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Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

economist.com

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Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#301

Post by jcrawfordor »

jaredklewis wrote: post #300
nostromo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't necessarily regulatory capture or protectionism. Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular brand of car sold in the US. So, yes, you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. If you didn't block them as imports, we'd have lots of people jus…

If it’s about standards, how come 25+ year old cars are ok?

The 25-year exception is intended for collectors and restorers. It is aligned with many states allowing historic/vintage/"horseless carriage" plates with limitations and reduced fees for vehicles over 25 years old. These rules are often something like must be driven < 1000 miles per year except trips to/from exhibitions and shows. The federal standards don't get so specific about restrictions on collector vehicles, they just get a lot looser about what can be registered after 25 years.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#302

Post by iancmceachern »

strken wrote: post #290
iancmceachern wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not me. I bought a F250 diesel to tow my 13,000 lb rv. Smaller vehicles can't do that.

A 13,000lb RV is doing a similar job to a 6lb tent, 1lb sleeping mat, 3lb sleeping bag, and 2lb stove. There are obviously some good reasons to buy a huge RV instead of using a tent, but the RV itself is an expensive and heavy status symbol.

Do you live in a tent? Would you make the same comparison about your house?

We live in our RV for 3-6 months a year, in weather from -10 in Colorado blizzards and 120 degree California summers. In rain snow and sleet. I work remotely from it.

A tent is not a home. An RV It is for many of us.

Before you throw more stones, it's far more eco friendly and lower carbon Footprint to own an rv and travel and stay in it in various places than to own several properties and fly between them.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#303

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

nyx wrote: post #29

The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles from other countries unless they're 25+ years old, is just awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars. It would be great to live completely car-free, but absent major changes to how we plan our cities, it's just a sad reality that cars are a necessary ingredient to life in the vast majority of Americ…

> [...] awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars.

I currently drive a small efficient car, but I'm seriously contemplating buying an electric SUV for my next car, even though I've no use for it. I don't drive a lot, but every time I drive, I see drivers on their phones, drivers who don't signal, drivers who race the lights, drivers who don't turn their head lights on at night, and other general poor situational awareness, etc. etc. And about once a month I see someone run the red light by a _large_ margin.

By absolute measurements SUVs are worse in most metrics including safety, but alas prisoner's dilemma prevails. No amount of defensive driving on my part is gonna trump physics, if / when my tiny hatchback gets T-boned by a lifted truck.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#304

Post by llanowarelves »

jjoonathan wrote: post #298
llanowarelves wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the links. Why is the phrase "conspiracy theory" used for that though? Sounds like it's a value-judgement free decision from manufacturers to follow the incentives from the policy as we'd predict: way cheaper and less work to make those (now pretty popular) vehicles bigger than R&D and re-tool factories to make smaller and/or more efficient. It would need to be made more efficient to get smaller otherwise…

It's value-judgement free if they had no hand in crafting or maintaining the loophole, but undermining popular policy with a loophole is a very common strategy for dodging regulation. If that's the case here then they aren't simply honest corporations just trying to sail the sea of incentives, they are more like a schoolyard bully who has grabbed an environmental cause by the hand and is doing the "why are you punchi…

I don't disagree with you on that component of it existing.

The thing about policy is usually somebody big is warning the public ahead of time that the "affordable healthcare bill" (for another example) isn't actually affordable healthcare (it's mandated health insurance), get called debby-downers/negative/hateful, and then it happens that way anyway due to lawmaker and corp PR pushing it through while everyone else cheers. Actually reading the bill and thinking/wargaming how it will apply deterministically with basic thought experiments is discouraged. And all "sides" do this, from incentives.

I question the validity of the spirit of bills when it repeats like that so often. At some point that is the spirit of the bill.

This is of course ignoring the revolving door, regulatory capture, and lobbying angles, which are always in play some (maybe huge) %. Also predictable and deterministic, from incentives.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#305

Post by jcrawfordor »

kube-system wrote: post #221
eduction wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can import new tiny cars and drive them all you want on a farm or private grounds, you just can’t take them on roads if they don’t meat road safety standards. Even the advocate highlighted in this article (Economist) admits his would probably be a “death trap” on a busy highway. Maybe the US should create separate standards for city streets and roads with low speed limits, that could be a good way to bring down v…

> Maybe the US should create separate standards for city streets and roads with low speed limits, that could be a good way to bring down vehicle sizes. They already have! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-speed_vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicl... But it’s a hard sell when the US has so many high speed roads. I mostly see them used for facility maintenance, parking enforcement etc…

There are several companies that import new mini-trucks titled as LSVs, too. Vantage Vehicle is one of them.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#307

Post by Aeolun »

nyx wrote: post #29

The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles from other countries unless they're 25+ years old, is just awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars. It would be great to live completely car-free, but absent major changes to how we plan our cities, it's just a sad reality that cars are a necessary ingredient to life in the vast majority of Americ…

If it’s legal for BMW to import it’s cars and sell them, then it should be legal for Toyota to import it’s kei cars and sell them in the US right? You just can’t do it as an individual.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#309

Post by Aeolun »

Dalewyn wrote: post #261
nostromo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't necessarily regulatory capture or protectionism. Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular brand of car sold in the US. So, yes, you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. If you didn't block them as imports, we'd have lots of people jus…

>you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. This really is the crux of the issue, those kei cars simply do not meet US car regulations by the very nature of their small size and light weight. Even in Japan, where they hail from, kei cars are a distinct category regulated separately from the rest of…

Nor do they meet Japanese regulations to be cars proper.

Trying to drive one on a highway (100kmph) strains the poor thing to it’s limit, and if you are ever in a crash with a real car you better prepare to be completely crumpled.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#310

Post by asveikau »

llanowarelves wrote: post #255
asveikau wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the standard conspiracy theory was that they started making them larger to avoid environmental regulation (which is pretty ironic). Here's the first google result for "large cars regulation loophole", looks like an interesting read: https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-wants-to-close-the-suv-lo... Edit: prior HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35609521

Thanks for the links. Why is the phrase "conspiracy theory" used for that though? Sounds like it's a value-judgement free decision from manufacturers to follow the incentives from the policy as we'd predict: way cheaper and less work to make those (now pretty popular) vehicles bigger than R&D and re-tool factories to make smaller and/or more efficient. It would need to be made more efficient to get smaller otherwise…

I was a bit tongue in cheek and playing off the previous comment using the phrase "conspiracy theory".

It has a bad connotation, but I guess not all things that sound like conspiracy theories are false. Another car themed topic is when Standard Oil and Firestone Tires colluded to buy up trolly lines and shut them down.

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