New cars could be limited to travelling at a maximum of 73mph under plans being considered by one of the world's leading motor manufacturers. The move would be an alternative to EU legislation which says "super-expensiive" equipment must be fitted to improve road safety.
Now Fiat CEO Olivier Francois has said he would "happily" limit the top speed of some of the firm's range of vehicles. He says if cars like the Fiat 500, Panda and Grande Panda had the limiter fitted, it would be a more cost-effective solution than the other hardware which the rules insist on.
At present, European laws say Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) technology must be fitted to all motor vehicles. These are aimed to improve road safety and include lane departure warning/correction, automated emergency braking, traffic sign recognition and pedestrian detection/avoidance.
It is part of the EU’s General Safety Regulation which aims to reduce deaths and serious injuries on the roads. It is hoped it will stop 140,000 serious accidents by 2038, along with saving more than 25,000 lives.
However Olivier Francois has asked if the technology is really needed on smaller, city cars which are usually driven more slowly. He says: "We fundamentally think that with all these rules, the most unsustainable portion lies in the city cars and urban driving, because all these cars are small, democratic and inexpensive, bought by younger people and so on for the daily commute in a city.
"They are driven at way slower speeds. It's not the same usage."
"I have a hard time understanding why we need to install all this super-expensive hardware: sensors, cameras, road sign recognition." He says the changes have contributed to raising the average price of a city car by 60% over the last five or six years, reports Autocar.
He adds: "Our proposal was literally to say 'let's go a little bit backward from overloading cars with expensive hardware'." And it is for this reason that Fiat may consider lowering the maximum speed of some cars.
He says: "If you take the average legal maximum speed in Europe, it's 118kph [73mph], so above 118kph is [often] illegal, and most of the radars, ADAS and all this stuff has been developed for cars to go way above the speed limit. I would happily limit my city cars, my smaller cars, to what is today the maximum legal speed limit. It's already a limitation."
If Fiat was to intorduce the restriction on its city cars it would follow on from Swedish brand Volvo. In 2020 is went further, capping the speed limit on all of its models at 112mph as part of its "Vision Zero" goal to end serious injuries and deaths in its vehicles.
