Kei Trucks—Lifesize!

[EB421]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

I so want one of these! Be fun to have a ev version that had like 70 mile range as that would do me for all the stuff i usually do around here off freeway stuff.

 

Oh, the Mitsubishi MiniCab MiEV U68T? Yeah, they're awesome. Unfortunately even used in Japan they're $8000, and it's almost impossible to get used EV's shipped internationally - I tried to buy one back in December. Plus, you're in the US - and they were made 2012-2016 so aren't allowed there thanks to the 25 year protectionism law. If we have any Russian members - lucky you - a bunch seem to be making it to you, thanks to the very short distance between Japan and Russian ports.

 

They're solid though - rolling chassis from a 2002-2013 Suzuki Carry DA63T, plus the drivetrain from an iMiEV and some restyling. Only downside is the long wheelbase on the DA63T - really smooth in town and super stable, but cramped up front and not as good offroad. My DA16T is much better on that front than my DA63T, though I miss being able to essentially not steer for five miles while doing 70 on straight freeway. On the other hand, doing four hour and back-to-back drives on the DA16T is actually practical, while in the DA63T it's just painful from how cramped it is.

 

[EB421]

On 2/1/2025 at 9:32 PM, RS18U said:

Very hard for me to fit in it as a driver 😕

 

On 2/1/2025 at 11:08 PM, cteno4 said:

Yeah I’m figuring my 193cm into it will be a very tight fit.

 

On 2/3/2025 at 6:40 AM, lighthouse said:

A small transporter like this was actually planned for TrainSetter's future fleet, but I no longer fit in it at 196cm....

 

You need a Daihatsu HiJet Jumbo, or Suzuki Super Carry (Current Japanese model - 80's/90's Super Carrys were just bigger engines; and the current international Super Carry is something completely unrelated).

 

Bigger problem - the Super Carry only existed since the launch of the DA16T at the earliest, which is 2013. That's fine for Lighthouse, as the EU has a fairly homogenous 10 year import law. But if it wasn't launched till 2015 or later then that's a no. For Canada (15y) you'll have to ask Four Sons Offroad in 2028, and in the US... have you considered an Aussie Yute as an alternative...?

 

[cteno4]

Very sweet! Mine is only a pipe dream really. I dont really NEED it, just would be fun and useful now and then [like transporting sheets of ply!].

 

the big thing with little trucks like these around here is crash protection. We are surrounded by tons of large SUVs that go blasting around in the dc style of “Out of my way! im more important than you are!’, especially the faster the roads. I survived a decade in a 64 vw bug when younger so i probably used up a number of cat lives driving thousands of miles on california highways, having to draft semis closely to go 65mph! But i still miss that old bug.

 

Ive seen a few interesting little prototypes of new small ev pickup trucks that looks to be bringing back the idea of smaller, useful trucks. It’s amazing the large pickup trucks these days seem to ahve smaller and higher beds making them less useful than than a good old toyota or Datsun pickup of the 70s! I had to laugh the first time i was physically next to a cybertruck and realized how high the bed and side walls were to lift anything up and into the bed even with my height. You would throw your back out having to reach out so far to get over the wide sloping sidewall. Even the rear gate is pretty high to lift stuff up to. Seems like it’s going away from the good old usefulness of a small basic pickup. Thats what i love about the keis as they seem to focus on the usefulness 100%.

 

jeff

[EB421]

5 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Very sweet! Mine is only a pipe dream really. I dont really NEED it, just would be fun and useful now and then [like transporting sheets of ply!]...

 

We are surrounded by tons of large SUVs that go blasting around in the dc style of “Out of my way! im more important than you are!’, especially the faster the roads. I survived a decade in a 64 vw bug when younger so i probably used up a number of cat lives...

 

Ive seen a few interesting little prototypes of new small ev pickup trucks that looks to be bringing back the idea of smaller, useful trucks. ... I had to laugh the first time i was physically next to a cybertruck and realized how high the bed and side walls were to lift anything up and into the bed even with my height. ... Thats what i love about the keis as they seem to focus on the usefulness 100%.

 

Road safety is a common refrain I hear about Kei in the USA. Apparently speed limits there are "minimum speed" instead of "maximum speed" like everywhere else. The biggest difference is that here, vehicles have to be safer for the people it hits; not just the ones inside; as you say - I wouldn't want to be hit by a US SUV (whether in a Kei Truck or not); especially the deathtrap that's a Cybertruck. And at 4000kg, the energy used on a Cybertruck(and therefore dirty coal burned) is much more than the energy burned on the 900kg MiEV pickup!

