Can anyone please explain the technical aspects of the "advanced airbag" and why it is proving to be very difficult for small manufacturers to implement?

 

With all due respect "gross mistake" is putting it lightly. There's NO way company reps DID'NT know the plate did not belong on the car. It's been alleged the #'s on the plate presented actually belonged to another manufacturer. If US gov't gets involved it could get ugly!! Not a smart move if it was an attempt to slip one by.

 

Smart airbags measure the weight and position of the occupants and then deploy the airbags at varying forces in the event of a crash. This prevents people from being injured or killed from the very device intended to protect them.

There is added cost in the sensors on the seat rails and the weight sensor as well as a more complex igniter for the bags themselves. I would suspect that in order to meet the level of approval required you have to somehow demonstrate the safety for different sized occupants, likely with additional barrier impacts, but perhaps with computer simulations.

Anyway, its an added layer of complexity all around and since there are fewer sold units to spread that development cost against for a small-volume manufacturer it becomes an expensive standard to satisfy. Pagani was unable to demonstrate enough of a hardship when they applied for their exemption and so they were not given a pass on it as other manufacturers have.

>8^)
ER

 

I respect all the opinions displayed, but I also raising questions ...

1 - Why leave the plate in sight of all, where authorities (NHTSA) and interested consumers could easily fix their eyes.

2 - Would not it be easier to make the correct VIN plate? What would be the difference? Them anyway were doing something "in the act", "illegal"; according to his speculations, on this thread.

3 - Someone who spends more $1.3 million, I think it is duly advised; addition to the Huayra has been in everyone's lips for over 1 year.

4 - What benefits hoped for Pagani acting this way?

5 - Do not forget that we are talking about a show car; the plate could be just demonstrative.

I admit that as a fan of Pagani, my view of the facts can be somewhat obtuse, but think Pagani breaking federal laws, is somewhat hard to believe for me. Honestly, no longer to think about.

 

I believe they are the generation of airbags that can sense the weight of the passenger and adjust the force used to inflate the bag accordingly. Involves numerically more sensors; more advanced sensors plus integrated electronics.

 

By regulation the plate must be in the driver's door jamb area, and visible when said door is in an open position.

I would have thought it would have been much easier just to have made the correct VIN plate, yes. The difference is that if the plate had been worded "This vehicle conforms..." neither I nor anyone else would have thought anything was amiss.

This is what's so baffling. This data plate is uniquely required for U.S. market cars. Pagani knew enough that it had to be there, and they knew generally what the content had to be. Notice that the production date and axle/combined GVWR ratings are correct for the Huayra as opposed to the CCX that the rest of the content was plagarised from.

The requirements of this plate are literally step #2 for importing a car legally into the U.S., see: Importation and Certification FAQ's Directory. On that site they tell you exactly how the plate should be worded. In doing so the car is considered compliant.

I'm confident that the people at Pagani, like the rest of the interested world, knew they did not have an advanced airbag exemption. And yet they purposely went out of their way to indicate (erroneously) on this plate that they do, having copied it from a Koenigsegg. My thought is that this mere act alone is against some sort of regulation.

What possible explanation could there be for going so far as to provide the plate as required, with the correct vehicle GVWR data, and then using a compliance statement from another car? Should we really believe Pagani got that far and then "didn't know" how the compliance statement was to be worded?

Why, of all the cars in the world to copy the compliance statement from, did they choose a Koenigsegg CCX? Did they think that because the CCX was a car in such a similar vein to a Huayra, that what applied to the CCX, would apply to the Huayra as well? If you were confident that the Huayra was compliant, why would you even bother? What does this indicate about the possible compliance status of the Huayra today? Would there be legal issues with a noncompliant car in the U.S.?

These are fair questions to ask, questions that Pagani themselves have raised by displaying the Huayra with the bogus data plate attached.

I would agree very highly.

Until there is a statement from Pagani, we are left only with speculations.

True, but in that case why demonstrate it incorrectly? Seems like a lot of trouble to go through. It would have been easier not to install the plate at all, wouldn't you think? If they knew that compliance was completed or imminent, why install an incorrect plate at this time, so that they could remove it later and install a correct one?

I understand completely. And again this car has not yet been sold, so really there haven't been any laws yet broken (I don't believe). As this car was presented as the first U.S.-spec Huayra there is an assumption that its configuration of data plate was Pagani's production intent. But as we clearly see now it will not fly. As the plate has now been removed we can be safe in assuming that other interested parties are now aware of the issues as well.

 

Ok. The VIN plate is back, you can not read very well, but apparently it's different now. They have eliminated all about exemptions.

 

Pagani Gate.

 

Thanks for answering those questions so succinctly - I was going to take a crack at it, but you did a better job.

When I thing again about how concerned one manufacturer was about having omitted some information on an information plate like this, I would think that falsifying the information to represent something that isn't factual is an even more egregious offense to be concerned about.

Whether Pagani's original intent was to correct this later or not, it is pretty clear they should have NEVER put that plate on their car.

>8^)
ER

 

I can't fathom that it was done with intent to correct it later. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that what we originally saw was the version the car would have been delivered with, had I not noticed it first.

Tango was not the first here to offer the theory:

I think we can fairly easily dismiss this theory on the basis of practical logic. To suit this hypothesis requires one to envision a scenario by which the folks at Pagani, having gone through the trouble to assimilate the correct vehicle data for the car in question, then searched for and found the exemptions wording as found on the sample Koenigsegg, then told the engraver to carve this data and these words into a piece of aluminum, and attach it to the body of the car in a permanent manner (using rivets in this case!) as required by regulation, all the while being aware that they were going to have to remove this plate at a later time, because they knew it was not the final version of the plate they were going to use on the car.

I just don't find a sequence of such events to be very plausible.

But I would be very interested in a better photo of the new version!