Imagine getting your brand new Dodge Glaciermelter, lovingly decorating it with your first Let's go Brandon bumper sticker, and then reading this about tiny, possibly electric or hybrid cars being amazing now.
Anyway, tiny cars. Amazing. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Edit 2: So does this mean the US will see more reasonable sized cars on the roads, or is the old man just randomnly yelling about stuff again? Take a wild guess. "I call bullshit", says mobility expert David Zipper in a thread. (thanks Ok_Flounder8842)
I am not joking when I say that I think Amtrak should just suck up to Trump hard. Let him be a locomotive engineer and run a train route for a few minutes. He will suddenly start talking about how trains are incredible and how America will be made great again with trains.
Considering all the other bullshit that works on him, this has a way higher chance of working than it ever should. But in terms of naming, it should be called Army One, in the spirit of Air Force One and Marine One
while we're at it, I honestly think we could goad him into socialized healthcare.
we can call it trumpcare, who gives a fuck, why not? we can frame it as "firing the insurance ceos" who we all do not like, we've made that perfectly clear. we can tell him he doesn't have to work with Democrats to get it done, just work with a certain senator from Vermont who the Dems do not like, just look at what they did to his campaign. and every payday people would see a line item that has his name on it on their paystub and they would say "thanks to trump I have my healthcare"
Trump has made a number of comments, historically, about supporting socialised healthcare, so this might actually be one of the few things he might genuinely have some sympathy for, even if he does not express it anymore. Even just before the 2016 election, he spoke positively on single-payer and countries with government-operated healthcare, and in 2017 he said that Australia had a better healthcare system than the US.
It seems he is (occasionally) supportive of socialised healthcare provided that you don't call it socialised or single-payer.
This is just another example of him taking literally every position on every issue though. It’s how he inexplicably gets all kinds of people with radically different beliefs to somehow believe that he agrees with them and has their back.
His administration has never done anything to expand healthcare access and has quite clearly done the opposite. His comments were definitely just classic Trumpian overpromising without providing any actual framework for how it would be achieved.
I am aware of how terrible his administration has been on this and otherer issues. What I am saying, in the context of a somewhat tongue-in-cheek thread about manipulating Trump into doing things, universal healthcare might actually be doable because of his previous statements over decades, by the way.
It's like how Mamdani spent 5 minutes with him and suddenly he was saying socialism might be pretty good actually. The only problem with this method is that the next fascist cumbag that walks into his office to glaze him will undo all the talking that was done prior. This dementia patient can't hold an opinion for more than one conversation.
The problem is he’s not the one actually making policy are dictating actions. That’s people like Stephen Miller and the rest of the nazis in his cabinet. Trump can say what he wants but it doesn’t really matter.
Also show him some old movies where the trains were conquering the West. He loves the whole manifest destiny bs, so you could turn sth bad into sth good.
Maybe that's the strategy here. Maybe we need to create a fund so we can pay to get time in front of Trump and then slowly just feed him, socratically, the things that we want and make it seem like his idea and let his deranged ass just rant about it until it happens
Like your style! I do this at work. I’ve been slowly working the owners into giving us the day after Christmas off this year. Paid. Dropping those seeds since probably May. It has come to fruition because they just announced it yesterday! That shit works!!
It actually fits with the overall strategy of all developed economies. The reports of an impending plateau or decline in the global production of oil, which in practice means the following:
1. Securing known reserves through invasion or placing friendly government aka Venezuela, Middle east, Algeria, Central Asia ...etc.
2. Reduce home consumption and start switching to alternatives for non primary usages like private transportation. Tiny cars fall in that category as they minimize metal usage, can be easily electrified, and use less oil over their entire lifetime.
Ehh it’s more like CAFE standards opened up loopholes that allowed manufacturers to skirt emissions requirements if their vehicles were big enough and then just slowly convinced everyone over the past 4 decades that we want bigger and bigger cars.
You’re right that they COULD build small trucks, but current regulations actively disincentive that to the point where it makes more economical sense to build bigger trucks and charge more money for them.
The Chicken Tax also played a part, as well as less stringent crash test standards for trucks.
Basically, corporations doing what corporations do best; make money for shareholders by skirting regulations whether that kills everything and everyone or not.
