25-MPH Kei Truck Revives Toyota's Scion Brand in Indiana

Toyota is bringing back the Scion nameplate, and the first vehicle under the revived badge is not a hatchback aimed at twentysomethings but a 25-mph, Japanese-style kei truck built in Indiana, according to The Verge.

The automaker is positioning the relaunched brand, marketed as "Scion by Toyota," as an experimental mobility incubator rather than a conventional product line, The Verge reported Nov. 11. The decision puts a shuttered badge — one Toyota discontinued in 2016 — behind a vehicle category that barely existed in the mainstream American market a decade ago.

What is Scion by Toyota, and why is it coming back?

Scion originally launched to sell compact, youth-oriented cars before Toyota folded the brand in 2016. The revived version has a different job: testing small, utilitarian vehicles that do not fit neatly into Toyota's core lineup, per The Verge's reporting. The kei truck is the first product under that mandate, and the brand name appears chosen to signal a younger, more experimental buyer than the fleet operators who are the truck's likely first customers.

What is the truck, and where is it built?

The vehicle is engineered in the style of a Japanese kei truck — the boxy, narrow-bodied trucks built to satisfy Japan's light-vehicle regulations — but assembled in Indiana for the American market, The Verge reported. Toyota capped the truck's top speed at 25 mph, a limit that keeps it classified as a low-speed vehicle under U.S. rules rather than a full highway-rated truck. That classification is standard for low-speed fleet and campus vehicles, and it shapes where the truck can legally operate.

How popular are kei trucks already in the US?

Toyota is not creating demand from nothing. More than 30,000 used kei trucks have been imported into the United States since 2020, with roughly 7,500 units entering the country annually, according to The Verge. That volume has built up largely through gray-market imports of older Japanese trucks, not domestic manufacturing — which is the gap Toyota's Indiana-built version is aimed at filling.

"More than 30,000 used kei trucks have been imported into the US since 2020, with roughly 7,500 units entering the country each year."

By the numbers

• 30,000+ — used kei trucks imported into the U.S. since 2020
• 7,500 — kei trucks entering the U.S. annually, on average
• 25 mph — top speed of Toyota's new Scion-badged truck
• 2016 — the year Toyota discontinued the original Scion brand

Has the kei-truck trend reached Washington?

It has reached the White House. President Trump told reporters last year that he had directed the Department of Transportation to approve kei truck production, The Verge reported, a sign that federal regulators have been paying attention to the category's growth even before Toyota's entry. Toyota's move effectively tests whether a major automaker, backed by domestic assembly and full warranty support, can out-compete the secondhand import market that built kei-truck demand in the first place.

Why discontinue Scion in 2016 only to revive it now?

The Verge's reporting frames the original Scion shutdown and the current relaunch as two different bets on the same question: how to reach buyers Toyota's main lineup does not serve. The first Scion chased younger car buyers with distinct styling and simplified trim options. The new version chases a different audience — fleet operators, campuses, and small-scale commercial users who want a low-speed, low-cost utility vehicle — while betting the Scion name still carries enough brand recognition to stand apart from Toyota's core truck lineup, which includes the Tacoma and Tundra.

What happens next for the Scion kei truck?

Toyota has not detailed pricing, release timing, or broader rollout plans beyond the Indiana-built truck, based on available reporting. The bigger test is market reaction: whether buyers who have spent several years importing used Japanese kei trucks will instead choose a new, domestically produced, Toyota-backed alternative. The Verge's original report is the primary source for the vehicle's specifications and the brand's repositioning, and further detail on pricing or availability will likely surface as Toyota moves toward a public launch.