- cross-posted to:
- finance@thelemmy.club
- cross-posted to:
- finance@thelemmy.club
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Give them European fuel prices, and they’ll convert quickly.
Those tiny cars don’t meet American safety standards. And Americans don’t like bottom-of-the-barrel cars at any price.
It’s not that they want to … as the economy grows worse for poor people, they will have to use small cars.
Who the hell can afford a big fat ugly shiny new truck right now? You can’t drive it, you can’t fuel it, you can’t insure it, you can’t park it, you can’t maintain it, you can’t store it … and it’s a liability that is expensive when it breaks and it is more likely to be vandalized or stolen.
I don’t live in a big city … but I still want a small vehicle because it’s cheaper to fuel, cheaper to operate, can be parked anywhere and they’re easy to fix if broken (and even if they do get damaged, I really don’t care what they look like as long as it still operates) … and no one would want to steal it unless they wanted the scrap metal from it.
poor people tend to drive huge old cars. they don’t buy new cars.
i live in a big city and most of my neighbors have mid-full size suvs they part on the street. it’s not an issue. and 50-70K for a new car isn’t much on a professional salary of 150-300K a year.
How about huge overweight and expensive kei cars?
I already love them
please, bring back cars whose engine is just capable of reaching the speed limit, a 70hp engine in a small car is more than enough for the average person. it’ll cost a fraction of a normal American car, and be much cheaper to run and maintain.
and they are so adorable. seeing a kei car or a delica in the wild makes me happy.
be much cheaper to run and maintain.
no one mentions how heavy vehicles use more tires, brakes, transmissions and wear everything faster.
however big cars cost more and increase so the cost relating to transport. making more money for rich people. that’s why we can’t have nice things
It won’t really cost much less. The difference between a 1.6l 100hp engine and a 1.6l 150hp engine is just a turbocharger and those are less than $1,000 for an auto maker. So the cost of the car could potentially drop from 28,000 to 27,000 which is peanuts. The cost of maintenance between those two vehicles would be almost non-existent.
Cars aren’t expensive because of horsepower. They are expensive because of labor cost and government regulation. The less you have of either of those the lower the production cost goes and the less expensive the vehicles get.
are you telling me, that an American car that weighs 3 tonnes, is only slightly more expensive to buy/run/maintain compared to one that has the same bed size and weights less than a ton?
an f 350 (American large car) has between 400 to 500 hp, a kei truck has 65hp, the difference isn’t just a turbocharger, it’s an engine small enough you can lift without tools. it’s a third of the materials, a third of fuel consumption, parts are smaller and much cheaper…
Are we discussing cars or trucks? You use both terms but they are very different things. The article itself is discussing CARS and the very first picture is of a Honda Life.
In your original comment you said “average American car”. Which to me as an American is clearly a reference to a CAR. And by sales the three most popular CARS in America are the Nissan Sentra, the Toyota Corolla, and the Honda Civic. If you push it to Top 4 then the Tesla Model 3 enters the chat. None of those are called “trucks” anywhere in the world.
an f 350 (American large car) has between 400 to 500 hp
That is not a car. It is a Heavy Duty truck, one of the largest behomeths commonly (and I use that term loosely) sold in America. By sales volume the Full Ton and up trucks like the F350 are maybe 20% of total truck sales, the rest are 1/2 and 3/4 ton trucks.
If you want to bag on American trucks that’s fine but that isn’t what you brought up nor are they what my comment was about.
I wouldn’t purchase a Kei truck in America. It’s too small to be used for heavy loads or over distance and in the city a small van is superior in literally every way as it’s storage is both lockable and protected from the elements. That Honda Life in the first picture is better for nearly every use case than a Kei truck.
I owned a Ford Festiva, made by Kia, in the 90s. But at that point, I had a fully developed penis and did not need a truck. The 4 doors were for the excess women this attacted.
Loved those back in the day but they were not safe and a lot of people died in them. There’s no chance that car would pass today’s crash tests.
I had a serious fetish for Ford EXPs and Escorts in the late 80s / early 90s. Me and my buddies did lots of hop-up work and engine rebuilds. Set aside the nostalgia though and they were absolute piles of crap.
That’s not actually true. They got a below average safety rating for impacts on pedestrians.
