I understand they make absolutely terrific farm vehicles that are only meant to see minimal road use. Local access only, so American highways and stroads would be right out. Something to pick up the mail in.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
1242 points (99.5% liked)
Fuck Cars
11594 readers
308 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
In WA we can get them licensed for road use you're just not allowed on the highway, which you would be silly to try. Mine gets up to 50 mph fine, have pushed it to ~60 but the engine's basically flat out at that point.
If most of your driving is under ~40 they're perfectly usable. Not super fast on the acceleration but personally think it's fun to have 30 mph be 4th gear. 30-40 mpg in and around town. Have had friends that borrowed it talk about how it's kind of zen to have people blow past you when you're doing the speed limit and then you both sit side-by-side at a stoplight for a while. And the next light and the next.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Thank you Colorado
These trucks work pretty great up here in Seattle and the surrounding areas. They hold very close to as much as a full size American 8ft truck, plus a lot of em have sides which fully fold down.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Tax subsidized parasite big mad they might have to compete
If you go look at most places where people regularly use trucks for actual work in the US like construction or agriculture, pretty much the only ones driving the newest and most luxurious new trucks are the bosses while the actual workers use older and more practical vehicles. And a lot of those fancy trucks have so little bed space that I can hold more shit my friends Subaru Outback. And I say give me the tiny truck that can parallel park.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Someone is considering moving to Colorado
If I could have a modern(within the past 10 years) make of a Kei truck in my little Appalachian town I'd be so goddamn happy.
To be fair, they’re death traps at most American road speeds, especially if there’s an American vehicle involved. The smart was the only kei-grade car allowed in North America and it was not too popular (the price didn’t help).
But smaller cars is a great idea.
why aren't they allowed now?
Because they used emissions standards in the 80s to remove light trucks from the market. Which is why everything is bigger now, blowback: unintended consequences of shitty legislation.
load more comments
(1 replies)
us auto industry has reletively higher crash saftey requirements. part of the reason why everythings so damn big.
the kei trucks are basically rear end death traps if you hit US sized vehicles.
its why the only ones you can legally drive in some states are the ones that pass the 25 year car import law.
some areas explicitly ban it (e.g NYC i believe)
I understand now allowing them on the freeways, but they're perfect for cities with their smaller footprint and lower driving speeds. These aren't allowed in NYC, but Escalades are?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Maybe they could tweak the design a little. Make it like a Chevy Spark with a rear bed.
load more comments
(1 replies)
EU: Your truck is unsafe because it is unusually large and has razor sharp edges at head height.
US: Your truck is unsafe because it is too small to withstand a direct hit from one of our super safe giant axe head shaped cars.
No pre installed firearms... Very unsafe...
the good, the bad, and the dodge ram.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
I don't understand how states can ban an otherwise legal vehicle
Cause they're not really safe to drive. Older US made cars are technically grandfathered in because as time progresses, there will naturally be less and less of them to the point where they won't be much of an issue on public roads (when was the last time you saw a model t driving down your road other than for a parade or something?). However, a lot of kei trucks were really meant to just be farm vehicles with more utility, so safety wasn't ever a real hallmark of their design. I considered buying one a while ago, but came to the conclusion that they might actually be less safe than an old S10 which wasn't really that much bigger.
Safety standards for family vehicles: ok, sure
Safety standards for non-family vehicles: fascist overreach
load more comments
(3 replies)
They don't make inflated profits for US companies. That's what this is about
load more comments
(6 replies)
They generally don’t meet safety requirements.