from Hacker News

Why are Japan streets devoid of US cars? It's no mystery, theyre not good enough

by zinekeller on 4/8/25, 1:06 AM with 12 comments

• by ggm on 4/8/25, 1:08 AM

  Good enough or small enough? We have increasing numbers of F150 and similar trucks on our roads in Australia and they are bulked up beyond the lane width and parking bay size. Small US cars don't seem to sell overseas but small european and japanese and korean and chinese cars sell everywhere.

• by NomDePlum on 4/8/25, 3:05 AM

  I worked on a warranty insurance system rewrite.

  There was basically a risk matrix that when simplified meant insurance was cheapest for Asian cars, then European, then US due to reliability and quality differences. The model was based on past insurance payment data.

  It was over a decade ago, maybe things have changed but I always remember questioning if it was that simple, turned out it was.

• by ics on 4/8/25, 3:24 AM

  Do American car manufacturers make right side drive vehicles for any country at scale? (I wonder how many postal vehicles are ordered these days...) Besides size, reliability, etc. that's something that Japanese manufacturers have figured out so they can export anywhere. The last thing I'd want to drive in Japan is a wrong side drive oversized American import...

• by gnabgib on 4/8/25, 1:13 AM

  Article title: (Opinion) The Japan Tariff Myth That Just Won’t Die

• by spwa4 on 4/8/25, 9:31 AM

  This is a similar sentiment you're seeing everywhere. Operating a business, and just living in America, and to a lesser extent Europe, has risen to the level that anything with a market smaller than 100s of millions of dollars isn't worth making a company for.

  Unfortunately there is a genuine need/demand for a lot of these products, just not enough to justify what it would cost to produce them here, or in Europe. Even non-luxury smartphones fall into that category.

  China, and to a lesser extent a number of Asian countries, are doing it anyway. And, I'll give Trump this one: through unfair means. That can mean state subsidies, preferential tax treatment, ... But that's the reason those products exist at all, not the reason they're made in Asia. The only way to fix that is self-defeating.

  You could make Americans (and Europeans) as poor as Chinese/Vietnamese/Bangladeshi. Back to the time where a working-class, even a middle class family has essentially no hope to even afford an apartment without sharing with another family. You know what you can't do? You cannot do that and have people like that buy those products. People will give up games, give up internet, give up tv, ... before they give up housing by themselves, for example, and that goes for everything we buy. The specific comparison doesn't even really matter. If you make people poor, of course, they'll stop buying, at which point there's no point to the economic activity they are now cheap enough to work at: there are no buyers. And we'll lose a lot, like those lives we now have.

  The problem is that this makes essentially all republican-style policies (all supply-side economics) impotent. The problem is not supply. The problem is demand: people have close to the maximum they'll pay for, and increasing production will simply not find buyers.

  Which leaves having the government buy more.

  Of course, on the other side there's problems too, an extreme socialist could ask why Americans and/or Europeans deserve to be richer than Chinese/Vietnamese/Bangladeshi, and make an argument for just burning the world down because then everyone will be equal (someone's "pride" will be restored) ... but sane people will quickly say "no, thanks".

  And, yes, maybe there's countries that like to pretend they have a history of self-sufficiency and think they would fare better in a burned-down world, ie. Russia.