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It's useful in the same context a gator or kubota UTV are with the benefit of being road legal where the others aren't. Hopefully it's easy to flash the firmware though and that can just be stripped out entirely.

"Limited" to 25mph, I think they meant.

That all depends on how easy it is to reflash the ECU with a governor-delete version of the firmware.

Hello Claude and REA

Doubt you'd need to go that far. You probably just have to do a Button Dance while turning the ignition on to put it into a config mode.

It'll be like the 25mph mopeds, unplug a wire.

At worst it'll be a checkbox in the software.

Wheel speed sensors are a bit more important on cars, ABS for one relies on them.

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You can literally import a 55mph version of this exact same vehicle from Japan

The governor purely exists for US legal reasons

It is one of the issue with the Kei truck design, it's so stubby on the front there's not really room for much of a crumple zone on them, this new one looks like it has a little more room but one of the legal reasons you reference are crash safety standards. The version you can import now are importable because there's a cutout for imports of cars over a certain age, I think it's 25 years old, that allows them to come in without complying with crash testing rating testing and a lot of other things.

Meanwhile I can buy a brand new Harley and ride it legally with no safety gear on, or in some places, drive a farm tractor on a public road. Laws are kind of arbitrary, IMO let these be legal under some kind of farm or utility vehicle rule that allows adults to drive and ride in them on streets up to 45mph.

Motorcycles are more a rule where we know they're unsafe but everyone riding one also knows that and takes the risk, there's not a similar broad carveout for cars/trucks until you get into the older vehicle imports I mentioned. Tractors are quite safe for the drivers and are allowed on roads because it's necessary to feed the country. Making broader cutouts just gives big holes for car companies to cut corners through the way SUVs mostly exist because they worm their way into light truck exemptions for certain rules.

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.