MEPs urge measures to promote take-up of 'intelligent' cars
Tue 08 April 2008
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The take-up of intelligent car technologies is too slow, given their potential, according to the European Parliament's Transport Committee. According to the Committee, the technologies need to get cheaper, but also to be better publicised. If they were fully deployed, with the necessary infrastructure, intelligent technologies can reduce accidents as well as cutting CO2 emissions.
The report says that emissions can be cut through the use of Adaptive Cruise Control, which adapts the speed of the car to surrounding traffic. This technology could lead to an overal fuel reduction of three per cent the report says.
MEPs also asked the European Commission to develop a methodology for measuring the impact of Information and communication technologies (ICTs) on CO2 emissions, arguing that this could also help to cut fuel consumption and emissions.
The Rapporteur, Zita Gurmai, said: "I think that we achieved a brave but realistic result with this report; we have to take it step by step. Taking into account that for consumer's price is important, we have invested time in research to obtain the best product, so now we must invest time encouraging people to buy them".
The report supports the goal of achieving 100 per cent availability of Electronic Stability Control for the model year 2012 together with implementation of the eCall system by 2010. eCall is a pan-european in-vehicle emergency call system which automatically calls the emergency services in the event of an accident.
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