Volvo announces that it will limit the top speed of its new cars to 180 km/h starting in 2020

From 2020, all new vehicles Volvo launched onto the market will have their top speed limited to 180 km/h

Volvo, showing off its leadership in safety, has surprised with the announcement that it will limit the top speed of all its new cars to 180 km/h starting in 2020. A measure, according to the Swedish brand, aimed at highlighting the dangers that excessive speed poses for road safety.

A topic that is always controversial. Because, if a limit is to be set, why 180 km/h and not 150 km/h, for example? At Volvo they claim that what they intend is to influence the driver’s behaviour, rather than leaving everything related to safety solely in the hands of technology.

At Volvo they admit that the problem with accidents is that beyond a certain speed the technology fitted in vehicles is not enough to prevent serious injuries and deaths. And that users do not recognise the danger of driving at such high speeds. At Volvo they also point to driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and distractions as the other two dangers, alongside excessive speed, that need to be tackled as soon as possible.

Volvo S60

For this reason, in addition to limiting the top speed of its cars, it is also researching intelligent speed control technologies that could automatically limit speed when the vehicle approaches a school area or a town.

The gentlemen’s agreement among German brands

Currently, many brands offer cars with top speed limited to 250 km/h, the result of a “pact” between German manufacturers that dates back to the 1970s. At that time, with ecology and environmental protection in focus, some parties called for speed limits to be introduced on the “Autobahn”.

The measure did not go ahead. But at the end of the 1980s, as an alternative solution and at a time when increasingly powerful and fast models were being launched, the Group Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes signed a pact to voluntarily limit the top speed of their vehicles to 250 km/h. A pact that Porsche, for example, did not join.

Of course, a certain margin was always left for getting around the unwritten rule: you won’t see a Audi RS, a BMW M or a Mercedes-AMG limited to 250 km/h. And in some cases the brand itself already offers an intermediate step, limited to 250 km/h… or to 280 km/h on request.

Now, the new limit has been set by Volvo, and it has been established at 180 km/h. Will we see more manufacturers join this measure? The timing and circumstances are completely different from those that motivated the aforementioned “pact” between the German brands. But perhaps, underneath all this, lies a motivation that no one dares to explain: the arrival on the scene of electric cars.

All brands are betting heavily and in the short term on electrified cars. And it is well known that hybrid and electric cars limit their top speed to protect range. Has Volvo perhaps moved ahead by announcing that 180 km/h limit, which sooner or later was going to arrive, citing only safety reasons? We will see how the other manufacturers react to this measure.