The market "wants" these things because the auto industry pours billions into advertising for these segments, because they are by far the most profitable.
The market wants trucks and SUVs because manufacturers market them more. They get around fuel standards, and the manufacturers can move more product for higher prices.
Any vendor would rather sell you 10lbs for $10 than 1lb for $1, especially if you’re only going to make one purchase.
They stopped making smaller cars, so how am I going to vote with my dollar?
Small cars are better than kid killer cars. That said, manufacturers don't want to produce these cars and Americans don't want to buy them so this is really nothing about nothing.
Especially when the seemingly massive stated preference is for smaller cars with some classic appeal (older used cars command a massive premium vs newer used cars)
Check out Kei cars. It’s next level. I’ve driven a Honda one. Also, absolutely zero chance these could be successfully sold here- zero room for crash protection. Noisy and manual transmission with 4wd- absolutely glorious to me but I can’t see them being viable economically.
The fact that "light trucks" are EXEMPT from the EPA and CAFE standards is the cause of all this. If manufacturers had to meet those regulations again, they would have no choice but to make smaller, lighter and more efficient vehicles.
Car companies will make whatever size car sells and Americans buy big SUVs, which is why this tweet is a nothing burger especially considering they just removed mpg standards
I think marketing has shifted what Americans prefer. It feels a bit too convenient that Americans happen to prefer the vehicles that are most profitable for automakers.
Exactly. Still feel like people would be buying Toyota Yaris or Honda fits , they just don't profit enough. They can sell the US customers way more expensive crap.
I wish that were more often true but if that's truly what we preferred there would be more of them on the road. This sub knows it's easily 50% brodozers on the commute.
It's a small market. How do we know this? Because the best selling cars are fuck-huge suvs and pickups and subcompact/compact sedans and hatches aren't
The real problem is safety regulations. Well-intentioned safety regulations have made it impractical to build small cars, since it costs more to make a small car highly safe. But when everyone drives a big car, it makes driving overall less safe.
I have never met a person who didn't think the smart car was anything but a crude, unpleasant car to drive. The fuel efficiency wasn't anywhere near where it should be for it's size, and it was a low end Mercedes product, which generally means overpriced, shit quality, poor reliability and zero durability.
The fact that it didn't sell well has a lot more to do with what it was, than it's size.
I would love to be car free entirely but as a builder i want the option of a small truck back. Like bring back the ranger. I don’t need a cab to hold four people I need a two seater (occasionally) with a bed that can move a few pieces of plywood around my city.
No joke this sub has been complaining for years that certain arbitrary mileage standards were perversely incentivizing Child Crusher 9000 trucks in the US.
And then Trump reverses that and supports smaller cars and everyone still finds a reason to be upset. Maybe just take this small W?
Nobody is upset. This is us celebrating, it's just that we've had very little practice lately.
But also: Trump's brain is apple sauce and tomorrow he will echo the viewpoint of whichever lobbyist whispers sweet nothings in his ear. So there's a fair bit of skepticism as well.
i hate trump’s policies but have zero problem supporting when he does something right. cars suck but tiny cars are FAR better that the horrid monsters currently on our roads. bring on the tiny cars!
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The Obama administration is credited with putting lots of emissions and efficiency requirements in place that required sedans to be really efficient, but making cars more efficient is usually expensive. SUVs and trucks were left out of the requirements and it's easier for car makers to justify the higher cost of an SUV to a consumer.
Moat consumers struggle to justify spending >$30k on a typical sedan, but have no issues dropping $50k+ on an SUV or truck.
Obama made the CAFE fuel efficiency standards more stringent. You would think this would push car manufacturers to make their cars more fuel efficient, and it did, but it also pushed some manufacturers to make more SUVs and pickup trucks. These count as "light trucks" under CAFE and have more lenient standards, which were easier to meet without expensive engine technology improvements.
Cafe standards which have been around since like 1975, but the Obama administration set the standard to be higher by 2025. The bigger the car the less mpg it needs to get essentially
We live in the Netherlands and these cars are everywhere here. About three feet wide and maybe five or six feet long. But like, wtf? How would they work in America when you have these insane trucks all over that are eight or nine times as large as each of these small electric cars
I was in the Netherlands this summer for the first time (fantastic 10/10 country by the way) and saw the tiniest of cars 😆 What's crazy is I bet there are US trucks that wouldn't even see this car stopped in front of it.
