It’s a strange inversion of safety regulation.

The most intelligent vehicle designs are prohibited from being sold in America.

…the state is targeting vehicles that do not meet FMVSS, with a focus on vehicles the state identifies to be in the Kei class. The RMV identifies a Kei vehicle through the above list and through a short VIN. The state’s logic is that this will be for safety since a Kei vehicle is not built to FMVSS.

I’m sure you can see the problem here. Not only does the above list include vehicles outside of the Kei class, but the state doesn’t seem to be aware that short VINs are not limited to Kei vehicles. A large Nissan Civilian bus will have a short VIN, as would a Toyota Century. I asked Natasha about how the state will interpret short VINs and she told me that they will be applied only to vehicles believed to be in the Kei class with a short VIN. The state is not looking to deny registration to vehicles imported from other countries, either. So, you could import a Japanese car that was sold in Europe and the state wouldn’t care. But that same car from Japan would be a problem.

Notably, the states are given authority to ban cars, which they do based on claims to be following a federal safety rule. See the clever problem? States say they are following feds, while the feds say it’s up to the states. In fact, Americans want small cars but the big brands hate the low margins of affordability, and corrupt the system.

And so, actual inexpensive yet safe cars good for everyone with a history of low or no harms somehow end up banned by states on a false pretense feds don’t want them on roads. Political and big corporate nonsense prevents sane engineering safety from being deployed to improve quality of American life.

There’s also an important trivia point here, that regulators try to enforce a 25 mph rule on small cars without cause. That’s because the low speed is a relic of the American car brands creating a stupid 1990s loophole in low-emission laws.

They tried to argue that electric golf carts should count as full cars in their “low emissions” fleet, and then put a 25 mph cap into law to restrict use of their cars as an actual car. Count it as a car for environmental credit but don’t count it as a car for high margin pollution sales.

Tesla actually slid into this kind of loophole by replacing the contrived golf cart strategy with bogus “credits” instead, and going to the opposite extreme.

Unnecessarily fast and wasteful electric engines (powered by diesel and coal plants) were paid for by selling huge amounts of “clean” credits to companies like Stellantis, that soaked them up to fraudulently excuse production of gas guzzling monsters, all in a flagrant (conspiratorial) disregard for the environment.

The worst of both worlds became the American standard. All of this political BS comes down to the best cars being banned, while the worst cars get funded by taxpayers.

Now a predictably dangerous Tesla Cybertruck, riddled with basic safety design flaws and tragedy after tragedy, isn’t even being considered for a formal ban. It’s strange to watch because it’s the worst vehicle in history, a sore thumb on roads and most deserving of a full ban for very obvious reasons.

If we were talking about diet in America it would be like eating fresh organic vegetables banned for being “too dirty”, while giant corporations are funded by taxpayers to sell cancer-causing lumps of coal as fast food.