Campers are lined up in neat rows in the parking lot of the Kawasaki horse racing track, just outside Tokyo. Flags with the names of car dealers from all over Japan fly above the vehicles. Visitors shuffle through the busy grounds and talk to salespeople about folding beds and pull-out kitchenettes. The size of the vehicles is striking: the majority of the campers are smaller than an average European passenger car.
„Puchi Kyan,” says Kiminari Kitagawara, pointing to the flag above his stand, “is an abbreviation of the Japanese words for small camper.” Car mechanic Kitagawara is the owner of Car Shop Assist, a garage company that, among other things, builds campers. “We use this name especially for our line of mini campers.”
He walks to a converted Suzuki Every, a compact two-seater van that is especially popular in Japan with parcel deliverers and small entrepreneurs because of its surprisingly large loading space. “We use this type as a basis boulder-cars.”
Anyone who has ever been to Japan will immediately recognize them: ultra-compact vans, tiny city cars and angular vans that squeeze through narrow residential streets and park in places where normally only a scooter would fit.
These kei cars, short for keijidōshaliterally ‘light vehicle’, are typically Japanese mini cars with engines of up to 660 cc, where ‘cc’ stands for cubic centimeter, a measure of engine capacity. In this case it is about half of an average European city car. There are also strict rules regarding size, a kei car may be a maximum of 3.4 meters long and 1.48 meters wide.
Golf cart
Because they are so compact, the vehicles almost look like toys to foreign visitors, slightly larger than a golf cart, but with a roof and doors. In Japan, these dimensions are quite favorable: the cars maneuver effortlessly through the narrow streets and tight parking spaces of densely built-up cities. There are now almost 32 million kei cars driving around in the country, accounting for approximately 40 percent of the market. Here they are as commonplace as bicycles in the Netherlands.
And interest in these compact cars is now also growing outside Japan. During a visit to Japan, President Donald Trump expressed online admiration for the kei car and said he wanted to produce similar models in the United States.
The call for smaller and affordable cars is also becoming louder in Europe, partly because car models have become increasingly larger in recent years. Organizations such as the Scientific Institute for Road Safety Research have been warning for some time that these are increasingly unsuitable for the limited space of European cities.
A handful of car manufacturers, such as Stellantis, based in Amsterdam, are now lobbying for a European variant of the kei car. With some success: committee chairman Ursula von der Leyen advocated more compact vehicles in cities last year, and the European Commission is working on new regulations for a comparable vehicle category.
“We don’t make our cars big and overdone,” says car mechanic Kitagawara, pointing out all the extras he has installed in the mini-camper. A built-in tap with a water bowl for a dog, next to it an air conditioner the size of a beer crate, aimed at the sofa that folds out into a bed. And an extra luggage rack is mounted on the roof.
A ‘unique category’
“Kei cars are designed to do as much as possible in as little space as possible. And within the limitations, the Japanese are remarkably creative,” says Yoshio Minegishi, policy officer at trade association Zenkeijikyo. “They are not only used as a mini camper, but also as a family car or delivery vehicle, as a mobile supermarket, food stall and even as a healthcare vehicle.” These are specially adapted cars that transport less mobile elderly people or wheelchair users.
According to Minegishi, this multifunctionality is closely related to the affordability of the vehicles. “Most users have a household income of less than 4 million yen per year.” That is less than 22,000 euros, about a quarter lower than the national average. “Such a car must not only be cheap, but, despite its compact size, it must also be useful for everything in daily life, from picking up children to going shopping.” Minegishi also drives a kei car for the same reason.
More than seven in ten Japanese households own a passenger car, considerably less than in the Netherlands according to the Knowledge Institute for Mobility Policy on average each household owns one car. A regular new passenger car, comparable to a European car, costs an average of approximately 3.31 million yen in Japan, the equivalent of almost 18,000 euros. A new kei car is available from around 1.8 million yen, less than 10,000 euros.
“So they are practical and affordable,” explains Minegishi. “That has stimulated sales enormously all these years.” 1.69 million were sold in 2025.
In the Kawasaki parking lot, Kitagawara agrees that affordability is the main reason he builds these mini campers. “This model only costs 3.5 million yen,” he says, tapping his hand on the roof of the little Suzuki – the equivalent of about 19,000 euros. “You can easily pay 10 million yen for a regular camper [55.000 euro]almost triple.”
Increasingly safer, increasingly convenient
The kei vehicles are a legacy of the post-World War II reconstruction, when Japanese factories were forced to switch from producing weapons to mopeds and small cars after the dissolution of the army.
