Well, it appears that Tiny Cars – Trump’s term for the small affordable cars that Americans aren’t allowed to buy because they’re not legal to sell (here) are coming . . . to Japan. According to a news story in the Japan Times, “China’s BYD is adding a tiny electric vehicle to its lineup in Japan, in a challenge to domestic brands in the country’s most important vehicle segment.”
The interesting thing isn’t that BYD is going to sell its Tiny Cars in Japan. It is that Japan will allow BYD to sell its Tiny Cars in Japan. More precisely, it will allow BYD to offer them for sale – and it will be up to the Japanese to decide whether they want to want to buy them.
Imagine that.
Here in the United State (singular, to reflect the fact) no one is allowed to offer Tiny Cars for sale to people who are free to decide whether they want to buy one. Not Ford, not GM. Well, there’s Stellantis – which has been given the green light to sell a Tiny Car (the Fiat Topolino) here, but while the Topolino is very tiny it is hardly a car. A golf cart is what it is. The thing – which is battery powered – has a rope for a door and a top speed of 25 MPH, rendering it both unusable as well as illegal to operate on public (that is to say, government controlled) roads. Americans are not permitted the freedom to choose to buy actually usable Tiny Cars such as the Mazda Flair, which can be purchased in Japan for about $10,000. It is also tiny but it is a car, with doors (four of them) and an engine and a top speed significantly higher than any legal-to-drive road speed in the United States. It even has air bags. Nevertheless, it’s illegal for Mazda to offer the Flair for sale to people who would be free to not buy it, if they thought it too tiny or disliked it for some other reason.
This is a really important point.
No one would be forced to buy one of these Tiny Cars; the idea is merely that they would be available (legally). Why is this such an outrageous concept? Well, because there are people in this country whose attitude is that since they do not want a a Tiny Car, no one else wants a Tiny Car. It is actually worse than that. Many of these people think that because they consider Tiny Cars to be “unsafe” – because they are tiny and by dint of that, less able to protect occupants from injury or even death in the event of a crash – they ought not to be legal for anyone else to buy. It is the same species of arrogance that was behind mask-pushing during “COVID.” It was not enough for these types to wear a mask themselves; everyone had to wear one. Had to be made to wear one.
We are lectured by these same people that there is no market for Tiny Cars in this country. This is a fascinating assertion given the “market” is closed to Tiny Cars. The reasoning is so circular it engenders nausea.
Trump promised the market would be opened. True to form, this promise has not been kept. It is possible that Trump doesn’t even know what a Tiny Car is – other than it is “tiny.” He is not a car guy. It is unlikely he could tell you a single thing about the mechanical workings of a car. It’s a safe bet he cannot drive stick. He owns limos – and is driven around in them. He may, at some distant point in the long-ago, have driven a car himself. But did he ever raise the hood? Would he have any idea what he was looking at if he did? Probably not. This isn’t to disparage him, per se. It is to make point that’s relevant. Trump is not a guy who knows much about cars – or the car “market,” such as it is. He makes breezy assertions about Tiny Cars without any understanding of Kei cars, which is what he means even if he doesn’t understand.
“Kei” is a category of cars – in the Japanese market. Of a piece with the categories of cars in America. The difference being it is a category of cars Americans aren’t allowed the opportunity to buy if they wish to buy one.
In Japan, people are free to buy Kei cars and soon they’ll be free to buy Chinese iterations of the same kinds of cars. Americans will not have the same freedom, even though Trump promised they would. Of course, he also promised no stupid, evil wars in the Middle East and lower-cost rather than higher-cost energy – as well as $5k DOGE rebate checks.
Vote Harder next time, I guess.
. . .
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You would think that the way the bureaurats go on about pollution and emissions that tiny cars could help solve some of these problems. Potentially more fuel efficient and more efficient use of materials might help out but GovCo has never liked solutions it didn’t come up with.