From a US perspective I guess. Here in NZ, the 2011 Ford Ranger was already amongst the largest and tallest vehicles on the road (excluding actual trucks and buses of course).
The Toyota eCVT is an engineering marvel[1].
The hybrid power train is simpler than a regular transmission and made of more durable parts.
The clutch itself might not have to disappear for more fine grained power delivery, the new Ferrari clutch-by-wire is a similar bit of a few hall sensors talking to the ECU.
You can build a simulacrum of a manual low-mode transmission without needing to use it constantly in stop-go traffic or while sliding backwards on loose dirt.
I don't think it's possible to deliver a Toyota hybrid system or Ferarri-style drive-by-wire clutch at that price point. Although maybe in the future we could see EV kei trucks at a comparable price.
Personally I think it's worth spending slightly more for a manual transmission - although some of my buddies laughed at me for buying an automatic kei truck (my license doesn't actually permit me to drive a manual on public roads). I think at this point though automatic transmission sales probably exceed manual transmission sales.
[1] https://www.daihatsu.co.jp/lineup/truck/02_grade.htm?item=6
So while I'm not sure about the origin of manual vs automatic licenses specifically, it's not really surprising in the broader context of Japan's strict stance on driving.
In practice it means if you want to drive manual, you need to take the driving test in a manual. But seeing as how only 13% of foreigners pass Japan's practical driving test on the first attempt, and I hadn't driven manual in years, I wasn't looking to make things any more difficult for myself.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-road-incident...
Deaths per X km driven would be a more useful statistics. Japan has such a well functioning public transport system which just leads to people driving less.
Road fatalities per 10,000 registered vehicles were also higher in the US, at 0.4 in Japan vs 1.3 in the US.
Japan does have a significantly larger share of deaths coming from pedestrians (36%) and cyclists (15%) vs the us (18.2% vs 2.9%, respectively) - which is one of the challenges of driving in Japan. You constantly have to be on the lookout for pedestrians and cyclists coming from any direction, often on narrower streets with obstructed visibility.
[1] https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/united-states-r...
[2] https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/japan-road-safe...
Even worse was when I lived in the countryside and I'd try to go for walks down the road and motorbikes absolutely maxing out would rocket past me not giving a shit about who or what was on the road. Kinda funny looking back how the most dangerous place I lived was the Japanese countryside
Bonus points: near the end of the walk there was a two-lane road that I had to walk half a km to get to the nearest crossing for, and then half a km back. Bonus points for the one car dealership in front of my destination that was only fenced off on the back side just to spite me (or, more likely, they don't want people using it as a pedestrian cut-through). The road blocking my path was constantly jammed with cars. Somehow, Nagano invented the one-lane stroad! Also, Google Maps doesn't have a good understanding of crosswalk locations, because there was a closer one on the other side that you can't really see on foot at night.
[0] I am trying to go to as many Round1s as possible to get a title in Music Diver for playing the game in a bunch of prefectures. The game gets EOS'd at the end of the month (but only in Japan, which is unheard of). Round1 likes building giant locations in the middle of nowhere with terrible transit access. I think the one in Nagoya even had a shuttle bus from the train station - which I didn't use, lol.
If you took the automatic-only test, and have an automatic-only license, you can take an additional 7 hours of lessons to remove the automatic-only restriction from your license.
It does indeed make sense, since manual requires more skill, and attempting to drive a manual on the street without knowing how could be dangerous.
Funnily enough you can visit europe, and drive here on a canadian/US license, without ever having driven a manual.
Or you’re launching towards a wall, or, worse, pedestrians, by accidentally dropping the clutch due to poor feathering control.
The US does have separate license endorsements for manual in commercial trucks.
For 80hp Suzuki Baleno and 110hp Yaris, CVT had $1200 premium, for 120hp Hyundai Verna, 6 sped TC had $1200 premium.
For dirt-simple, low-fi reliability a manual transmission is still the guy for the job. I generally buy older cars and I almost never buy a car over 150k miles unless is has an manual.
They require two generators, but they also don't require a starter motor or an alternator. Meanwhile a non-plugin hybrid only needs around 2 kWh worth of battery, which has gotten so cheap you might prefer that to a clutch replacement.
Conduit and pipe tend to come in 10 ft lengths, which only hang out the back of an 8 ft bed a little, but are a real touch-and-go experience with shorter beds.
If a manufacturer doesn't offer an 8 ft bed, what they're selling probably isn't a work truck.
10 ft pipes I can put through the rear window... would be nice if some short-bed trucks came with bed access like the Chevy Avalanche.
It does, but it's never really made sense for my use. I use the bed frequently, but like 95% of the time I don't need the tailgate down, and for the times I do, I keep some ratchet straps in the back seat.
I used the bed extender a lot, though. Moving furniture, beds, a moped, you name it.
Tonneau covers also slightly help with drag, offering slightly better mileage for fuel
The type of customer looking for a practical cheap truck won't take kindly to a bunch of silhouette photos and a brand nobody's ever heard of. For the subset who have a good mental radar for AI slop, this whole website just looks like a scam.
Not saying it's impossible, because I very much want this to be a thing, but if Fisker couldn't pull it off with much more funding, I'm not going to bite until I see a real vehicle and some actual adults backing the thing.
There are no unsolved problems here. If you find one, you can take apart a Frontier, Tacoma, or Colorado from before 2005 and check how it was done then.
Yeah, it’s a safe bet.
EV's are different, the power trains there are something a 10yr old can understand. But even in EV land, Tesla spent quite a few years learning things Toyota and GM and the likes had learned half a century earlier about how cars work in the real world. Why the roll the dice at $25k for a conventional vehicle from a no name brand?
