This is how cars need to be made, no obnoxiously large center console that makes the car 2m wide.
Edit: Fuck piano black though.
Why are you lying, @dwazou@jlai.lu? These vehicles aren’t illegal in the US. Your own article says this:
Sadly, so far Nissan has shown no desire to sell the car outside Japan, although a few secondhand examples have ended up in right-hand drive markets such as New Zealand.
Surprisingly, the car’s systems such as the navigation were possible to switch into English, so if the determined fan were to import one to the US, they wouldn’t be stuck with a Japanese UI.
Cars made to be sold and driven in Japan (aka JDM vehicles, for Japanese Domestic Market) can not be imported into the US until they are over 25 years old. This is part of a series of import laws that American vehicle manufacturers lobbied for to keep foreign cars from dominating domestic marketplaces.
The US also has crash test safety standards that domestic cars must meet because a) safety is good, and b) people drive tanks like maniacs. Kei cars used to be pretty awful in crash tests, but have gotten a lot better in recent years.
So after reading the article, are you editorializing or did Wired change their title? No where does it mention the legality of selling the Sakura in North America. It only mentions that Nissan has not chosen to sell it outside of Japan.
Kei cars are illegal to purchase in certain states because of the comparitave danger they face due to the size of other vehicles.
States include: Georgia, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
so nothing to do with being an EV, an import, or anything like that as most people would assume.
They are like driving an ATV or go cart with a canopy though. Kinda scary to be going highway speeds in them around even other sedans. You do get used to it though. Just like anything else.
And riding motorcycles around these other cars feels like riding a motorcycle. If Smart can make a NA compliant car, there must be some kind of way to make a near-Kei car compliant.
Out of curiosity, I looked if Smart met Kei regulations with the ForTwo. The officiall Kei variant, the Smart K, only had 2 modifications and 1 restriction. The track width was narrowed and the fenders were slimmed in order to make it 1.5"(30mm) narrower and the only engine available was the 600cc.
And while Americans like to make assumptions about North American markets because they’re generally cross-compatible, they vary greatly. Mexico is full of compacts and ute chassis-mates such as Chevy Aveo/Montana, Fiata Strada/Ram 700, and VW Gol/Saveiro. Remember, the original VW Beetle (“Vocho”) was produced in Mexico until the 90s.
I’m sorry, but riding a motorcycle is vastly different than driving one of these, even the posture from riding to sitting makes a huge difference in comfort, but also these things are claustrophobic as hell, most people don’t realize just HOW small these actually are.
Imagine riding your bike and being enclosed by glass by an inch everywhere, your comfort would drop massively.
Dude it’s real life Mario kart. I’m down.
They were manufacturing original Volkswagen beetles in Brazil and Mexico up until 2003?. Illegal to sell in the USA.
Ther takin ur jubs!
Am I missing something? I am only seeing that it is not sold in the US, not that it is illegal to sell.
Different states have different regulations, but almost all states prohibit their use on highways/interstates or use above certain speeds if not outright banning them from public roads.
Because of US import restrictions, they can’t realistically be imported unless they are >25 years old, and generally only Kei Trucks are imported.
They’re aren’t road legal in some US states, OP might have confused them.
Came here to say this. Major editorializing by the OP, unless there’s another source they chose not to share.
Fuck Cars means Fuck all cars.
Electrified trolleys and trains all the way
How are deliveries going to work, exactly? If I order a computer, what, I can’t have it anymore because some dumb ecofash said so? And before you go all “hurr durr go 2 ze store” I can’t, I WFH, as should everyone who can, in part - to save the environment.
And before you go all “hurr durr go 2 ze store” I can’t, I WFH, as should everyone who can, in part - to save the environment.
I think I get the point you were originally going for, but this part is unhinged. You can’t go to a store because you work from home? What??
How am I meant to fuck off from work for an hour to go to the store? Even if grocery stores sold electronics which they don’t, everything closes at 6PM latest. On Saturdays it’s 3PM, even if I could carry enough to shop for an entire week ahead on my back.
That comment is a bad take to be sure, but it isn’t really about eliminating every vehicle in existence. We’d still need individual vehicles to serve for delivery and emergency services, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
The main thought is just that it’s a bit silly to have half the population driving a two tonne vehicle to the grocery store. There’s already communities where golf carts are used instead of cars.
The whole concept of ripping out every road and installing solar tramways is just as much a nonsensical extreme not worth taking seriously as ‘what do I do if I order a computer and I work from home’. I get your use of the example though, it is the equivalent counterpoint.
I mean, I don’t think my example is an extreme, like I work from home every single day and have always done so, there are no longer stores around me that sells any electronics, and as I don’t drive, I get it delivered, which is the primary and most of the time the only way of buying anything that isn’t groceries for me these days.
If anything my example is an extremely down to earth grass-touch-core argument built off explicitly literally what my life is in the most literal sense wholly about the basic material realities of it, and it highlights the problems with their their absolutist internet-extremist-silliness-core-ass rhetoric. I don’t get in any way how it’s “extreme” or “equivalent” to the other user’s batshit insane propositions.
Are you one of those “everything is equivalent both sides” type people?
Are you implying I in any way disagree with the actual rhetoric of “let’s have less car-centric infrastructure?” Because I don’t and I never stated that. Moreover I do agree with you though, I don’t drive and I hate cars anyway. I just don’t like that user’s rhetoric because it smells like degrowth ecofash type rhetoric, which is extremely harmful and leads to NIMBYism and as such worsening material conditions and issues like homelessness and poverty traps and enriches landlords.
Environment good because it makes things for people better, not as a thing unto itself. On that basis and only on that basis with that reasoning as the guiding and completely overriding principle - I agree, fuck cars. 👍
How do you build a railway?
Unless you live inside a major city in America, you can’t get to work without a vehicle. It’s either have a car or be homeless.
You aren’t in the fuck cars community, and the rest of us live in the real world where cars exist. Especially in the US. This isn’t some fantasy land where we can go back in time and change our entire infrastructure. We CAN however condense more, rely on trains in metro areas, and use electric vehicles. But you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
The entire infrastructure was changed towards cars within living memory. What makes you think the reverse isn’t possible or even likely in the next hundred years?
Where are you referring to? In North America, much of the infrastructure wasn’t changed, it was created for the first time to accommodate cars.
The “Fuck Cars” crowd basically just regurgitate what they hear a ridiculously rich youtuber who lives in one of the higher cost of living cities on the planet say. So take anything they say with a grain of salt.
What they ACTUALLY are saying is that the average person did not need a personal vehicle (whether it is a horse or a car) until (guesstimating) the 1950s/60s. Not because public transit was so much better but instead because people basically never left the couple mile radius of where they were born. Catching a bus To The City was a big deal and people who actually moved long distances away from family were 'strange".
Then, for whatever reason, people learned there was a big wide world and the cost of cars dropped drastically. So it became much more common to want to make that dream trip to The City a monthly or even weekly trip and people increasingly would move tens or even hundreds of miles away from where they grew up… in part to be able to buy a house and have their own family.
But it isn’t that infrastructure was “changed” so much as use cases were. And people stopped being willing to spend an entire day traveling to go visit their sibling one state over.
The aspect which HAS changed in “living memory” is the decline in “walkable cities”. The idea that you would have a corner grocery store every couple miles and would never even need a car. And… anyone who is even slightly aware of logistics and shipping can understand why that is also not really feasible. Because having pantry staples and “the basics” at Fred’s Grocery down the street? That is… depending on where you live that is feasible.
But… there is a reason fricking kei cars exist. Because you are not going to have a butcher or a giant produce stand or whatever on every street corner. You can’t. There will be MASSIVE food waste if you did. So people still tend to have to travel a bit even just a few times a month. Some people do that by public transit and are the people with five bags of groceries on the subway. Many people rapidly get that car for the weekend grocery trips and so forth.
At which point… if people are already going to drive to get groceries… why would they go to the corner store anyway?
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE a walkable city and I was probably the happiest for the five or so years I lived in The City and would hit up a medium sized grocery store while walking back to my apartment from the subway station. And getting GOOD meat was 30 minutes away by train. But I am also not privileged enough to ignore the existence of small towns or the tendency for the people who WORK in those grocery stores to live in said small town where it is an hour commute and having to stay late for 30 minutes adds another two hours to their day.
Which is why I REALLY dislike the “Fuck Cars” “movement”. Because, at best, it is a bunch of privileged people saying “fuck the poors”. And… the idea of never needing to travel more than 5 miles from where you live feels like some backdoor rightwing bullshit to isolate people and Make Xenophobia Great Again.
I mean… even in Japan (basically the mecca of public transit), you need a car for a lot of “last mile” transit to smaller towns. And you want a car for many (most?) towns because there might only be two or three buses per day.
Makoto Shinkai’s movies LOVE to focus on this as a way to build tension. Have one of the characters spend two or three days taking a long chain of trains and buses to reach the one that they love only to have to spend the night at a motel in a nowhere town where they can then have a heartfelt talk about what they are actually looking for.
And if you actually go there (or to “Western Europe”) and want to go somewhere other than the most touristy of places? You rapidly realize how true that is. Less so the “talk to the friend who is taking off work to help you check in on the girl you used to body swap with” part and more the idea of needing to transfer to three different trains and run to catch a bus because the alternative is you are waiting for 3 hours at a tiny 7-11 and then spending the night at the bus station when you arrive.
Sure, but even in the most orange-pilled places, there are still cars, and occasionally reasons to drive. And if individuals/small groups need to get somewhere inaccessible by bikes/public transit, etc., I’d rather they drive something like this instead of a vehicle that’s literally the size of a tank.
An entirely impossible dream world you live in, bud
17k for not even 200km range sucks. EVs must get cheaper.
That BYD Seagull price/capacity is exceptional even among Chinese EVs. I think a better comparison to this car would be the Wuling MINI, which also has a 200km range, and costs 6~7k in China.
Which is much cheaper than this car. Prices for small cars must go down(and big car prices going way up seems fine, TBf)
Trust me. You do NOT want to go on a long distance road trip in a kei car. Even if you are super short.
Kei cars are amazing for commuting and grocery store trips. They are horrible for basically anything beyond that so you are still getting that chair delivered and so forth. Once you start cramming it full of luggage or camping supplies you will rapidly feel the claustrophobia.
112 miles is perfect for driving around a city or going to the park on the weekend or whatever. 40 minutes for 10->80% is a bit… ouch. But if you can charge it over night (with even an L1 charger) that doesn’t matter for day trips and… trust me when I say you want to take a long lunch and stretch your legs if you are taking a kei car on a road trip.
Which… also speaks to how consumer vehicles “should” be treated. Get something with great efficiency for your commute and every day driving. Rent a car for long range driving. First off… if you actually take wear and tear into account it isn’t THAT much more expensive to drive a beater for your 500 mile road trip. Second it means that you are saving a LOT of money on your commutes and normal shopping trips and can drive something optimized for that which reduces pollution considerably.
I don’t live in car land. Hence I don’t commute or shop groceries via car. Charging seems a hassle for typical trips, but I am not an experienced driver. I want mini cars to be cheaper, not go farther, so using one is more sensible.
17k for a new car of any kind is a good price
Except that even if your commute is 20km that’s still going tonlast you all week. Obviously there are other trips to make but it’s definitely not stopping 99.9% of people in the middle of their commute, or even their workday, to charge.
I don’t know why so many people think whatever they buy needs to be able to handle every single fringe case they’ve never even experienced or why they think that something being absolutely adequate for their own use is somehow bad. It’s room-temp IQ bullshit and I’m tired of it.
17k for a vehicle powered by a watch battery(exaggeration) is pretty sick and more than practical, even for people in North America.
The problem is that the battery is usually half the cost of manufacturing the car, larger batteries still means more expense, at least until whatever replaces the current battery tech is mainstream.
Britians cheapest brand new EV that isnt limited to 28mph top speed is the Dacia Spring at £11k. $17k is about £13k. UK average commuting distance is a round trip of about 40 miles. In an ICE car thats costing about £6 a day, vs. 70p in an EV that can charge at home overnight. My kids basically get brand new (small) EVs for free vs. running an older ICE that I would gift them just on the fuel saving.
Obviously not everyone can change at home, but this will change the more people push for it.
Heat pump and dual direction charging are awesome though. I don’t imagine they’re using these kei cars between the cities when they can get high speed trains.
Nissan could easily take 5k off but has been hesitant/gradual with EV adoption just like the rest of the Japanese producers.
Adding in cost of ownership, EVs are cheaper than ICE vehicles. Electricity is way cheaper than gas, and electrics require almost zero maintenance. Also, even 200km meets the needs of a whole lot of drivers just fine. Our family’s secondary vehicle is a Gen-1 leaf with 140km of range and I think we’ve used a public charger 4 times in over 10 years.
With better infrastructure and fast charging that shouldn’t be a big deal. I mean, we don’t have that infrastructure today, but ideally the gargantuan battery mode isn’t where we stay in the extreme long-term.
It could make a great town car.
More range would make it larger, defeating a large portion of its purpose.
It’s meant for driving around a city, 200km should be more than enough for a day of shopping.
I struggle to believe that. Packing more batteries does not mean size has to increase by a lot. the biggest part of car volume is air anyway.
You mean where the people and shopping would go…? In an already compact kei car where it’s a premium…? Wonderful idea! /s
There’s also more to it than just battery size, more weight, less range per W, more cost to manufactur, so higher cost to buy… wouldn’t be a kei car and lose the insurance and other benefits….
If you’re struggling to believe something so simple, you maybe shouldn’t be commenting on something you have no knowledge on…?
Exactly! Just put the batteries where the people go.
For driving around a city, 50km is already more than enough
That wouldn’t get me to one side of my city and back without a charge, but with chargers at malls, shouldn’t be an issue.
Gigantic vehicles should be outlawed, not these.
But what am I going to do without my tiny dick support vehicle? /s
