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Comment by bouncycastle | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people in Japan drive "kei cars". These are very compact, have tiny engines and are very simple and cheap. (Not to mention the registration incentives). Until electric cars become simple and cheap, they won't be able to compete with "kei cars".

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Kei cars seem like an ideal candidate for electrification though; they don't need to have high top speeds and are also significantly more lightweight than regular-sized cars.

No they are small - the battery will increase weight and they may not be able to do much to put in a motor and battery.

Most kei cars are FWD and have very compact engine/transmissions - like I would say at max 2 milk crates side by side. 3 cylinder engines are common.

Yeah, they are small, but seem to fit perfectly on Japanese narrow roads and small garages. For a lot of people in JP, it's the only option because of the size, a larger car would simply not fit in their driveway / garage.

There are European electric cars similar to Kei cars.

Smart EQ, Renault Twingo, the Citroën Ami is smaller still.

While the Smart and Renault examples are regular cars but small (Mini and BMW i3 are about the same category), the Citroën Ami is a bit different: it can be driven without a licence, could work for teenagers for example, and some other specialised brands exist for those tiny/simple/quiet cars like Aixam (https://www.aixam.com/en/e-aixam-range). Renault also had the Twizy in that category.

Smart or Twingo don’t qualify as Kei cars FWIW. Ami might?

The Smart EQ is small enough to be a Kei car and could downrate the engine from 80HP to 63. Is it missing something else from the category?

Technically it’s not far too wide but it’s…it feels too thick and nice to call it a Kei to me, Kei is more like Ford Transit van scaled down to Smart footprint while retaining four seatbelts.

Maybe this is a pedantic argument like whether a Dyson cleaners qualify as “a typical handy vacuum” but those aren’t bland Walmart specials.

Smart fortwo is sold as kei car, named Smart K.

Wouldn't a kei car be used for shorter distances than a full-size car, and thus not need so large a battery?

For many in Japan, it's the only car option, so I assume that the distance it needs to go is the same as a full-sized car. (I often see them on inter-city expressways).

They do tend to go much slower & the acceleration is awfully clunky, but their range & efficiency is amazing.

Chances are they don’t go far. Most people drastically overestimate how far they drive. Iirc the 95th percentile commute in America is still like 40 miles or so, trivially reachable for even the lowest quality EVs on the market. I doubt that your average Japanese car commuter travels further than your average American car commuter.

I believe this is the biggest misconception among automakers...that people like to buy multiple cars: city cars, long range cards and ...mountain cars? In reality people like the city car to be able to do long range trips as well as that's the only car they can afford/want to buy.

People don't want to buy two cars, one used 90% for everyday trips and the other 10% (i.e in holiday etc).

I wonder if we will be able to get used to renting things when we need them only sometimes, or if indeed people will continue to want an all-purpose car which then lugs around half a ton of batteries while they run errands all year.

Having a rich daddy with too many cars, it was honestly quite the realization that I could just rent a car and not buy one (or, up till that point, borrow it from dad). The year before the pandemic is when that hit me and so I did that with some friends to go to a conference. Was quite happy with the experience: luxury car for 5 days for iirc 250 euros plus petrol, divided by four people.

>> I wonder if we will be able to get used to renting things when we need them only sometimes

I think there are several issues:

1. The renting process is quite involved, it's still expensive and the variety of cars is limited.

Something like Uber for renting cars with heavy marketing + some city regulation might make people consider owning a city car and renting a "specialized" vehicle for long trips or just renting both the city and the long range one.

2. There is a social aspect to this issue as small cars are seen as "cheap"/worse cars and for some reasons many people seem to like big off-road trucks even if they never go off-road and even if they are over their budget.

Like it or not the car you drive matters to many/most of the people just like the clothes you wear and the mobile phone you use.

I believe a "simple" and single solution to fix all these ills would be to be full self driving capabilities. That way we could hail the car we want when we want it perhaps directly from automakers or from a tech company such Apple/Amazon. I guess the "pride" being driven in a big truck would decrease as well so we would see less of them on the roads.

> People don't want to buy two cars

I mean, shouldn’t that be obvious?

There’s a bunch of fixed costs to owning a car (space to store it, registration, insurance/vehicle duty, servicing and maintenance) that vary directly with the number of cars owned (yeah, I know maintenance/insurance gets more expensive if you’re doing above-average mileage but that’s on top of a mostly fixed base) and not the number of miles you drive.