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I drive a manual Miata. I’d absolutely love an Autozam AZ-1 (Autozam is a Mazda brand). I also ride motorcycles. The Miata is actually harder to use than the motorcycles in American traffic due to its height. If you want to turn and a truck/SUV pulls up on your side you’re just stuck staring right at the middle of their door panel, zero visibility. On the motorcycles my head is at least high enough to see through their windows. Obviously this wouldn’t be an issue if the other driver didn’t pull forward to the absolute limit but that next to never happens.
For reference:
What, a cheap car that is perfect for commutes and milk-runs, gets stellar mileage, zero unnecessary frills, with no over-engineered electronic crap? I can’t even get a new car w/o a crappy electronic center console if I throw money at the dealership. Who cares if it’s like driving a mail truck: sign us up!
Many of us want these, but cannot obtain them new or even register them in our home state(s).
That said, ending the Chicken Tax might turn companies like Ford inside-out in the process. It’s an economic Jenga tower of automotive suck over here.
Never.
While not in Japan, I live in Taiwan and we have some Japanese imported Kei cars.
The majority of Taiwan driving is city. We don’t have many highways.
In Japan and Taiwan, esp in the city, the average speed is like 35mph. Even on the highway, most cars are not driving faster than 55mph.
In some parts America, it’s mostly highway driving. Those Kei cars are death traps.
If they have to pay the same prices for fuel as the rest of us, they will
Don’t kei cars fail us crash tests?
yes, but throw out the standards, Trump -style.
they are city cars desigend for low speeds. some can get up to 80mph, but most top out at 60mph, which is the speed limit of highways in japan.
they would be fine for city life but awful on american highways with 70mph speed limits
I got Tboned in the city by a truck. So…
So?
So, those little cars would get me killed.
Unless everyone was forced to drive one.
Have you met America?
Yeah boo! Boo America
how fast was it going?
where i live the city speed limit is 20mph. in some cities it might be closer to 60mph
Probably closer to 60mph. It totaled my new SUV. Long term bodily injury.
If I was in that tiny car, I would be dead.
Damn.
They are driven all around Japan including north of around morioka where the speed limit on the expressway goes to 120kph. People drive them on the expressways all the time (and speed over the normal 100kph limit ~ 62mph all the time as well). Many have turbochargers.
Most Americans aren’t like me, but I love my Smart car. I got into it late, I thought the cars were really goofy and stupid when they hit the scene. It’s now my favorite car of all that I’ve owned, including my previous Porsche Boxter S. The Smart car was $6k used, it costs a little over $20 to fill up with gas, the 6 gallon tank takes just under a minute. It’s still a manual which I love and it’s so easy to drive. There is no extended hood so you never worry about scraping things when turning. The turning radius is insane by the way; the wheels turn to almost 90 degrees. I only need 1.5 lanes to make a U-turn and the power steering and clutch is very light. It also goes plenty fast which I was concerned about, I don’t feel scared driving on the highway in it at all. It really doesn’t feel small when you’re in it until you look behind and remember that the car just ends as far as your arm can reach. Smarts are made by Mercedes so they’re good quality. It’s a shame they were discontinued in the US, but I’m not surprised at all.
This all sounds amazing… Except having no rear. I was rear ended by a drunk driver and was able to walk away (relatively) unharmed because my trunk was a massive crumple zone able to soak up all the energy.
They surprisingly have high safety ratings. There is a trunk, it even opens like a standard truck, it’s just not very big. The frame doesn’t get crushed, but the car is very light and I’m sure the force of an impact can still cause a lot of damage, or of course the car is more easily pushed into places it shouldn’t go in a crash because it’s so light.
Not unless they’re made out of titanium; half of the other vehicles are monster trucks.
that won’t help in a crash, (unless it adds enough mass to outweigh a dumb American car).
As soon as they figure out how to make them super loud and roll coal.
Honda fit owners were born ready!!
Best car im thinking of another
Why leave it to car brains to determine if they like it? The people driving F350 GMC Yukon zero visibility death machines will never. Too bad.
Regulate the size of cars and stop pedestrian/biker deaths.
Regulate the size of cars and stop pedestrian/biker deaths.
I think that’s the point of the USA, though. You’re not allowed to indulge in nature, only industry.
