Gods I’d love A small truck like that if they made them, I know this is fuck cars and I agree with the sentiment, but I’d much rather these be everywhere than the monstrosities on the road today
May I introduce you to the Kei-Truck?
We’ve met, and it goes too far in the tiny direction and can’t drive on highways. It’s like suggesting a moped to someone who wants a smaller street bike.
Aren’t those illigal to drive in most of the US? Besides that, they also cap at like 60mph, right? That really limits thier usefulness in a lot of the US, these are mostly good for cities, right?
Don’t get me wrong I love kei trucks, but I think having small regular pickups would help a ton too.
They’re illegal for road use in a lot of states, yes, but not private use. So in most states, if you need something for around your property, you’re still allowed to buy one. Some states will let you register them for road use though.
The bigger issues are 1. To be imported, they have to be at least 25 years old, so the current ones are from the late 90s. Thus, they have the tech to go with it, limiting their speed.
And 2. They’re built and designed for Japanese roads and regulations, not American ones. Speed limits are different there, and as you said, they’re better for city use, I’d say non-highway use.
They’re legal in my state, and I want one when I can afford one, but I’m also less than a mile from a major home improvement store, and the other two stores I would need to visit are within 20 minutes driving by backroads. But I’m a fringe case, but I’d say for most people who live reasonably close to a Lowes or whatever and are only going to use it for weekend projects would be perfect candidates for a kei truck.
Beyond that, yeah, they’re limited :/
I think they’re awesome but yeah, unfortunately limited in most bigger cities due to how everything is laid out.
Their use case is basically “never need to go on the freeway”. Going over 50 mph is maybe possible, with a tailwind, downhill, but would be terrifying.
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Oh for sure, I’m not trying to defend the status quo, if anything g I’m saying we need kei trucks and stricter regulation making regular pickups smaller and more efficient. No one who doesn’t actually need a massive hauling truck should have one imo
Only on high ways. They have all the required features (lights, seatbelts, indicators) to be legal on roads, only two states have official bans on their use for roads with speed limits faster than 55mph. But I don’t think any sane person is buying these things for long distance commutes, those that would would just buy a smart car instead.
If it’s old enough, you can import and drive them. Some kind of classic car exception.
It varies state-to-state wether you can register them for road use.
Illegal to drive on the highway
So happy with my 80’s c10. Once I do the engine swap, I’ll be able to run it on biodiesel.
Canoo is supposedly going to make a pickup based on their electric van platform that looks really interesting:
The expanding bed is an absolutely killer feature IMO. Small footprint the vast majority of the time but expands out large enough to fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood when you need that. All the fold-out workbenches are a really cool touch too.
The whole thing feels like the Kei trucks people in other comments are mentioning but upsized and up-powered to be more feasible on US roads.
Not 100% definite and it’s likely going to look a bit weird, but real good chance we’re going to have a model based on the transit vans you see rolling around called the ‘ford courier’ in a year or so but regulations make it difficult to release a truck like that nowadays.
Just went through Japan and Korea and there are a lot of perfectly capable trucks that aren’t giant land-whales
Maybe Telo Trucks might be worth keeping an eye on?
Even from the renders I can tell you that it’s probably not going to work out, all other things being equal. Sharing the “format” of like, a cabover, similar to a kei truck, means that it would more readily be suited for smaller scenarios in which maybe turn radius and immediate over the hood visibility is more important, right, but then, its size kind of defeats that, and I suspect that the slant of the window, in order to make it aerodynamic at highway speeds, and efficient, is going to end up putting the driver back so far that it’s going to eliminate your ability to actually see over the hood as much as you might want to. Probably the format also has adverse effects on crash safety, as you really want a hood on your car in order to catch a pedestrian, scooping them up by the legs, and also as a crumple zone to dispel some of the force of crash from the front, which is ideally where most of your crashes are coming from.
I think probably also that the conventional american automotive taste might defeat it, as americans kind of, historically, prefer a larger shittier hood on their vehicle. They prefer the sort of idiot dominance that a big hood gives them. Carolina squat style. I could be wrong on all that, though.
I think my biggest concern would probably be that, even though light trucks are the segment of the market which are very obviously viable for EVs right now, the people who buy trucks won’t want to buy them, and the people who want EVs won’t want to buy them. Implicit in both of those is those who can afford them, which I think automatically maybe selects for people who have the worst taste of all time. Light trucks make sense for EVs, right, you have a rear suspension which is supposed to be beefier for large loads already, conventionally in consumer trucks you’re not going to want a longer travel distance because they’re not supposed to be these highly efficient vehicles, and going electric gives you a pretty good and easy tow rating and high levels of torque low in the power curve like you might get with a diesel engine.
