Electric smart cars heading for Jersey

GD wrote:

Deputy Guy De Faye says... "...Indeed I'm told that the top speed can be limited to forty miles an hour to bring everybody within the speed limit whether they like it or not... ...it's the sort of vehicle that perhaps we should be getting used to,"...

Love the idea of electric vehicles, and have been an advocate of them since for nearly 15years... but HATE the idea that the Minister is okay with limiting the performance like that. The 40mph speed limit in some areas is a joke, and having numerical speed limits is often used as an easy revenue collection method, the only problem being is that speeding fines haven't kept up with other costs so now cost more to collect than they're worth.

If he wants to limit performance do so at 70 or 75mph so the vehicles can still be viable off-island, and take a look at a review of Jersey's speed limits and their implementation and control at the same time.

He would have to allow the speed to be set to 70-80 mph otherwise overtaking would be imposible

I agree Pegasus overtaking would be impossible also if you restrict the speed it also restricts performance so trying to go up hill will slow the vehicle down to walking pace and IMO would be dangerous.

Having said that if your Deputy would just leave them standard i would like to see them on your and our roads.

Digger wrote:...if you restrict the speed it also restricts performance so trying to go up hill will slow the vehicle down to walking pace and IMO would be dangerous...

Not necessarily, you could program a max speed without blunting the performance to that speed. In fact if the manufacturer was to take into account an imposed max speed there's a good chance that he could improve the performance and or economy of the vehicle at the lower speeds.

Even on petrol/diesel cars an imposed top speed of ~100mph could result in increased performance and economy at everyday speeds and use.