This goes to show just how superficial and backwards the American car industry is. You can do the job of a $50,000 pickup using a machine that is half the size of a Honda Civic, costs $10,000 new, gets 40 MPG, fits in any parking spot, is easy to load, and sells for around $10,000 new. But they look weak and girly.
I think that’s why big shared fleets will never really take off. People don’t seem to mind spending a lot more on their vehicle than what they really need to.
People spend $50k because they want that truck, not because they need it.
people spend $50k because they have to have a car to get around, drive kids, get to work, etc. If they're stuck with needing a car, they have too much ego for it to be shitty, so they spend a lot. I think a lot of these people would rather ride share if it was cheaper and it wouldn't be much of a hit to their pride
It's because, as the old saying goes, we fight wars with the army we have rather than the army we want.
We buy cars that provide more than our needs so we aren't left needing in case we come across something that goes beyond our expectations.
Always buying just what is necessary right now in a bid to be efficient leaves no margin for error and will end up being inefficient in the long run.
I don't deny that driving a Ford F-350 is great in its own right, though. That thing screams 'Murica, and all the better if it gets us out of an unexpected rut every so often.
No, it's because trucks got marketed and sold as a symbol since the margins are much higher for automakers.
People got by just fine with sedans. Most folks who own a giant pickup drive it in the exact same way as a Honda Civic and have no actual need for a pickup. It's very apparent in how tall these vehicles are now. If you are actually hauling goods, you don't want clearance to be that high.
A motor vehicle that is at least 25 years old can be lawfully imported into the U.S. without regard to whether it complies with all applicable FMVSS. Such a vehicle would be entered under Box 1 on the HS-7 Declaration form to be given to Customs at the time of importation. If you wish to see that form, you may download a copy from our website at nhtsa.gov/importing-vehicle. You should note that the 25 year period runs from the date of the vehicle's manufacture. If the date of manufacture is not identified on a label permanently affixed to the vehicle by its original manufacturer, to establish the age of the vehicle, you should have documentation available such as an invoice showing the date the vehicle was first sold or a registration document showing that the vehicle was registered at least 25 years ago. Absent such information, a statement from a recognized vehicle historical society identifying the age of the vehicle could be used.
Pure speculation on my part, but from having ridden in one of these Kei trucks (and lots of US trucks): I wouldn't be surprised if American-style trucks get in and cause more accidents per mile, both because of their lesser visibility and weaker cultural norms around speeding and rules of the road ("biggest car wins").
(This doesn't make Kei trucks safer, but it might have the same paradoxical effect as helmets on cyclists[1].)
American-style trucks get in and cause more accidents per mile
They don't. I used to own an F-350 for a race team and when I sold it for a Corolla I had a long argument with my insurance agent as to why the Corolla was going to cost me more to insure.
Despite their outrageous cost to own (which you would think would primarily be the driver of insurance fees), apparently large trucks are both stolen much less and get in fewer accidents due to their size. Hard to argue with the insurance company on the stats there.
I think we're talking about different things: I was talking about the physical risk to the humans inside and outside of the truck, not the cost of insuring the truck. Trucks can simultaneously be involved in fewer non-injury accidents (meaning preferable insurance terms for you) and be involved in more injurious accidents/produce worse health outcomes.
IIHS and NHTSA have figures that are generally consistent with my speculation[1]:
1. Overall car occupant deaths have nearly halved since 1975, but have risen by 25% in the pickup category.
2. Trucks have fewer rollover accidents as a category, but those rollovers that do occur make up a far larger percentage of occupant deaths.
3. Consistent with (2), truck drivers appear to drive without seatbelts more often than other categories do (based on overall incidence in accidents), and suffer higher fatalities as a result.
>I switched providers anyway and still saved on the Corolla, in case you were wondering.
This is the correct solution with auto insurance in America. You should never stay with the same company more than 3-5 years, just like you should never stay at the same job longer than that. Loyalty is penalized in America, and you can get a better deal by jumping ship. Always shop around for better rates when your auto insurance policy is due for renewal.
> You can do the job of a $50,000 pickup using a machine that is half the size of a Honda Civic
You can't, though: “half-ton” pickups start much lower than $50k and near universally have a 1,500+ lb cargo capacity (the half-ton designation is historical and almost never actually meant what it seems to, quater-ton is even worse.)
Seems more competitive with the $27K Hyundai Santa Cruz, with similar cargo capacity (by weight), 40 MPG mileage, US new vehicle standards compliance, but trading off a shorter bed length for a second row of seating.
It’s not even remotely as capable as a full size truck. Or a compact one for that matter.
Edit: Don't be grouchy and just downvote. If you really think a Kei truck with a 1000 pound payload and 60mph [optimistic] top speed is comparable to a full size pickup, explain why. It's the same payload as a Corolla, not a full size body-on-frame pickup. And even then, that completely ignores towing, which is a very common use case for full size trucks today. A Corolla would do -that- better, too.