 

Also worth mentioning that my trucks have dual airbag, advanced emissions control and the new one; ABS - which US-importable Kei Trucks will have none of. 😞

 

Vans too - since I'm currently in France, let's shout out the Ami Pro. 45kph max speed, 75km range, no license required (Moped license in the UK) and a fair whack of parcel space.

[cteno4]

Yes most here think speed limit reads speed minimum! DC can be especially bad as it has a big im more important than you attitude and many large expensive SUVs and very large truck [and now cybertrucks] running around. 

 

I am just so shocked thee are no smaller pickups here in the states anymore. Smallest are what we would have called a big pickup when i was a kid. Macho rules over usefulness and economy. I just have to laugh walking thru the parking lots in dc and seeming so many large trucks and as i look at the beds they are so clean and scratch free and most you never see anything in the back on the road. Only contractor trucks in town seem to use the beds at all! Odd status symbols the cybertruck is capping! 

 

The ami looks so cute! It would be a billiard ball here im afraid. We cant keep people near the 25mph speed limit on residential roads with kids and no side walks and that is our slowest area! I actually had a suv come down our street two days ago at 50mph i was stunned, they caught air on the speed bump in front of the park next to us. It all happened so fast and i was so stunned i didnt even have the time to grab a rock to toss even though i could hear and see it coming all the way up the block! Some stupid kid im guessing screwing around.

 

i am hoping some day folks will get saner about transportation here. Not happening any time soon though… i went thru a heavy evaluation of personal needs last spring when we were replacing the Prius v and trying to find the best option. Kia Nero phev luckily worked out, but it was about the only choice that did,

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Cat]

My first car was a used Subaru Brat, very handy little pickup like vehicle!

[cteno4]

Honey, I shrunk the El Camino!

 

jeff

[EB421]

Well this apparently happned. There goes my excuse for not having a Kei Draisine on 1435mm.

 

 

Edited March 1 by EB421

[cteno4]

Very cool. Now i just have to get my buddy in virgina to do this to his so we can go riding the rails!

 

Jeff

[Cat]

4 hours ago, EB421 said:

Well this apparently happned. There goes my excuse for not having a Kei Draisine on 1435mm.

Hmm, Tomytec Bus System application....

[EB421]

57 minutes ago, Cat said:

Hmm, Tomytec Bus System application....

 

I was just thinking "Put a motor in a Kei Truck and put it on the track" honestly.

 

I'd like to do a car layout on one of my HOx-Trak panels mind. Magnorail seems the simplest solution for my needs, or a bicycle-derived knock-off. HO remote control models are a thing though, so the simple system works to give me a generic traffic flow that I can drive through!

[RS18U]

Seeing @Tony Galiani post with his Kei food truck made me remember I had this picture from last November in Miyazaki.  Sorry no other pictures as we were in a vehicle at the time.

[UnfinishedKit]

Neighbour’s Daihatsu Hi-jet, we got passed by another one a  a couple of minutes later  

 

 

 

They are being grey imported into Australia - the rule in Australia is that you can private import anything as long as a brand isn’t importing that model or variant and can be made to pass the same standards as any other new car, in practice not that hard. 
 

Very on brand for the neighbourhood, where the most popular car is probably the Suzuki Jimny. 
 

The Japanese style plates are a nice touch.

[katoftw]

We're seeing heaps in Queensland too.  It's been a missed market segment in Australia for 2 decades.

[beakaboy]

On 2/2/2025 at 10:32 AM, RS18U said:

The company I work for in Canada has had one for some time, now surplus and up for disposition.  Was licensed for the road but stayed close to base.  Very hard for me to fit in it as a driver 😕

I remember driving a yellow version of this in 1980-82 picking up and dropping off motorcycles for a suzuki dealer. One of the mechanics used it too and it was funny to see him driving it stooped over . He was over 6ft tall. Think they had an 800cc motor 

[cteno4]

Wild some can do 100kph. Out of curiosity i looked to see where you can drive them here in Maryland and sadly top road speed limit is 35mph. Does allow most around town driving, but cant get very far out of town, would not be very useful for trains around here. Milage isnt great either at 25 or so mpg. Last issue is they may require emissions test and adjustments here in more urban areas. These probably are not the cleanest burning engines. An ev one would be great but it also has to be a “classic” car so 25+ years old…

 

jeff

[Cat]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

Wild some can do 100kph.

Fun random fact: the maximum road speed of a classic VW Bug is 186mph (300kph).  After that, it becomes aerodynamically unstable and leaves the ground.
 
