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   Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: (tk@bbs.kawa-kun.com)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 09:58:11 JST Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem:
   The US auto industry basically created the American kei truck market by killing off compact trucks in favor of these monstrosities they're pushing now.
   
   A small business would balk at a $100k pickup truck with a tiny bed that's too high to load and unload easily, but a tiny $6k truck that can carry as much stuff in the bed while being easier to operate is a much better investment.
   
   Also, the US auto industry is constantly fighting the kei truck threat hard because they know that the trucks are practical for so many uses.
   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: like this.
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     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: (tk@bbs.kawa-kun.com)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 09:58:34 JST Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem:

     in reply to
     (Yes, I know that pickup trucks in the US grew because of emissions regulations.)
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     Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲 (baralheia@dragonchat.org)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 08:32:20 JST Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

     in reply to

     @tk Yep, 100%. And American trucks (and other vehicles too) keep getting bigger and bigger because American manufacturers decided that was the cheaper and easier path to complying with stricter federal crashworthiness standards... Instead of properly engineering their vehicles to be safe in the first place. :dragnangry:

     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: likes this.
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     Xoa Gray (xoagray@phoenix.masto.host)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:32:14 JST Xoa Gray

     in reply to

     @tk All of this. I was a truck guy, but I hate the trucks that we have now. Big, overly macho looking walls of steel that are a danger to everything around them. I'd take a Kei truck over any of them any day.

     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: likes this.
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     Isocat (isocat@tiggi.es)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:33:02 JST Isocat

     in reply to

     • Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

     @tk @baralheia You're many kinds of right. I fervently wish US regs weren't deliberately configured to cater to the market-control preferences of the American automakers (+ those international ones who pay the steep cover charge to participate in this market), at the expense of things like pedestrian safety (and many other kinds) and on-road fleet fuel economy, but that's the fetid reality we live with here on the North American regulatory island of Ferenginar.

     There's also more nuance and complexity to it, though. Road and traffic conditions in Japan really are significantly different to those in North America in ways that heavily affect the practical safety of a Kei truck. That would still be the case even if LHD Kei trucks were a thing, and the fact that privately-imported Keis are RHD makes them significantly more unsafe and incompatible with North American traffic.

     Some states and provinces are now refusing to register Japanese-specification vehicles imported under the 25-year-old cutoff exempting imported vehicles from US safety standards, the 21-year cutoff for US emissions standards, and the 15-year rule for Canadian safety and emissions standards. That really is a sound decision by those states and provinces, bitter though it be for those who think a Kei truck best meets their needs.

     It also sucks that the Australian-type "ute" (formally "coupé utility", a station wagon but with a truck bed instead of enclosed rear cabin + wayback) withered and died in North America after the Chev El Camino and Ford Ranchero went away by the late '70s, as nudge/wink CAFE regulations spurred automakers to pivot to trucks and truck-based SUVs (and miscategorize certain cars as "trucks"). A ute would much better, more safely, and more economically serve a great many North Americans' needs than the F-990 Super Duty King Ranch Canyonero types they're more or less forced into. Subaru's Baja was a more recent halfassed effort at at ute, but as a 4-door its bed was too small to be useful for more than Harry Homeowner's smaller pickups at the garden centre.

     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: likes this.
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     Pissed Hippo (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:35:18 JST Pissed Hippo

     in reply to

     • Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲
     • Isocat
     @isocat @tk @baralheia one of those material conditions is simply that there are tons of small vehicles there already so you don't have to build defensively, unfortunately that will never be reversed in america, ever.
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     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: (tk@bbs.kawa-kun.com)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:36:24 JST Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem:

     in reply to

     • Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲
     • Pissed Hippo
     • Isocat
     @sun @baralheia @isocat It will be reversed when nobody can afford to fuel these rolling monstrosities. :blobfoxgooglytrash:
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     Isocat (isocat@tiggi.es)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:37:58 JST Isocat

     in reply to

     • Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲
     • Pissed Hippo

     @sun @tk @baralheia Exactly right.

     Pissed Hippo likes this.
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     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: (tk@bbs.kawa-kun.com)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:42:36 JST Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem:

     in reply to
     @isocat @baralheia @sun The thing is, obese "performance" electric vehicles are going to show how "great" big vehicles are once electricity rates skyrocket with everybody driving them. There is no way to move a 3+ ton vehicle without expending tons of energy to get it moving (unless you drop it from a plane or something :blobfoxgooglymlem: ). Even worse if it's only transporting one person. You can't beat physics.
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     Isocat (isocat@tiggi.es)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:42:37 JST Isocat

     in reply to

     • Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲
     • Pissed Hippo

     @tk @baralheia @sun Unfortunately, though, Cybertruck. And it's only a matter of probably not much time before the F-150 is the smallest in Ford's Lightning pickup line.

     This can be viewed entire by putting the URL in at 12ft.io:

     https://www.wired.com/story/the-uk-now-has-its-own-illegal-rubberized-cybertruck-on-the-road/

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     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: (tk@bbs.kawa-kun.com)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 10:43:20 JST Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem:

     in reply to
     I would definitely qualify all of these long-range battery electric vehicles as "obese" because of how heavy the batteries are.