Yeah but the point is that the vast majority of people buying full sized pickup trucks aren't actually using them for practical purposes, and it turns out that when something becomes a status symbol like that for so long the capabilities diverge from what people that aren't just buying it as a status symbol want.
> Yeah but the point is that the vast majority of people buying full sized pickup trucks aren't actually using them for practical purposes,
If they aren't, you can replace them with a cheaper, safer, more fuel efficient vehicle that meets US safety standards and is easier to maintain and register than a Kei, and probably at a comparable or far cheaper initial price than the Kei.
If they are using it for a practical purpose, you can't replace it with a Kei.
Either way, a Kei is probably the wrong choice for most US buyers.
(There are newer import-legal minitrucks that don't have the registration hassles, like Nissan Clipper, which makes the range of situations where the Kei makes a lot of sense outside of particular brand attachment even narrower.)
> a Kei is probably the wrong choice for most US buyers.
> There are newer import-legal minitrucks that don't have the registration hassles, like Nissan Clipper
I'm confused - the Nissan Clipper is a Kei truck/van. Kei isn't a brand, it's just a description of a specific style of car (low weight, engine size etc incentivized by the Japanese government).
Panel vans. Like those 1.2L 3cyl Golf faced delivery vans. People need those. But that’s not a socially acceptable private possession, and a Kei is nowhere as humiliating thanks to novelty, so Kei sells.
>If they are using it for practical purpose, you can’t replace it with a Kei
Often people living on large properties and in rural areas have vehicles that never hit public roads, and Kei car class vehicles or their equivalent get used every single day. Just think about the logistics of living down a long road on 30 acres - getting the mail, taking garbage bins out, moving tools, water, animal feed, debris, etc. Large trucks don’t even fit through some gates and Polaris/atv/small vehicle is often the best solution.
Alternatively, you could get a vehicle like this and _not_ be concerned about what other people think about you. Or you could continue to fight imaginary battles against people who simply like something different than you.
For what the average person uses their $50k pickup for, you most certainly can. Do you really imagine most pickup trucks in the US are hauling bricks on a dirt road up the side of mountains?
You think a Kei truck can't make it up a mountain with a load of bricks? It may not be the fastest, and the biggest load of bricks it can haul is gonna be smaller, but let's not pretend a Kei truck can't go to Home Depot and back again with a decent amount of stuff. Like smaller trucks in the US, like the Ford Ranger or Chevy S10, they do just fine if you don't abuse them. If you do, giant 2-ton trucks don't last either.
No, I imagine the average person in the U.S. is using their truck to drive to and from their office job and taking their kids to and from school. And for that these tiny trucks obviously would not work.
You said it yourself. People aren’t buying trucks for their function. They aren’t hauling bricks up mountain roads. So if it’s not about function, then it’s about something else and a Kei truck might not fill that role.
It’s like people who spend thousands of dollars on a wristwatch. They don’t do that because they need to know what time it is.
The real equivalent of a kei truck in the US I think is a minivan. I see a lot of blue collar workers that use an old beater minivan as a work truck basically. Its an easy engine and platform to work on; something like a honda odyssey shares parts with a civic and most anything else they made in the same era. There is a ton of space when you take out the seats, that locks up unlike a truck bed. The floor is a lot lower than a truck bed which makes it easy to load stuff in and out. You get much better gas mileage than most commercial van platforms. They sell for a few thousand dollars in decent shape used and hold their value.
My kei truck is actually a replacement for my Tacoma (had to sell it because it was starting to fall apart). I wanted something to fill the gap. It's always nice to have a truck bed available for hauling random stuff, but it was during the used car boom and Tacomas seem to hold their value (everything was expensive). Not since I first got my license have I had so much fun driving. It's like a right-hand drive, manual transmission go-kart.
I've hauled bikes, lumber, furniture, rocks and soil for landscaping. Unfortunately, it's no good on the highway, so long distances are out, and your knees are the crumple zone, so I drive the same way I bike...hyper-vigilant and try to anticipate danger. Still worth it.
Not trying to persuade you, I just love to talk about my truck!
N=1, moved into my current home a few years ago and it has a long and steep hill for a driveway (house is downhill from the street). I bought an early-00's pickup truck thinking I'd use it a lot more than I have. It's languishing in the driveway and will probably go up for sale soon.
If I could reasonably get and register a Kei truck in my state it would be the perfect replacement, literally all I need is some hauling space for big trash cans, and the occasional Home Depot run.
If they made them electric I'd already be getting one!
I would argue that this form factor could absolutely replace the vast majority of trucks use for delivery and contractor duties in many cities and towns in the US.
Edit: flat bed pickup trucks that is, not lorries.