I guess the Renault Zoe, with its battery rental model, is a nod to the direction the automakers really want. Instead of buying more than one car, you can buy none and rent the one you want!

They’re also used for deliveries and sales in urban areas. In a sense those are short distance purposes but may need some range.

Kei car is also often seen in highway, but less frequently than streets. Some kei car buyers buy it as a second car for family (example: husband buy Prius or Noah minivan, wife buy kei car like Tanto), so their second kei car replacement by EV kei car is possible market (though still difficult task). Some people buy kei car for the only car, it's more difficult to replace.

However, they need more than 60 miles (!) of range and their batteries mean they're more comparable weight-wise with a normal gas-powered compact sedan (they're roughly 400 pounds heavier than other cars of their class).

And that range is measured when they're new- battery degradation is much more significant when your range barely covers your commute; add cold weather taking off another 20% of that range and now you can't make it to work and back without needing to stop at a charger.

Battery energy density just isn't enough in this application for it to make sense for this type of vehicle.

A non trivial number of the basic EVs on sale in CA are basically Kei cars for the American market.

I've previously heard of a cheap Chinese electric car that seems very kei car-esque to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ytqr8T05OU

As the video says, the car can be so cheap in part because of many safety features it lacks. I assume therefore that such a car would have to be more expensive in the Japanese market. But the space seems perfect for electric vehicles.

Number one selling EV in China is a 'kei car':

https://insideevs.com/news/525542/china-wuling-hongguang-sal...

Not to mention bicycle usage, walking, etc. is quite widespread in urban environments.

Agree with you but sooner or later people are going to have to account for the real costs. “Cheap” doesn’t account for the hidden cost to the environment. Small engines, counterintuitively, generally pollute much more per mile than larger engines.

In a lot parts of the world, you cannot sell anything bigger, or more expensive than a Japanese kei car.

Most of South Asia, and Africa drives Suzuki Altos, and Suzuki SX4s are considered there as big cars.

It's definitely, definitely possible to make small, cheap cars on batteries. In fact, easier than bigger ones as power to weight, and driving range scale non-linearly with the car size.

Big, heavy cars pay big premiums for not being able to use stamped parts in suspension for example. Small cars use stamped parts for almost everything.

Heavier cars almost invariably have to use more sophisticated suspension designs, with more parts to provide an equal level of comfort to lighter cars of the same class.

The amount of energy you lose in rolling resistance also varies non-linearly. You often can get an increase in driving efficiency if you have softer tires when you drive on less than idea roads. Etc, etc, etc

> Most of South Asia, and Africa drives Suzuki Altos, and Suzuki SX4s are considered there as big cars.

I saw an F150 once. The thing was a monstrosity that took a lane and a half on a suburban road.

Why is a car that big?

It makes sense in the US, where space is cheaper and bigger and you have to drive everywhere, but not anywhere else. I saw a US car with the embassy flag in the streets of Malta. The car was the size of the road, the driver was having a lot of trouble making simple turns in the "narrow" streets and gave up trying to do a 3-point turn. Probably could never find street parking for it, has to be a garage. I never saw an American-made car for American use before and I was amazed at how huge it was. You do see a local limo once in a while, but their drivers are usually more savvy as to where they can go with it.

> Why is a car that big?

Because it's a light truck. Useful for towing and moving material. Unfortunately used by many as a commuting vehicle.

They're also 15% bigger than they were 20 years ago for no apparent reason.

>Most of South Asia, and Africa drives Suzuki Altos, and Suzuki SX4s are considered there as big cars.

This is quite untrue about Africa. I doubt whether you've been to any country in Africa if you think that a Suzuki SX4 is considered a big car there. You'd get mocked for driving a "baby car" if you have an Alto.

How does the Mitsubishi i-MIEV compare in price to an ICR kei car?

I'm not sure if i-MIEV are produced anymore, but a new Leaf is about 3.3m yen (30K USD), compared to a kei at around 1.7m (15.5k USD)

Looks like i-MIEV was discontinued just this March. 10kWh and 16kWh models existed, base model was 2.27m($20k) at that point, launch price was 4.6m($45k) in 2010.

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