Kei cars are in the news – the European Union is looking at ways to relax its regulations to allow them to be built and sold in the region, while US president Donald Trump has said that he has approved the cars for the US market.
But what are they? Kei is the smallest category of car in Japan, compact cars with a strict footprint designed for urban areas and to lower insurance and running costs for drivers.
They can’t be any longer than 3.4 metres, wider than 1.48 metres or taller than 2.0 metres and have a maximum engine capacity of 660cc, producing around 64hp. They typically have a very upright stance and feature some ingenious packaging measures to increase interior space.
It’s not likely that we’ll see exactly that formula being introduced in Europe though – the lightest class of car in Europe is the quadricycle (think Citroen Ami), which is speed limited and can’t weigh more than 450kg (minus the batteries). In France light quadricycles are restricted to 30mph and can be driven at 14.
Carmakers are lobbying for a new class of vehicle between quadricycles and standard cars that’s been termed the ‘e-car’, and can stand for European, economical, or whatever other e-word you fancy.
In her state of the union speech to the Strasbourg parliament in September, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen mooted the idea of a European version of the kei car as a way to boost the appeal of electric cars by making them cheaper.
“Millions of Europeans want to buy affordable European cars,” she said in her speech. “So we should also invest in small, affordable vehicles. Both for the European market, but also to meet the surge in global demand.”
Stellantis chairman John Elkann said earlier this year that he was pushing for the EU to relax its regulations on small cars to increase their affordability, explaining that the cost of meeting stringent safety standards was the same as actually building a small car.
He said that he was calling for the rules to be changed to allow carmakers to be able to produce small, low range electric cars that were accessible to more people, saying that in 2019 there were 49 models on sale in the EU for under €15,000 versus one now. Cars like Volkswagen's e-Up have been discontinued because of the pressure on already razor thin profit margins on small cars.
This wouldn’t mean making them physically less safe necessarily, but it would mean that cars could be sold without electronic safety equipment that’s now mandatory, like lane keep assist and autonomous braking. Meanwhile, it has emerged that carmakers have also been lobbying for the EU to defer its 2035 ban on combustion engines in new cars.
Of course, the irony of the European Union trying to boost its domestic car industry with the new class is that Chinese manufacturer BYD has said that it’s ready and waiting with models of its own to sell in Europe should the rules be changed.
Honda’s Super N concept was recently revealed at the Tokyo motor show – it’s coming to Europe in 2026 and is based on a platform that Honda uses for its kei cars, but doesn’t meet those standards. It seems like there’s the appetite for smaller, cheaper cars – let’s see what happens...
Would you drive a car like an Ami but with more range? Seems like a no-brainer to us... 
