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 =(.
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.
[0] https://jalopnik.com/the-25-year-import-rules-history-is-mor...