But I dunno. Basically I think americans might be too stupid for it. Might see more success in japan, but I have no idea what their EV infrastructure is looking like or if they already have kei trucks or larger cabovers which are electric. Fleet vehicles would probably need something like a swappable battery on the cheap, or a fast charging system that doesn’t destroy the battery immediately, but the first one probably requires more infrastructure and the second one seems maybe like it would be a limitation of the technology.
Doesnt even list payload or towing capacity. What a joke.
Ford Maverick
So rare, all the 2024 are sold since months in Canada, I don’t even know if you can buy a 2025 as maybe they are all already reserved.
“We know you want one because it fits your needs and your pricepoint, but we don’t make enough margin on those, so buy an F150 for more money please.”
I was very interested in the Ford Maverick up until the 2024 model year when the hybrid engine stopped being standard and instead a $2500 upgrade on top of an already significant price hike. That, and the complete inability to find one to buy anyway were what made me give up on the maverick entirely.
A move in the right direction for sure.
I had one, a proton Jumbuck, great little machine. I’m not sure they are still made but you see them second hand occasionally.
Giant land yacht with the LED permanent highbeams tilted up to blind oncoming traffic.
I would not say that we can completely get rid of cars, or that all cars are evil, but such absurdly big, extremely inefficient trucks with negligible visibility just should be taxed to shit.
At the very least you should need a special license to operate them. They’re classed differently to avoid safety and emissions regulations imposed on regular cars, so its perfectly reasonable that there should be different requirements to purchase them and get behind the wheel.
That’s brilliant.
I cannot believe my license lets me drive all sorts of vehicle sizes that can outright crush/kill, right off the bat.
But to operate a forklift or ride a motorcycle that is more likely to kill myself? Nah gotta have a license.
Not to mention the massive loads they can haul which basically turn them into semi trucks, vehicles which you would in fact need a special license to operate, with worse visibility to boot. Way too many people out there hauling ridiculously large campers and sometimes even towing an extra vehicle at the end of their train with zero special training to do so.
Not even taxed. Outright banned. What happened to governments regulating and revising car safety standards? They can even collect all these back and offer change into more environment and traffic friendly ones, like they were doing 10 years ago.
What happened? Regulatory capture happened.
Capitalism progressing to its natural end stage.
The guy that drives the land yacht once brought home a couple of two by fours in it from Home Depot, so he feels justified in owning it too. “Sometimes there’s just mo substitute for a good truck.” When his ac cannot handle the heat, he still won’t experience any introspection.
The beds are the same size too. It’s not even a better truck than the old one.
But it’s legal to manufacture today, unlike the old one. CAFE rules changed in 2012 to be based on footprint instead of vehicle class, so they essentially outlawed small trucks and gave auto manufacturers an easy way out of efficiency regulations by just making cars bigger every refresh cycle.
Thanks Obama!
But jokes aside that’s how everything geta done.
Industry writes rules for themselves and nobody knows how such thing happened but nobody is at fault and nothing to be done really … Kk thx bye
This was more of a misguided response to other manufacturer fuckery.
They would just classify everything as a truck before. The fucking PT Cruiser was a “truck.”
misguided
In tejas we called that corruption…
Meh. The Ranger, S-10, and Dakota were major sellers for the automakers and they’ve felt that hit . The Ranger has come back in name, but not in size.
The fact that a 2008 Ford Ranger with 150,000 miles can still sell for 12-15k tells you there’s still a huge demand for this class of truck. The manufactures don’t get another dime out of that S-10 that’s changed hands 4 times - often to people who would have gladly bought new if it were an option.
Another vehicle class just died to increasingly-strict CAFE rules on vehicle footprint - the small cargo van. The Nissan NV200, Ford Transit Connect, and Ram ProMaster City were all discontinued in the last few years. These were all hugely popular.
These were all hugely popular.
Because they did the truck job for kinda cheaper?
Why sell you practical good value product when they can sell you FORD HEMI 650 69 litre
we can talk about the product by product basis but if you look at the big picture, it now became clear what they did back then.
Aren’t some of these going to a 4.5 foot bed? I once had a bargain basement Isuzu pickup because it was the cheapest car you could buy new in the US (early 90’s). I’m pretty sure that had an 8 ft bed or close to it.
I hate these bullshit oversized trucks too, but to be fair the big one has a much bigger cab for more passengers, a much bigger engine, and a much bigger towing capacity.
This is the wrong sub for such comments… but I agree with you. If you need a truck and you have a family you can buy the smaller truck, but then you also have to buy a car to carry the family. The larger truck will let you haul your family and give you the pickup truck that you need.
Yeah, I don’t care about the downvotes.
The comment I replied to implied the vehicles capabilities were similar, which just isn’t the case.
It’s fine to hate cars, especially these oversized trucks, but let’s keep it real.
Whenever I see some jackass driving these I comment to them how nice and clean it is. Usually they don’t get it but sometimes I go a step further and say “wow you must really never do any work with this work truck!” Fucking pussies
I looked inside a parked one yesterday and saw eyelash curlers.