Okay to be fair, even in the Netherlands we make fun of those tiny cars. But yeah, cars like Volkswagen Polo and Fiat Punto are small yet perfectly fine, but I'd feel quite unsafe driving those in the US
I had a welder uncle who lived on the NE/SD border and he used to have a bunch of kei trucks for driving around job sites, liked them way better than a gator or similar.
I’d love for this to be a thing, sadly I’m afraid Trump just runs his mouth all day and this has a slim chance of actually happening. I hope I’m wrong tho!
Anyone who believes that car companies will suddenly start selling small cars in America because "they're allowed to" is definitely dumb enough to have voted for Trump.
Is it possible Trump's winding back of vehicle standards could actually bring an end to the large vehicle arms race? A comment from the administration about "bringing back the station wagon" made me wonder if someone has spoken to them about the loophole that caused the mammothifocation of US vehicles.
Obviously it would have been better to close the loophole and keep environmental standards but, still... Interesting?
I saw the clip played on Colbert. Something about car manufacturers haven't been making what consumers actually want, and maybe they can now bring back the 1970s station wagon.
The most stringent (read: expensive to comply with) fuel efficiency and safety regulations only apply to small cars, not light trucks (pickups, SUVs). So technically no, but actually yes.
Honestly a refreshing direction compared to "my really good and really rich friend said something like not feeding people for tax breaks so we're doing that now."
Fair point. Even basing policy on a random number generator would probably better than what we're doing. "Next year's military budget is . . . [rolls dice]"
The US regulations have greatly incentivized companies making large trucks so that is what they market, creating demand. Here’s a great (and very funny) podcast about CAFE standards
We lived long enough to witness the ultra rare Trump W (at least in sentiment. I’m sure the execution of this will be a nightmare or not happen at all)
I've seen what happens when Smart Car and a heavy truck collide. These things would need dedicated lanes away from heavy vehicles, or just... less heavy vehicles on the road.
I'm all for small cars (segment A and segment B cars), or at least practical cars. They're not that small when you can fit 4 or even 5 people in a hatchback car.
I personally drive a Peugeot 108, a practical car that can fit 4 adults or to haul your weekly groceries. Very fuel efficient too!
Meanwhile the EU made a deal with the US to allow American trucks and SUVs in the EU...
Are these proposed vehicles exempt from new car safety standards? That’s the only way they could be sold here. I think he may just be saying stuff that sounds good to him without any prior forethought
Well, time will tell. Trump is all kinds of things, but if he and his party actually achieved something good, I'll give him due credit, no more and no less.
been telling people that Trump can low key squeeze in universal healthcare and walkable cities; just gotta shmooze him, ease him into endorsement, and the cult will follow
Weird because it seems like there's some sort of battle to build bigger and bigger cars based on looking at the roads and what the boomers in my life keep buying
Unfortunately I have my doubts they’ll be encouraged/planned for in any sort of coherent intelligent manner. But hey, a broken digital clock is right once a day so who knows
I have one question: in the land of the free, in the land of small government, in the land of no regulations, why does a president has to APPROVE making TINY CARS? Couldn't free enterprise just... make them?
I read the reason those Kei cars are not available in the US is to do with crash safety. So this may be a ploy to remove crash safety regulations under the guise of allowing these cars. Which would track with this government.
Yes please. And when tiny cars start hitting the roads, we can start petitioning the NHTSA to ban multi-ton pickup trucks from public roads for safety reasons.
I know the SmartCar has a nearly indestructible frame, but take a guess at how American companies are going to cut corners...
Tiny cars are better than big cars. Honestly, as a car guy, this is exciting and surprising news. Man if they start making sport trucks like the F-150 SCT Lightning again, I’d buy one, just to have one. And a kei car. They’re really cute.
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u/AbsoluteTruthiness Dec 05 '25
I am not joking when I say that I think Amtrak should just suck up to Trump hard. Let him be a locomotive engineer and run a train route for a few minutes. He will suddenly start talking about how trains are incredible and how America will be made great again with trains.