Is this the end of the kei car?

Monday, 8 February 2021

OPINION: The fact that we are faced with a fairly stark choice between continuing on like nothing is wrong or acknowledging that our planet is under threat and that we all need to change our ways throws up a number of existential dilemmas, particularly for the avowed petrolhead.

V8s? Yeah, let’s face it – their days are almost certainly numbered. Emission and noise standards are muffling the belligerent roar of a performance car, and massive diesel-powered utes? Well, good luck with that continuing…

And despite embracing the sometimes dismissively-uttered ‘petrolhead’ epithet, I genuinely have to say that none of that particularly bothered me to a great degree. Until now.

Yeah, yeah, I know: cue the howls of horror and outrage that the so-called motoring editor of Stuff is unbothered by the relentless assault on our enjoyment of a bellowing V8, a silky six or a screaming turbo four and their potential extinction at the hands of the bureaucrats and the tree-hugging left…

**READ MORE:

* Toyota's CEO really doesn't like the EV revolution

* Japan looking at banning combustion car sales by 2035

* Tiny cars with big appeal: Mazda's Kei car history

* Mitsubishi eK microcar named RJC Car of the Year in Japan

**

I’m not gonna lie; I do love me a bellowing big V8, a silky inline six or a screaming turbo four as much as the next bloke.

But here’s the thing - what I really like is a good car. One that handles brilliantly, goes like hell and looks good, in that order. I guess there are other things people look for in cars, but that’s my personal list.

Notice what’s not on that list though? What powers it.

That’s because I really don’t care much one way or the other what is powering a car that ticks boxes off my list. As long as it does it well it can be a petrol V8, a diesel six, a tiny triple or a bunch of electric motors.

But out of all the wide options available, the existential threat to one of those power units bothers me the most – specifically, the small triple. More specifically, the 47kW 660cc three-cylinder engines in Japan’s tiny kei cars.

While my personal checklist for what makes a good car consists of handling, power and looks, there is another personal checklist (or blind spot, if you are feeling less charitable) off to one side that consists solely of “small and weird”.

Yeah, I love tiny, weird cars. I have made no secret of that over the many years I have been writing about cars and, of course, Japanese domestic market kei cars border on being an obsession to me.

In case you don’t know, kei cars (short for ‘keijidōsha’ or ‘light automoblie’) are the smallest road-legal passenger cars available in Japan. The kei car category was originally created by the Japanese government in 1949, and while the regulations have been revised several times since, they still specify a maximum vehicle size, engine capacity, and power output to allow owners to enjoy both tax and insurance benefits.

They are insanely popular in Japan, making up about a third of new domestic car sales, and in most rural areas they are also exempted from the requirement to certify that adequate parking is available for the vehicle, making them extremely popular in country regions, almost the exact opposite of where we would expect to see what we would consider to be a tiny ‘city’ car in the western world.

We don’t see a lot of them here because, well, they are small and weird (which I will happily admit is an acquired taste), but their popularity in Japan keeps late model used prices high, meaning that a used import kei costs about the same as a ‘normal’ car of the equivalent age and mileage.

But it’s mainly because they are small and weird…

The current regulations for kei cars set the maximum length at 3.4 metres, the maximum width at 1.48 metres and the maximum height at 2.0 metres (you shouldn’t need a tape measure to tell you that those dimensions make for one tall, skinny car), while the maximum engine size is 660cc and the maximum power is limited to a throbbing 47kW.

But here’s what has me truly alarmed about the admittedly-necessary push for decarbonisation: those tiny, light, fuel efficient kei cars are now under threat as the Japanese government leans on carmakers to go electric as part of its net-zero emissions goal.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged last year to decarbonise Japan by 2050, with plans to ban the sale of new gasoline-only vehicles by the mid-2030s, which has created a dilemma for the makers of kei cars as the added cost of electrification and other technology will make them less affordable for buyers.

In fact, it is estimated that electrification could add around 1 million to 2 million yen (NZ$13,250 to NZ$26,500) to the price tag of a kei car, which would effectively double the price of most of them…

'The kei is Japan's national car,' Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota and chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association told Bloomberg in an interview recently.

'People maybe able to live in cities without keis, but once you're in a rural region, these cars are a necessity,” he said, pointing out that kei cars are common in rural areas where public transport systems are sparse and where around 85 per cent of the roads are only wide enough for two kei cars to pass.

The biggest problem Japan itself faces with the pressure on kei cars is that a price hike would likely put the heaviest burden on people with lower incomes, especially the elderly, as around 40 per cent of kei drivers are 60 or older.

'Kei cars would be meaningless if their prices go up,' Nozomi Hiramatsu, who started her own farm in northeastern Japan four years ago, told Bloomberg. 'The car and its tax are cheap. A kei fits my lifestyle.'

Even if the price of batteries and EV tech comes down drastically – which it eventually will, after all SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile's four-seater hatchback Mini EV is a best-seller in China and one of the cheapest on the market, costing less than NZ$7,000 – it would still likely mean the end for the kei car as we know it. The restrictions on dimensions wouldn’t be necessary (although the narrow Japanese rural roads would still be a factor), meaning the need for endearingly oddball proportions would diminish.

But the loss of the wonderfully characterful snarling, thrashing 660cc three-cylinder engine would hurt me the most…

Look, I’m sorry fellow petrolheads, but I would readily give up V8s and turbo sixes, and joyously throw diesel utes and SUVs under the (electric) bus if it meant my precious kei cars and their wonderful 660cc engines could survive. But that’s just me…