To encourage this transition, Japan’s Ministry of Transport created the “light vehicle” category in 1949. Simple to make cars with a maximum of 100 to 150cc engine capacity, comparable to a light motorcycle. The government hoped to make transport affordable in the poor post-war country, where a normal car was still far too expensive for most families.
But the first kei vehicles hardly caught on. They were small two- or three-wheelers that were not much more powerful than a moped, with a small loading platform or a roof on top. They couldn’t fit more than one or two people, and they were too unstable to carry large things.
“It was only in the 1950s that the first four-wheeled models appeared,” says Minegishi of the trade association. “Then the engine limit was increased to 360cc and automakers could get started with kei cars that were easy to use.”
The breakthrough came in 1958 with the Subaru 360, a small, bulbous mini-car with round headlights, roughly three-quarters the size of a modern Volkswagen Golf. It became extremely popular: for many Japanese families it was their first affordable car. In the years that followed, one model after another rolled off the production lines.
Sales temporarily slumped after the special kei driving license, which was fairly easy to obtain, was abolished in 1968 and stricter car inspections were gradually introduced. But a revival followed in the 1980s with models such as the Suzuki Alto and Daihatsu Mira: angular mini cars with thin tires, sliding windows and simple interiors, especially popular with small entrepreneurs. Most models were only sold in Japan, as they were specially designed according to Japanese kei rules.
When the Japanese economy entered a recession at the end of the century, kei cars became even more popular: the small engines were economical and cheap to run compared to those of regular cars. “The interesting thing is that there are even sports models within this category,” says analyst Masahiro Akita of Bernstein Group. “Due to the low economic growth in the 1990s, the disposable income per household remained limited. This has kept the demand for these smaller cars stable.”
In addition, safety also improved significantly. In 2012, Daihatsu was the first to introduce an automatic emergency braking system that can intervene if a collision threatens. “Then the safety systems followed each other in rapid succession and became increasingly better,” says policy officer Minegishi. “That also boosted the image of the cars. While cars in many countries were becoming increasingly larger, Japan continued to focus on small.”
The Japanese government has explicitly linked car taxes to emissions and fuel consumption since 2001. Older and more polluting cars have since been taxed extra, while economical models receive tax benefits. Since 2015, these rules also apply to kei cars, which are characterized by the Ministry of the Environment as a ‘relatively’ climate-friendly option due to their efficient engines.
“For a normal car you easily pay 50,000 yen in annual vehicle tax. For a kei car that is only 10,800 yen,” says car mechanic Kitagawara – about 270 euros and 60 euros respectively. Purchase tax and other levies are also considerably lower.
Switch to electric
Yet the transition to electric kei cars, which have no emissions on the road, is proving difficult. “For years, our car manufacturers mainly invested in hybrid technology and became world leaders in it,” says analyst Akita. This limited the push to go all-electric, not just for kei cars, but across the Japanese auto industry.
Now that the global demand for electric cars is growing, brands such as Nissan, Honda and Toyota are mainly marketing electric models. But within Japan, sales continue to disappoint and many manufacturers are making losses on their electric segment.
“The price is the biggest problem,” says policy officer Minegishi. The Nissan Sakura, Japan’s most popular electric kei car, costs about 2.6 million yen, about 14,000 euros. That is almost half more than the average sales price of a kei car. About ten thousand were sold in 2025. For comparison: almost 200,000 units of the popular Honda N-Box, with a petrol engine, were purchased. At the same time, affordable electric cars are increasingly coming from Chinese companies such as BYD, which is now also active in Japan.
Nevertheless, analyst Akita sees opportunities for Japanese electric kei cars. “Because they are more compact than regular passenger cars, they require smaller and therefore cheaper batteries.” He expects the technology to develop rapidly and the market to grow further. “Several manufacturers have recently announced new models.”
And what has long been seen as a typically Japanese solution for affordability and dense cities is now also attracting attention in Europe. The European Union is working on new rules for smaller and cheaper electric city cars, inspired by the Japanese kei car. The new M1E category is still under development, but car manufacturer Stellantis has already announced that it wants to launch a new line of cars that fit within those rules from 2028. According to the plans, the vehicles may be a maximum of 4.2 meters in length and must be built in Europe.
However, according to policy officer Minegishi, Europe is in danger of encountering the same problems as Japan. “If affordability is the goal, going fully electric immediately may not be the most practical solution.”
Auto mechanic Kitagawara agrees. He sees that attention in Japan for electric driving is increasing. There is also an electric version of the Suzuki Every that he leans against. But it costs almost as much as his converted camper, including all the extras. “Our customers use our kei cars not only for camping, but also for work and shopping.” According to Kitagawara, the combination of price and ease of use therefore remains the most important for customers. “The reality is that I still mainly sell petrol cars.”