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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

#621

Post by jeeeb »

deaddodo wrote: post #470
stevev wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 25-year import rule serves as evidence of how the United States has struggled in competition and developing vehicles over the past several decades. Toyota and Subaru are present in the United States because there is an incentive to manufacture them locally, which serves as a valuable learning experience for the US. Thus the United States' car manufacturers are either perceived as being of low quality or lagging b…

There are a couple issues with your assessment. A) most cars manufactured by European and Japanese brands are built in Mexico and direct imported via NAFTA/USMCA. The fact that Toyota and Honda choose to continue to do manufacturing in the United States is probably seen as a boon to those local communities. B) the "low quality" image of American brands is pretty limited to the United States, like a lot of American pr…

I’m suspicious of your claims in B. I can’t speak for every country you mentioned but in Australia (which constitutes most of the Oceania market), Ford/GM are not huge here at all. I also didn’t think I’ve ever heard people speak favourably of their reliability over Japanese brands. Tesla is perceived quite differently though and is gaining popularity.

Last year Ford sold about 1/4 the vehicles Toyota did (they were the 6th best selling brand in Australia), while GM/Tesla didn’t make the top 10 (https://www.racv.com.au/royalauto/transport/cars/australian-...).

Historically GM (under the Holden brand) and Ford were popular because they sold locally designed and manufactured v6 sedans and utes (like small pickup trucks). These cars were always perceived as Australian, not American.

They don’t locally manufacture anymore and have lost most of the Australian market.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#622

Post by echelon »

NickBusey wrote: post #582
echelon wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly are they being dishonest? They're comparing on a single dimension and laughing at F-150 owners. > This is more like r/vegan showing how a vegan meal is better than a steak meal along some dimension, say, environmental impact. Not when evaluating a purchasing decision, overall utility, or customer demographics and needs. I'm showing that morally opposed parties inject themselves and their biases orthogon…

The insinuation that you need a F-150 to go fishing and drink beer is hilarious.

Painting a picture of the demographic for urbanites.

In terms of fishing, lots of folks haul their own boats. Renting at a marina is expensive, and they have space to store their watercraft at home.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#623

Post by wlonkly »

mcv wrote: post #505
hn_user82179 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what a great campervan. I've seen some of the egg-like old japanese campervans but not one like yours. Very cool!

Is that an unusual campervan to you? To me it looks like the most archetypal standard campervan there is. I've seen tons somewhat like it, although this looks like a particularly nice compact model.

There's North American RVs, and there's Japanese-import vans, but this one looks to me like a an RV and a Japanese van had a baby.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#624

Post by wlonkly »

bombcar wrote: post #443
nickpeterson wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been downvoted over this before but really we just need weight limits on cars. Efficiency is pretty closely aligned and we seem to regulate that just fine.

Very small cars are available in the USA, people just don’t buy many. Mini Cooper, smart, these exist.

The Mini Cooper is bigger than you'd think -- same wheelbase and height as a Corolla, although the cargo area and hood are shorter. But the wheelbase of the Smart car (no longer sold in the US, by the way) is 2/3 that of the Mini.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#625

Post by zirgs »

bombcar wrote: post #565
zirgs wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a lot of Smarts in Rome simply because it's easier to find parking spaces for them there. A typical American pickup truck would be a total nightmare to own while living there. So fix your city planning issues and people will choose smaller cars.

The Romans I was riding with agreed that the sideways parking was the only reason to get them, otherwise they considered them expensive for the size.

And that's a pretty big reason in cities that aren't littered with giant parking lots.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#626

Post by itronitron »

tecleandor wrote: post #500
itronitron wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the owners somehow manage to keep them running the people that depend on these vehicles are particularly tuned in to how to keep them alive... Years ago, when my wife and I lived in a 'rural adjacent' community we had a ~20 year old manual transmission european sedan sitting in our driveway for about a year, tires slowly deflating, until one couple stopped by to enquire about it. My wife told them that if you can…

OOC, what car was it? :)

It was a Swedish car whose model number is equivalent to the number of hours elapsed in ten Earth days.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#627

Post by IIAOPSW »

DontTrustOver25 wrote: post #566
bioemerl wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> primarily because they get used a lot by people who can’t afford a car. Primarily because they are slow and constantly get in your way, building a train of cars and making many people late for work.

Which is why we need to invest more in non-car infrastructure like ample bike lines, reliable publish transit, and pedestrian friendly sidewalks :)

and funky atoll autocorrect

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#628

Post by IIAOPSW »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #607
IIAOPSW wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's electric bikes in China that are more like a Vespa than anything. Commuting this way was pretty great when I owned one. The range is perfect for urban commuters, charging it at night is basically negligible in your power bill, it slips right past the cars so there's no such thing as traffic (whatever cars pass you, you pass them right back by the next red light), likewise parking is a non-issue as it takes a…

I don't have a good impression of chinese electric bikes. They don't make very much noise behind you (unless they have a speaker) and the people driving them are often doing dubious things that maybe the bike shouldn't be doing, like balancing a bunch of empty water bottles. But I guess I feel the same in SEA where instead of electric bikes you have to contend with a sea of gas mopeds.

What you don't have a good impression of is the Ebike drivers, not the Ebikes.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#629

Post by iancmceachern »

strken wrote: post #553
iancmceachern wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

Owning multiple properties and flying between them is something rich people do that wastes an astronomical amount of resources, and the fact that it wastes more than towing 13,000lbs of RV around doesn't make either of them any better. Or any worse - you apparently didn't notice, but I wrote that there are good reasons to own an RV, and want to reiterate that. Probably in your heart of hearts you know whether your ow…

thank you for your last sentence.

TONs of non-rich people also have 2 properties and go between them. You can buy a cabin or vacation property in the rural US for a surprisingly affordable amount. I know many folks who are certainly not rich, but do spend time in various locations.

Think traveling nurses, seasonal employees, etc. Also look up the term "snow bird"

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#630

Post by dang »

yamtaddle wrote: post #183
nicbou wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to rethink the incentives. Big, wasteful cars have no business being as cheap as a small family car. This was not accidental.

Oh, for sure. The old-school conservative solution, from back before "conservative" meant "simply don't try to do good things, at all" (at least, in the US) would have been to try to price in the added risk to others (and other externalities, like extra road-wear) to discourage having too-large vehicles. I think that could work. Never gonna happen, because too many people think discouraging choices that make public r…

Please don't go back to posting ideological flamewar comments. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and you've mostly been doing a pretty good job of avoiding it (thank you!)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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