article should be enough for any sane person to see that driving more than a single child around in such a vehicle is blatantly untenable.
downvoters might also be surprised at how safe large motor vehicles are for transporting children, especially in areas with spontaneous, often-unavoidable wildlife crossing. try hitting a mule deer crossing the road in the dark in one of those little trucks and see how many kids riding (on the flatbed??) survive.
