If you’ve priced a modern city car lately and wondered how something so small got so expensive, Fiat CEO Olivier François thinks he knows exactly why—and he’s got a solution that sounds almost heretical in today’s arms race of sensors and silicon. His proposal? Forget stuffing city cars with ever-more advanced driver-assistance systems. Just cap their top speed at 73 mph.

Yes, really.

Speaking candidly about the impact of EU safety regulations, François said he would “happily” limit the maximum speed of Fiat’s urban-focused models—the 500, Panda, and Grande Panda—as a way to avoid fitting them with costly ADAS hardware that he believes adds little real-world benefit for how these cars are actually used. The argument is refreshingly blunt: most of the mandated tech is designed for high-speed driving, while city cars live their lives well below that threshold.

It’s hard to argue with the usage case. These cars spend their days dodging scooters, hunting for parking spaces, and rarely seeing the far side of 50 mph. Designing them to safely cruise at autobahn speeds—and then loading them with cameras, sensors, and computing power to manage that capability—starts to look like engineering theater.

François’s frustration centers on cost. According to him, the cumulative effect of these regulations has driven the average price of a city car up by around 60 percent in the past five or six years. That’s a staggering increase for vehicles whose core appeal has always been affordability, simplicity, and accessibility—especially for younger buyers and urban commuters.

“I don’t think that city cars in 2018 or 2019 were extremely dangerous,” François said, pushing back against the notion that more hardware automatically equals more safety. From his perspective, the industry hasn’t so much improved city cars as overburdened them.

The irony is that even without a speed cap, Fiat’s smallest models aren’t exactly autobahn missiles. None of them can officially crack 100 mph, and the electric Grande Panda is already limited to 82 mph. Dropping that ceiling to 73 mph—118 km/h, which happens to be the average maximum legal speed limit across Europe—would be more symbolic than transformative.

And that symbolism is the point. François questions why a car should be over-engineered to exceed legal speed limits in the first place. Most ADAS systems, after all, are developed with high-speed scenarios in mind. Lane-centering on highways, adaptive cruise control at triple-digit speeds, complex sign recognition—all impressive, all expensive, and all arguably excessive for a car designed to commute across town.

In that context, a speed limiter starts to look like a refreshingly analog solution to a digital problem. By defining a hard ceiling aligned with legal limits, Fiat could potentially sidestep some of the requirements that drive up costs, keeping city cars closer to their original mission.

François also welcomed the EU’s proposal for a new “M1E” category for small cars, which would acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all approach to safety regulation doesn’t make sense across every segment. City cars aren’t compact crossovers, and they’re certainly not executive sedans. Treating them as such, he argues, undermines their sustainability—financially and philosophically.

That word, sustainability, matters here. François describes city cars as “democratic” vehicles: small, inexpensive, and accessible. Price them out of reach, and buyers don’t upgrade to something slightly larger—they often move to the used market or abandon new cars altogether. In a market already struggling with affordability, especially for younger drivers, that’s a problem regulators may not have fully reckoned with.

Of course, Fiat wouldn’t be alone in using speed limitation as a safety strategy. Volvo famously capped all of its cars at 112 mph back in 2020 as part of its Vision Zero initiative. The difference is scale and intent. Volvo’s move targeted high-speed behavior in premium cars; Fiat’s would reshape the definition of what a city car is allowed to be.

Whether regulators would accept a lower top speed in lieu of advanced safety tech remains an open question. Safety policy tends to move in one direction—more systems, more redundancy, more rules—and rarely backtracks. François’s proposal challenges that momentum by suggesting that smarter regulation might mean less, not more.

It’s a provocative idea, and one that cuts against the grain of modern automotive development. But in a world where simplicity has become a luxury and “basic transportation” is anything but cheap, Fiat’s suggestion feels less like penny-pinching and more like a plea for common sense.

Limit the speed. Lower the cost. Build cars for how people actually drive. It’s a very Italian solution to a very modern problem—and it just might be crazy enough to work.

Source: Fiat