They already have the form factor, it’s called a Toyota Tacoma and Ford Ranger. They are bigger than Kei trucks because they have actual safety features.
Cars nowadays are larger for improved comfort, not because of safety features. Larger cars aren't inherently safer. Modern safety features, such as airbags, crumple zones, etc., have been around for over twenty years now, but cars have gotten larger.
Regardless, the comparison was between Kei trucks and pickup trucks.
Cars are in fact larger partially due to advanced safety features, in particular doors, pillars etc. have gotten a lot thicker over the last 25 years.
> Larger cars aren't inherently safer.
Yes they are, you're probably better off in a crash without a seatbelt in a bus than in the highly safety rated mini the bus crashes into. Newton matters.
> Cars are in fact larger partially due to advanced safety features, in particular doors, pillars etc. have gotten a lot thicker over the last 25 years.
I would like to see a citation on this. Car doors have gotten larger partly because there is so much more stuff going on there than 20-30 years ago, mostly a bunch of new electronics. They are also larger because, well, the cars are larger.
> ... you're probably better off in a crash without a seatbelt in a bus than in the highly safety rated mini the bus crashes into.
This is obviously not a fair comparison. I would be safer in a tank as well. Fact is, a current generation Toyota Camry is effectively safer than an early 2000s F-150.
E.g. [1] has a decent overview of the side impact saga for the Euro NCAP since 1997. I'm less familiar with how the American version has kept up.
In any case most mass market American cars target the Euro NCAP's safety tests, so it affects car design across the pond too.
> [...]mostly a bunch of new electronics.
I can't think of any electronics in doors than weren't there in 1995.
Powered windows have gotten more common, but if it weren't for safety considerations the thickness of doors should have reduced since then, as all the electronics involved are smaller now.
> Fact is, a current generation Toyota Camry is effectively safer than an early 2000s F-150.
Probably, but some quick internet searching reveals that if you add the weight of one person to the modern Camry it's probably heavier than the 2000s F-150, or thereabouts.
What I was referring to is that crash safety tests don't account for crashes between differently sized vehicles.
That's probably intentional, as regulators don't want to cause an arms race towards ever bigger cars.
> I can't think of any electronics in doors than weren't there in 1995.
Electronic locks, speakers, electronic bits of heated mirrors, airbags, etc. were absolutely not that common in the average 90s car.
Also, car dimensions are generally larger because we ourselves have become larger and taller. This becomes exceedingly obvious when comparing European cars in the past 40 years. If we look at the last 15 years, the trend is to make larger, more spacious cars, to the point where most firms are betting on SUVs over sedans.
> What I was referring to is that crash safety tests don't account for crashes between differently sized vehicles.
They do, though. What would be the point of testing a car safety measures only against cars of its size? In fact, there are plenty of videos out there of crash tests between sedans and trucks.
> That's probably intentional, as regulators don't want to cause an arms race towards ever bigger cars.
Uh? Manufacturers have been steadily increasing the size of cars in the past 20 years. Each Camry generation is larger than the previous one, and has nothing to do with regulators, it’s just that buyers want spacious cars.
If you wanted to make a car with the same outside dimensions today you could barely cram two people in it, due to all the mandatory crumple zones etc.
Of course consumer demand is also part of it, but in some cases car manufacturers are still making 1980s design cars today (e.g. the 79 series Toyota land cruiser), they're just outlawed in Europe due to safety, pollution etc. regulations.
> In fact, there are plenty of videos out there of crash tests between sedans and trucks.
I'm talking about official safety ratings, e.g. this in the Euro NCAP:
Although as that page explains the particular bias I had in mind was "fixed" in 2020, now it's a 1400 kg mobile trolley, so heavier cars are tested somewhat more realistically.
> ... we're not talking about what's more common, but about how recent regulatory changes affected car design.
Well, no. You said that cars are larger because of safety regulations.
But the obvious rebuttal to this is that larger cars have been trending upward for decades, and the most obvious proof of this is the decline of the sedan in favor of the SUV.
> You can look up luxury models of mid or late 90s cars, and they had all those features. Now look at the same models today.
These were larger cars than the average as well. The 90s Mercedes E-Class doors were significantly larger and heavier than the ones in a Toyota Camry.
A current generation Mercedes E-Class is also larger than the one from 30 years ago, mostly because it has gone through a significant increase in interior space. Again, this is not something only Mercedes has done to their line, all automakers have gone down the same route.
> If you wanted to make a car with the same outside dimensions today you could barely cram two people in it, due to all the mandatory crumple zones etc.
That car is roughly the same size of a Volkswagen Polo, which fits 4 people, and holds pretty much the same volume in the trunk. The Polo has an five star EURONCAP rating. Hell, even the SMART Fortwo is a pretty safe car, and it's mostly plastic.
Yes, small cars exist and are safe too, but people just like larger cars better.
Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas.