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.
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.
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.
My knowledge doesn’t extend much past driving a manual. There are automatics I believe but they’re rarer. (And not as much fun!) So far my biggest challenge was getting an oil change because the standard lifts don’t go narrow enough. I was able to get it into a place with a pit, it had about an inch to spare between the tires. Turns out it just takes a Toyota oil filter and the other ‘consumables’ like belts/bulbs are likewise fairly standard.
I’m vaguely hoping something will break so I can use it to slowly become more knowledgeable about cars. In theory it should be a great project vehicle, the only electronics are the lights / A/C / radio. There’s a few others around town and I think it’s funny they’re all vaguely different in what people have done to them. Extra lights, hand painted, etc. They’re cheap enough (11k freshly imported, licensed, and delivered to my door) and all metal so that’s at least a bit of the draw it seems like.
How do they do in crash tests? Are there blind spots?
Cars a death machines. We need to regulate them.
Low speeds isnt a risk. But if it’s a danger to its occupants or pedestrians/cyclists, it shouldn’t be on the road
They do fine in crashes… Against normal sized cars. They get absolutely obliterated by trucks and SUVs.
Most of them don’t go over 55, and aren’t highway legal because of that.
I am definitely going to die if I get hit by an SUV on my motorbike, but I’m free to drive that to work all the time. I fail to see how a mini-car is materially different while we allow other dangerous vehicles on the road by the same definition.
Tax subsidized parasite big mad they might have to compete
Colorado’s Division of Motor Vehicles also tried to explicitly ban them last year, though it later pulled its proposed rule. Some kei vehicle owners, however, say the state is still trying to keep them off the road by refusing to allow them into the emissions testing process.
As usual it’s confusion from news when reporting on public policy. So are they proposing that there be exceptions to emissions rules for these vehicles or not? Because that will make a huge amount of difference in how much I or pretty much anyone else should support this.