But Smokey won't be able to catch it til it lands.
: 3
 
https://www.theautopian.com/happy-juneteenth-meet-mr-pitiful-and-his-rocket-turbine-powered-vw-beetle/

[lighthouse]

12 hours ago, Cat said:

Fun random fact: the maximum road speed of a classic VW Bug is 186mph (300kph).  After that, it becomes aerodynamically unstable and leaves the ground.
 
But Smokey won't be able to catch it til it lands.
: 3
 
https://www.theautopian.com/happy-juneteenth-meet-mr-pitiful-and-his-rocket-turbine-powered-vw-beetle/

 

 

That's why Ferdinand Porsche further developed the 911 aerodynamically 😄

[beakaboy]

A mate had a Vw Bug in the 1970's while working at Auckland Airport , NZ. He told me he rolled it on way home one night ,after having too many beers at company party. He managed to crawl out and pushed it over back onto its wheels and drove off. 

[cteno4]

My 64 bug was able to barely do about 65 mph on its own and most freeway traffic was doing more like 70 at night so i use to draft trucks to get up to speed and stay there and not get run over. Bit of a white knuckle ride but great fuel efficiency! Rocket turbine would have been nice but maybe overkill for me.

 

In high school a few of us would pick up one end of a friend’s bug and rotate it sideways into 2 parking spaces and we would park our cars on either side. No way to get it out without moving one of the cars. It was fun messing with her.

 

One time my starter solenoid was getting sticky and after an attempted start it would stick in and stall the car. So you had to put it in third and push it in reverse for a few feet to get it unstuck. It was also 6v so a few attempts at starting and stalling like this it would run out of juice with the whimpy 6v battery in it. Then you just had to push start it. I was working on a project at the time that apple computer was publishing so i had meetings at apple with marketing execs and drove into the executive parking lot with my little 64 vw bug in a sea of very exotic and expensive cars and parked. Went to the meeting in a vp corner office that overlooked the parking lot and noticed how my little sparkly blue bug stood out like a sore thumb in the lot. Meeting ended and i went out and of course starter stuck so i had to push in back trying to get it disengaged and restart down the parking lot. I get to the end and the battery is toast so now i have to try to push jump start it by myself [you can actually do this by yourself with a bug on level ground] all the way back up the lot. After about the 5th attempt it worked and i drove off. Next week the marketing vp was at our offices and said the whole group up in his office was howling watching me try to start this bug up and down the parking lot and betting if i was going to end up running into one of the cars there that cost 100x what the bug did…

 

bugs are fun.

 

jeff

[Anvalo]

Reading this topic brings back happy memories and a smile on my face.

For most part of my life i worked as an electrician at a electrical contractor in the Netherlands.

Our first company car was an Opel Kadett and the first "van" our boss bought was a Daihatsu HiJet.

This picture was taken 40 years ago when the new van was delivered.

The man on the left was our chief electrician and the 1,98 meter tall guy on the right is me (21 years old).

Sometimes it was quite hilarious to see the two off us stepping in and out of this car.

Our chief sadly past away 3 years later so i was handed over the car keys and i drove this little car for a few years until we scaled up to Mitsubishi L300 vans.

It still amazes me how i ever could fit behind the wheel 😀.

 

André

 

Edited March 17 by Anvalo

[cteno4]

Wow, very nice story. Maybe there is hope for me yet, you have 5cm on me! Still a pipe dream for here, but they just look so cute and functional!

 

In grad school at berkeley one of the other grad students about the same size as me had a little LeCar with the rolling fabric roof [incredibly bad design/idea, always leaked]. We would fit in it with the front seats pushed all the way back to the back seats and the backs reclined quite a bit and it still was a tight fit. We definitely looked like the proverbial clowns getting into/out of the clown car. It didn't help it was bright red with a white top and had a horn sound like a squeaky little meep, that just made it too silly.

 

One nice day with the top rolled back one of us said to the other “hey if we pushed the seats up as far as we could bare and moved he seat backs upright i bet our heads would stick out the top of the car!” So we did and this put the top two thirds of our heads sticking out the top of the car and we drove around berkeley like this. Made a lot of people laugh. I suppose we could have sat on a pillow and got our whole heads out the top for an even better effect. It became a thing to do on a nice day for a distraction and make people laugh. 

 

cheers

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

7 hours ago, Anvalo said:

It still amazes me how i ever could fit behind the wheel 😀.

 

André

 

Taller than the truck!

[Cat]

With my Subaru Brat, it definitely helped that it had a moon roof, the cavity in the ceiling made it a more comfortable sit for sure.

[RS18U]

I don't think this is a Kei class vehicle, but it fits in here I think.  7-Eleven delivery, most likely electric, seen in Miyazaki March 2024 with an actual Kei class behind.