MOTOR BRIEFS
gases and poisonous nitrogen oxides. The government is torn between the need to protect the car industry, buffeted by a series of costly emissions cheating scandals in recent years, and the need to act to protect a deteriorating climate.
The paper says measures including a motorway speed limit of 130km/h and fuel tax hikes from 2023, the abolition of tax breaks for diesel cars, and quotas for electric and hybrid car sales could deliver half the greenhouse gas emissions cuts that are needed.
The National Platform on the Future of Mobility has yet to finalise the recommendations. It is due to report its findings at the end of March, which will then be incorporated into a climate change law the government wants to enact this year. Reuters
WORLD-FIRST MULTICOLLISION AIRBAG
Kia Motors Corporation as part of the Hyundai Motor Group has announced it will soon introduce the world’s first multicollision airbag system to improve crash safety.
In multicollision accidents the primary impact is followed by collisions with secondary objects, such as other vehicles, trees or electrical posts. This occurs in three out of every 10 accidents.
Current airbag systems don’t offer secondary protection when the initial impact is insufficient to cause them to deploy. However, the multicollision airbag system detects occupants’ positions in the cabin during the initial crash and allows airbags to deploy effectively upon a secondary impact. By recalibrating the collision intensity required for deployment, the airbag system responds more promptly during the secondary impact, thereby improving the safety of multicollision vehicle occupants.
The system will be implemented in future new Kia vehicles.
According to statistics by the National Automotive Sampling System Crashworthiness Data System, an office of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US, about 30% of 56,000 vehicle accidents from 2000 to 2012 in the North American region involved multicollisions including cars crossing over the centre line (30.8%), followed by collisions caused by a sudden stop at highway tollgates (13.5%), highway median strip collisions (8%), and sideswiping and collision with trees and poles (4%).
BMW AND MERCEDES TALK COLLABORATION
BMW and Mercedes-Benz could jointly develop the next generations of their compact cars the BMW 1 Series and the Mercedes A-Class family which would include sharing technology for autonomous cars.
The carmakers need to rein in costs so they can afford to invest in self-driving systems to avoid losing their technological edge to rivals and newcomers such as Waymo, according to a report in the German Handelsblatt newspaper.
Sharing a compact-car architecture would save the two automakers billions in investment costs, the paper reported, quoting insiders.
If the discussions go further, the first joint compact cars would appear some time after 2025. Top management at BMW and Mercedes would face stiff resistance to such a plan from their own engineers, the paper said.
Mercedes parent Daimler and BMW already co-operate in some areas. In 2015, the two automakers, together with Audi, bought Nokia’s mapping company Here, and last year the two companies merged their short-term rental services Car2Go and DriveNow in a bid to create more of a presence in the mobility market.