If I'm just missing the USP feel free to tell me I'm a dummy.
EVs don't make sense for trucks, especially trucks that will do actual work. I love my Tesla, but I know what it's meant for, and work ain't it.
Hell, throw in a split shift from a big rig.
Now you just need to move to Thailand. =(
https://www.nyetoyota.com/a-new-affordable-pickup-truck-is-j...
The REO Trucks might fill this niche, if they turn out not to be vaporware.
Can you lay a 4x8-foot sheet of plywood flat on the bed?
If you'll recall, around 2001 Nissan used to sell exactly what you and I both want: a light duty small pickup marketed in the US as the Frontier. That was the D22 model truck, which in NA eventually morphed into the larger (and arguably less capable due to bloat) Navara only years later. Most Americans forgot all about the D22 Frontier.
The rest of the world still has it, usually called the NP300 Hardbody. 2 or 4 seats, 4WD optional, crank windows, manual, basic as can be, and, to quote a guy I know that has one, "an absolute donkey." Across Africa, it's the work truck for the guys that show up to fix things and do work. Foreigners show up in a giant Toyota Land Cruiser. IIRC, It's being phased out in some markets, but it's ubiquitous as the truck that does work. It was the replacement in Southern Africa for the Nissan Champ, a tiny little pickup that didn't change design for 20 years.
Since the older NP300s are still on the road (Frankensteined together), they would be coming up on being importable under the 25+ year classic car exemption. That's about your only option to get a capable light-duty pickup in the US - import Africa's aged cars.
Or wait for this electric Slate pickup.
If that actually ships, it might be useful. It's also road speed capable. It's being marketed as a lifestyle accessory, not a work truck.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a73296422/2027-slate-ev...
The Slate pickup can be configured differently and has uses beyond that, I'm sure Slate did market research to arrive at the compromises it did, but it's a legitimate point for some.
Best as I can tell, the lackluster NP200, which looks like a Champ without the character, the Mahindra pickup, and the small Ford Ranger pickup, are filling the gap. Might not be the worst thing - the Nissan NP300 bakkies are apparently terrible for accidents. Still, not everything has to look like a Hilux!
REO[1] is supposedly coming out with a basic manual truck.
Slate is another option, but in the prototype videos I've seen it looks like it has about a 4' bed. That's too small for a utility pickup truck.
I own the same Ranger and my employer has a Maverick. They're functionally interchangable. Yeah the bed is theoretically shorter but they make it up in depth and IIRC it's wider. The stupid tailgate trick is fine for sheet goods and lumber. Stand them on edge if they're too heavy for that.
Modern automatics are "good enough"
I know all the ignorant fanboys are gonna screech about body on frame because they're idiots, but there's really no reason for a vehicle this light to need to be this light when you've got Sprinter vans and Toyota Highlanders (to pick two models specifically chosen to appeal to their brand of ignorance) rolling around just fine.
Idiot here o/. One very good reason to prefer a frame vehicle for a truck, besides the obvious (ruggedness, corrosion resistance, etc) is that you can more easily swap in components from heavier duty vehicles. It's not that big a project to put a real truck transmission (e.g. Eaton 9spd) in my 1998 Dodge. It would be a huge project to do it in a modern unibody vehicle. Light duty automotive transmissions do not hold up under the kinds of loads trucks put on them when they're actually being used at capacity.
Also it would be lunacy to attempt heavy towing or snow plowing without a frame.
If you just need a rolling box to move light loads of lumber around, towing a utility trailer behind your car is probably a better option than a unibody pickup truck. If you actually need a truck, I can't imagine why you'd want one without a frame.
>Light duty automotive transmissions do not hold up under the kinds of loads trucks put on them when they're actually being used at capacity.
It's not 1995. They're fine. They'll wear out sooner but they're fine. 200k instead of 300k. By virtue of being able to handle lead footed stoplight to stoplight driving the transmission, cooling, etc, etc, is in pretty good shape to handle the sizes and speeds of things you'd want to tow with a Maverick. Nobody is hammering down in a Maverick towing god knows how much up a grade or plowing so it really doesn't matter. Towing loads on the body are essentially a non-issue since every modern hitch is engineered well enough to spread the load enough the vehicle can handle it.
As far as suspension goes they handle ~2k in the bed just fine (done it) so there's some implied capacity for tongue weight there even if it's not 1:1. I can't speak to the Hyundai Santa Cruz.
> It's not that big a project to put a real truck transmission (e.g. Eaton 9spd) in my 1998 Dodge.
It would be the exact same sized project in a unibody vehicle that used a longitudinal transmission. But you wouldn't have the easy button of just doing a body lift to make things fit, you'd actually need to dick with the tunnel and firewall and whatnot to do it the right way.
Regardless, that's not a use case the OEM needs to support.
>If you just need a rolling box to move light loads of lumber around, towing a utility trailer behind your car is probably a better option than a unibody pickup truck. If you actually need a truck, I can't imagine why you'd want one without a frame.
A utility trailer works fine if you don't actually need to do anything on short notice. You never have them when you need them. Backing them into dumb spaces can be a pain. The threshold at which things need to be tied down is lower. It's just not as elegant of a solution as a pickup box.
At worst it'll be a checkbox in the software.
The governor purely exists for US legal reasons
I'd love to have something like an uncapped Kei truck available new but I'm also really reticent to just open up crash safety requirements for cars because it'll get used for a lot more than just the Kei trucks.
They aren't comfortable to drive at all (although just having A/C at all on a hot summer day in the field is a godsend), and I wouldn't want to do longer trips in one - although you certainly could in a pinch.
It seems like Toyota/Scion is just testing the waters here, and I'm not sure how successful they'll be. But I hope there is a future for kei trucks in the US.