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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
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.
