{"id":6617,"date":"2021-04-24T09:06:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T09:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/routehunters.co\/?p=6617"},"modified":"2021-04-24T09:25:11","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T09:25:11","slug":"volvos-180kph-limit-pursuit-of-safety-or-punishment-for-enthusiasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/?p=6617","title":{"rendered":"Volvo’s 180kph limit: Pursuit of safety or Punishment for enthusiasts?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Volvo<\/strong> raised eyebrows by limiting the top speed of their cars to 180kph<\/strong>. These cars are properly powerful, with more torque than a Supercharged Jaguar F Type V6<\/strong>. Yet now their top speed is slower<\/strong> than some Proton and Perodua’s<\/strong>. Is this justified for cars costing well over RM200,00? Lets find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How fast is 180kph?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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180kph was a speed seen on Saga speedometers back in the mid 80’s<\/strong>. Most modern cars with more than 150bhp can easily hit 160kph<\/strong> so another 20kph extra seems like not a big deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In actuality you are travelling 50 meters per seconds<\/strong>. Which means it takes slightly above 2 seconds to clear a distance of a football field<\/strong>. At this speed, if you were to blink, you would’ve travelled 5 meters<\/strong>. Which is more than the full length of an S90 Volvo<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Safe to say then, 180 kph is a very fast speed<\/strong>, and even the smallest mistake could prove to be fatal for anyone and everyone involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I can upgrade to AP Brakes what?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A 1600 odd kg Porsche 911<\/strong> takes about 120 meters to come to a complete stop from 180kph<\/strong>. That’s a car with 6 pot monobloc callipers <\/strong>and carbon ceramic brakes.<\/strong> In fact its the gold standards for braking performance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Anything else will take at least 1.5 or 2 times the distance to stop<\/strong>, especially with increased weight and reduced braking performance. Imagine how much more distance and time<\/strong> it would take to come to a stop at speeds higher than 180kph?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is speed a luxury feature?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Yes and no. In any self respecting luxury car, performance should be sufficient. The acceleration and the effortlessness of maintaining a good cruising speed contributes to the ease of driving<\/strong>, and therefore refinement of a car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after a certain point though, speed becomes genuinely terrifying<\/strong>. At that point, you no longer feel pampered but stressed<\/strong> from behind the wheel. Volvo feels that 180kph <\/strong>is the safe speed at which refinement turns into stress<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But for luxury orientated vehicles, going beyond 180kph is frankly pointless and does not undermine its refinement. Or at least that’s what Volvo engineers believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can I do more than 180kph in Malaysia?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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To be frank, there are plenty of straight-ish tarmac in Malaysia where mathematically you could reach 180kph<\/strong> in any car putting out about 130bhp. Provided the roads empty, and there are no uneven dips on the tarmac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Accidents take place even at odd hours<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our roads are full of commercial vehicles who pull out with little to no signal<\/strong>, drivers with no lane discipline <\/strong>and hog the overtaking lane, drivers who overtake on the left<\/strong>, or change lanes without checking their mirrors<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to mention our highways<\/strong> which have questionable amount of standing water<\/strong> on the tarmac, or with severe dips<\/strong> that can cause violent oscillations<\/strong>. Because of that you can either severely damage your vehicle or worse, crash<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And we haven’t spoken about debris on the road<\/strong>. Not something you want to encounter when travelling the length of a football field every 2 seconds<\/strong>…. Also you do realize 180kph is 70kph above the National speed limit right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I paid 6 digits for the car?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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True, and these cars are capable of hitting speeds well above 180kph<\/strong>. The question is, would you? And even if you could, can you? Not every driver on our roads are as competent as YS Khong or Karamjit Singh<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Volvo has only done this for their luxury cars and SUV’s<\/strong>. If there’s a strictly performance orientated car from Volvo, then a 180kph limit would seem odd. The raw truth is most of us can’t handle the speed<\/strong>. Plus 180kph is a huge limit, with lots of room for driving experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Which is why Volvo has set the limit there. They seem to care about their clients<\/strong>. The other luxury brands have seemingly given this possibly fatal liability to its clients<\/strong>. That’s like handing a knife to a toddler<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We at Route Hunters Malaysia applaud the move to cap the top speed<\/strong>. We are more interested in the ease of acceleration, and high speed refinement. Which is what a luxury car should provide. Will we find it in a car like the S90? Watch out for this space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volvo raised eyebrows by limiting the top speed of their cars to 180kph. These cars are properly powerful, with more torque than a Supercharged Jaguar F Type V6. Yet now their top speed is slower than some Proton and Perodua’s. Is this justified for cars costing well over RM200,00? Lets find out. How fast is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-car-review","post_format-post-format-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6617"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6637,"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6617\/revisions\/6637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routehunters.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}