Quote:
Originally Posted by niky
Keis are simply too small to sell outside of Japan. They sell like gangbusters inside because the taxes on anything non-Kei are ridiculous. But absent of any market-distorting taxes, they're not competitive against the global A-Class. We get variants of Japanese Keis here from Toyota and Suzuki, but they rebuild them with bigger bodies and engines to meet market demand.
And it's hurting the Japanese. There are complaints that money spent engineering Kei cars is money wasted, since they can't sell them anywhere outside of Japan.
Japan is now trying to close that gap. They're raising taxes on Kei cars. Methinks they could simply better the situation by making taxes a flat value tax and let the market decide what it wants.
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It would be nice if we could buy Kei cars officially outside Japan... but I doubt it'll ever happen. Shame. I rather like the new Honda N-One. And at $9.7k in Japan, it's not all that expensive.
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Jap automakers could actually sell Keis nearly everywhere they would comply to emission and safety standards, from "developing" countries such as Brazil, India and South Africa to developed countries such as Canada and Germany.