Are We Now a City Car Country?
Hi Friends!
Earlier this week, during a press conference, President Trump quite directly signaled his admiration for small, city type vehicles called Kei cars and trucks, which he had seen while traveling in Japan. He touted their size, efficiency, “safety”, affordability and potential to house multiple types of drivetrains. He stated that he had cleared the way for US Department of Transportation head Sean Duffy to reverse regulatory barriers and create a more favorable environment for these cars on US roadways. He doubled down on this on social media as well proclaiming that the US needs to “START BUILDING THEM NOW!”
Obviously, I got a lot of emails as soon as this started making the rounds (primarily, courtesy of one particular video that floated around social media which I’ll get to in a second….), so I figured I would cover the most frequently asked questions that I got surrounding this.
First of all, however, what is a Kei vehicle?
A Kei vehicle is a special class of ultra-small cars and trucks in Japan, designed to fit within strict government-mandated limits on size, engine displacement, and power. They are built to be extremely compact, efficient, affordable, and easy to drive in Japan’s crowded cities. They’re built to exacting government standards and cannot exceed 3.4 meters in length, 1.48 meters in width and cannot be powered by anything more than 660CCs and with no more than 64 horsepower on tap. Honda, Suzuki and Daihatsu seem to be the primary manufacturers of these types of cars.
So, what isn’t a Kei vehicle?
Well, for example a Toyota Hilux Champ is not a Kei vehicle. There was a clear engagement bait type of video circulating social media earlier this week (which currently has 3.4 million views on IG and was overwhelmingly what was forwarded to me the most of anything surrounding this issue) where the gentleman was talking like these vehicles have immediately become legal (not true), will be readily available (not true) and that the mystical $14,000 stripped down Toyota Hilux that I think probably a lot of us really want is essentially the truck in question (not true). The Hilux is a mid-sized truck by world standards and would almost assuredly not only not cost $14,000 on our shores, but also would not be included in something like this. If you watched that video and got yourself excited over it, I hate to burst your bubble, but tagging it as disingenuous would unfortunately probably be an understatement.
Are these things collectible?
I’ll admit, up until about 2 years ago, I had never heard of these things before. Then, almost out of nowhere, my phone started ringing off the hook with people wanting to start businesses surrounding them, providing sales, parts, service and everything else that an enthusiast community would need in order to exist. As I started digging in, I found out pretty quickly that these are pretty popular and have a large base of interest in this country. Facebook groups, Instagram pages, etc that frequently had hundreds of thousands of participants around them and it looked pretty promising as an up-and-coming enthusiast segment. Unfortunately, last year’s unrolling of the tariff debacle combined with a handful of states outlawing these vehicles on their roads, pretty much derailed all of these businesses before they could really go anywhere and I figured that was likely going to be the last I heard of these things – at least for a while. The TLDR here however is that yes, these things are collectible and there are a lot of people that are interested in them. Producing these domestically (which is ultimately what Trump is proposing), would almost assuredly reinforce this even further.
Are they safe?
The short answer here is not really. These vehicles actually have serious restrictions or outright bans on them currently in about 20 states and this is the primary reason. These vehicles are not built in any way to comply with US crash test regulations and certainly don’t hold up to the standard size that the safety of most US roadworthy vehicles are judged. I mean imagine a 9000 lb GMC Hummer EV bearing down on one of these things? That would be like launching an easter egg off a skyscraper. Nothing good comes from that.
How quickly could I get one of these?
Not anytime soon. Trump has reportedly specified that in order to legalize these types of vehicles, they need to be produced domestically. This means design work, legal clearances, safety testing, retooling or building new manufacturing facilities, training staff, etc would need to be in place first (all of which take years to accomplish). Additionally, these would almost assuredly be small margin, low cost, low profit automobiles and would likely be a very low priority for manufacturers anyway (not to pick on Ford again, but part of the reason they no longer make cars other than the Mustang is because the profit margins on things like Focus and Festiva were too small. This would be even more difficult for a company like theirs on something like a Kei car).
Is there even a demand for something like this?
I think the answer here is yes…… kind of. I definitely think that there is a segment of individuals that would be really interested in stuff like this. In fact, over the Thanksgiving holiday while visiting with my parents, we went down the memory lane of cars that they had when we were young and it was almost exclusively populated with small, inexpensive, base model equipped Datsuns. Certainly, some of these cars were better than others, but the reality is, these vehicles in particular made it possible for my parents to start their lives and in turn mine as well. There is a large cross section of Americans that urgently need something like this and legalizing and producing cars of this nature on our soils could potentially be huge. Also, how many businesses would run out tomorrow and purchase fleets of small, light duty, four-wheel drive, highly maneuverable pickup trucks and vans? I think the number there is pretty high too. I think the moral of the story is, people absolutely do want stuff like this, but I don’t think that really changes the picture a whole lot on the dollars and cents side of things. Demand will likely not be enough to justify production and development for major manufacturers. I’m not saying that this isn’t an opportunity for a smaller manufacturer to come in and try and figure out how to do this that way, but I think financially, these have a long and difficult road to reality.
I really don’t want to be all bah humbug about this though. (especially this close to Christmas) and I do think there’s real benefits if America were to become more of a city car type of country. This said, I suspect that this is not much more than lip service and it doesn’t go a whole lot further into the real world than the press conference earlier this week.
I hope I’m wrong and if I am, I’ll be at the front of the line to buy a little truck as soon as they’re available, but in the meantime, I’m not getting my hopes up and you probably shouldn’t either.
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge
