Fiat CEO Olivier François said he would "happily" limit the top speed of his company's city cars to 73mph, as an alternative to fitting them with costly safety technology that he considers unnecessary for low-speed driving.
He said that most of the ADAS technology that is mandated by current EU regulations is designed to improve safety at higher speeds so has little relevance for cars like the 500, Panda and Grande Panda, which are mainly driven around town.
Fitting this equipment is therefore unnecessarily hiking up the price of such models for little benefit to the consumer - and François thinks capping their top speed could be a more cost-effective answer.
It wouldn't be a particularly severe limit in relative terms, because none of those models is officially capable of cracking 100mph, and the Grande Panda EV is restricted to 82mph.
François welcomed the EU's proposals for a new 'M1E' category for small cars, because it demonstrates a recognition that the unilaterally imposed safety rules aren't appropriate in all segments.
"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," said François. "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... All this is a little bit inadequate, a bit crazy, and has contributed to raising the average price of a city car by 60% over the last five or six years.
"I don't think that city cars in 2018 or 2019 were extremely dangerous. Our proposal was literally to say 'let's go a little bit backward from overloading cars with expensive hardware'."
For this reason, said François, Fiat "could consider lowering the maximum speed" of some of its cars.
"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. There is something weird that I need to over-spec my cars to go above the legal speed limit."
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I agree with the Fiat boss - sensible compromise solution that should make new small cars more affordable.
Surely even at the legal limit of around 70mph the cars are travelling fast enough to warrant the adas? I’m no fan of all the nannying control systems but don’t see the logic here. Small cars maybe nicknamed city cars, but they are often ONLY cars for those that can not afford or need bigger cars and as such are often used to travel beyond city limits and speeds.
We have a high speed dual carriageway that bisects our city, so it’s often travelled on by those just commuting from A to B, so high speeds in city cars is regularly done.