pic: svd.se
The good news is that Volvo has started production on 2021 year’s car models. The Luqiao, China factory has started up, and the local factory out west in Torslanda is due to open in two weeks. The news making the headlines today in SvD is that the cars will have a built in speed limit of 180 km/hour (which is about 111 mph for imperial measurement fans).
The stated goal with the limit is to bring down the number of speed-related deaths of course. Which is OF COURSE all very good. 180 kmh is still way over what most people ever drive – the Swedish Transport Administration’s (trafikverket) numbers show that the vast majority of traffic-related deaths happen on roads with a 70-90 speed limit. Major freeways are the place traffic can even come close to breaking the speed limit so egregiously, and actually very few deaths occur on these roads. (Having said that, no death is an ok death. )
For Volvo cars spokesperson Malin Ekholm, the built in limit is all about making people aware of the importance of not speeding, particularly by that much. In good Swedish tradition, it’s all about making a point (signalvärde). FYI, the cars themselves have a top speed of between 220-250 kph, but in a new car you’ll have to take their word for it.
Volvo’s owners in China however are not putting the same limit on its other car make, Polestar. When asked if such a limit was in the works for the Polestar model, Brent Ellis, spokesperson for Polestar, said “no,” and that they had no plans to install such a thing later either.