Toyota is bringing a real Japanese kei truck to America — and building it in Indiana. At simultaneous events in Michigan and Texas on Monday, Toyota Motor North America relaunched its Scion brand as “Scion by Toyota,” a self-described “freedom lab” for experimental vehicles, and unveiled its first product: the KEI-01, an ultra-compact utility truck that arrives in the second half of 2027.
The truck
The KEI-01 is the genuine article, not a styling exercise. It comes standard with a 660cc three-cylinder engine, a continuously variable transmission, and selectable four-wheel drive with an auto mode and a push-button lock for mud and snow. It measures just over 11 feet long and under 5 feet wide — roughly four feet shorter than a Corolla — with a three-way fold-down cargo bed, a payload of up to 600 pounds, and the structural rigidity to tow small trailers. The extended cab has a raised roofline, reclining and sliding seats, storage behind the seats, and heat and air conditioning. Underneath, it is built from Daihatsu Hijet components shipped from Japan — the same underpinnings as Toyota’s Japanese-market Pixis Truck, pictured above — assembled at Toyota’s Indiana plant with a $34 million investment and about 50 new jobs.
The catch: 25 miles per hour
There is one big asterisk. The KEI-01 is right-hand drive, and it is designed to comply with FMVSS No. 500, the federal standard for low-speed vehicles. Its top speed is 25 mph. That classification is what makes the truck possible at all — it lets Toyota sell a kei truck without engineering it to full passenger-car crash standards — but it also defines who the truck is for. This is not a highway vehicle. It is a workhorse for places where 25 mph is plenty: farms and ranches, municipalities, universities, corporate campuses, urban delivery routes, and small businesses that need to haul things around a site, not across a state. Where an LSV may legally drive on public roads still varies by state and by road.
Why now
The politics lined up first. Reuters notes that President Trump encouraged exactly this move — he has praised Japan’s tiny kei cars and said he wanted them built in America. Kei vehicles are no niche in Japan: about a third of the 3.7 million new cars sold there last year were kei-class. Building the KEI-01 in Indiana also sidesteps the 25 percent “chicken tax” on imported light trucks that has kept foreign small pickups out of the U.S. for decades. Toyota is handling the revived brand the same way it is handling the truck — as an experiment. The KEI-01 was shown alongside two concepts, the off-road SxS and the personal-mobility BKE, and Toyota’s design chief Simon Humphries pitched Scion by Toyota as a place to “challenge conventional thinking.”
Who can buy one — and what it will cost
At first, not you — unless you run a fleet. Toyota calls the KEI-01 an intentionally low-volume, niche vehicle and will sell it first through a fleet-focused pilot program at a small network of Scion by Toyota dealers chosen from existing Toyota dealers. Limited retail sales may follow, Toyota says, depending on demand and how the pilot goes. Toyota has not announced a price. Car and Driver estimates about $28,000, and that estimate is already the argument: the KEI-01’s Japanese sibling starts at roughly $9,000 at home, and used imported kei trucks — the 25-year-old ones enthusiasts bring in today — often cost less than the estimate, without the speed limiter. Whether fleets pay new-truck money for Toyota reliability, a warranty, and dealer support is the question the pilot is designed to answer.
Either way, something real has changed. For forty years the kei truck was the vehicle America admired from afar and could not buy new. Starting late next year, one will roll off an assembly line in Indiana with a Scion badge on it — slowly, at 25 miles per hour, but rolling.
Sources: Toyota USA Newsroom, “Toyota Says ‘Okei’ to America” (November 10, 2026); Reuters, “Toyota to bring mini trucks to US market” (November 10, 2026); The Drive; Car and Driver (price estimate).
Photo: The Toyota Pixis Truck, the KEI-01’s Japanese-market sibling. Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