I see them a lot at Starbucks driven by women.
Part of that is soccer mom-ing, part of that is “urban jungle” brainworm fearmongering, I bet. It’s the transition from station wagons to minivans to SUVs to crew cab trucks. You need a big cool truck that can protect you from the elements, and from the potholes when you go somewhere worthwhile, and also from the crime, even! woah, so cool! kinda shit. Just like, basic fuck you get mine style stuff, there, no questions asked, contextually devoid vacuum “I need to protect my family” mind. People being taken advantage of, by marketing.
You could try making them paranoid. “Wow, that’s big! How do you make sure you’re not driving over a kid in it?”
Lol I’ll probably try this out next time
Hahaha, if you try it you’ll get an answer that will be some bullshit justification and then put in “Ah, I see, you can limit it but there’s no way to be 100% sure.”
I mean… I have worked for contractors that don’t even drive their truck off work hours who kept it very clean as a point of professionalism, but then again, they had obvious signs of it being specifically a work trick. So. Your still completely right.
I remember reading a study done in the late 1990s (I’m pretty sure it was ford) that looked at who was most likely to buy a pickup truck so they could market them better, and they found the people who buy pickup trucks fall into 2 categories, one, a blue collar boss buying it for his employees, or two, an insecure man in his 30s-50s trying to compensate
a blue collar boss buying it for his employees
I assume this means for his business, to be used by employees? I can’t imagine a boss buying his employees a truck.
bUt ThEy ArE oNlY sElLiNg ThOsE bEcAuSe ThAt Is WhAt We DeMaNd
I have one of those 2 seater pickups from 2010. Best vehicle ever, 7-8L/100km and the same size box as the whale behind it.
There’s no way you can get 7-8L/100Km on a pickup in the city. Are you living in the countryside so there’s no traffic?
A Piaggio Ape with a 50cc engine and two seats manages 3-4L/100Km (>70mpg) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have a 30km commute of mostly 50-70km/h roads.
edit: 7.8L/100km on the last fill
Now, TBH the truck in the back can carry a much heavier and/or physically larger load. Even though the beds are the same length, it’s bed is slightly deeper and likely a good foot or two wider. But how many truck owners transport such loads on the regular? In fact, how many truck owners have anything other than Pavement Princesses?
The truck in the front is more than enough truck for most “truck owners”, they just choose the back option for it’s utility as a penis extender.
You’re correct. I managed two raised garden beds with two trips to Lowes in a fucking civic. I moved apartments with one of those tiny pickups.
I have an S10 with an extended cab approximately in the class of the little Tacoma above. perfectly capable truck. fits in a parking space, easily carries a sofa, there’s room in the cab behind the seats for baggage so it comfortably carries two people plus gear, I’ve yet to find a mission my pickup couldn’t do that didn’t require a box truck.
Canyonero! whip crack
What’s really interesting is that the bed size on both of those trucks appears to be the same.
For myself, when I’m looking at pickup trucks–which I sometimes do, although I am unlikely to buy one any time soon–I’m looking at the ability to carry full sheets of plywood.
What is the load each can carry? I ruined the transmission in a small Nissan pickup truck like in the photo hauling old carpet to the county dump.
I would need to look it up for each.
A lot of the older trucks–like the early 80s F150s–were veyr small by current standards, but still had the bed size and overall hauling capacity of current gen F150 trucks. They were very clearly work trucks though, and had very few comforts that you’d expect in a car.
the bed size on both of those trucks appears to be the same.
The length, definitely. But having owned similar sizes with the same bed length (Mazda B2200 & F-150), I can tell you that the larger truck has a much higher max weight capacity, with at least 2-6in greater rail height and anywhere from 12-24 inches greater bed width.
As in, you could put a standard 4×8 sheet of plywood down in each, but in the smaller truck this sheet would be sitting on top of the wheel wells, while in the larger truck it would likely be sitting between the wheel wells entirely.
I get what you’re saying, but looking at old full-sized pickups, the overall width is about the same. What’s different is the ride height and wheel/tire size. A very high weight capacity creates it’s own set of problems, namely that control is compromised when you have no load at all, because there’s no preload on the springs.
You may be interested in www.minitrucks.net
Thanks for sharing
I would love a flat faced kei truck for camping. Adjust the bed into a cool mobile camping rig.
Making absolutely positively sure, that if you run a guy over, they can’t sue you, because they’re dead.
Can we get AI to make a version with increasing recursion into city-sized monster trucks?
That was great. I hope the ai that made that was also ironically and horrifically resource consuming.
The front truck is wonderful. Put a small lift on it and you can literally go anywhere in north America
You see a daddy truck and baby truck just out minding their own business and decide you want them to die?! What is wrong with you?
Nah I think he said he wants them to fuck🥴
I…I think he wants to fuck them…
Wait is Fuck Cars not about smut? Oh no…
