• Smiles Per Hour (SPH) is a new metric designed to measure driving enjoyment

• Metric developed using facial-recognition technology published by Google AI to analyse genuine emotional responses during real world driving

• SPH launches on the new Fiat Grande Panda and will be measured and published for other FIAT models

• Grande Panda recorded an average of 258.1 SPH

• Standard speed and performance data remains available, but are no longer the primary way FIAT talks about driving experience

• Previous research finds Brits smile 14 times a day on average

FIAT has introduced Smiles Per Hour (SPH), a new science backed metric designed to measure how enjoyable a car is to drive.

The new measure has been developed to reflect the way people actually experience driving, focusing on emotional response rather than performance statistics alone.

SPH will launch on the new Fiat Grande Panda, with plans to roll out across the wider FIAT range later this year.

The move builds on FIAT’s wider brand strategy to embody its Italian Dolce Vita philosophy, celebrating joy, colour and optimism in everyday driving and follows initiatives such as its decision to stop producing grey cars (details HERE).

The SPH metric was developed with cognitive scientist, Dr Duncan Williams, using facial recognition technology built on MediaPipe - a facial geometry framework developed by Google AI - to analyse involuntary emotional responses during real world driving.

While acceleration figure remain available to customers, FIAT believes speed figures alone do not fully explain why people enjoy driving its cars. This is reflected in broader consumer behaviour with new research from FIAT revealing that 81% of UK drivers are unaware of the 0-60mph time of their car, underlining how little relevance such figures hold for motorists.

Instead, SPH provides an additional way to understand the driving experience, based on how drivers genuinely feel behind the wheel.

Study Results

• Fiat Grande Panda: 258.1 SPH

• Grande Panda showed a consistent emotional response across drivers, with low variation in scores indicating broad and repeatable enjoyment

• Female participants recorded higher SPH scores than males with scores of 337.5 SPH vs 171.4 SPH

• Minimal difference was observed between hybrid (257 SPH) and electric (259.5) powertrains

• Colour had no measurable impact on enjoyment, with SPH remaining consistent across different finishes: Yellow electric Panda 259.5 SPH vs Blue hybrid Panda 257 SPH

• The highest individual SPH recorded in the Grande Panda reached 583 SPH vs lowest record 21.6 which is still 24 times higher than the average UK adult's daily hourly rate of 0.88 SPH

The Science Behind SPH

Initially, FIAT examined existing research into how often UK adults smile in daily life, with studies suggesting an average of around 14 smiles per day.*

Then thirty participants took part in structured test drives over two days in the Fiat Grande Panda.

Across these real world driving sessions, each lasting approximately 15 minutes, the facial recognition software tracked 468 three-dimensional facial landmarks at 60 frames per second, capturing approximately 1.7 million individual facial data points in total.

Before each drive, participants’ faces were calibrated to a neutral baseline. During driving, changes in facial landmarks associated with the zygomaticus major - the muscle responsible for smiling - were measured relative to this baseline.

The system measures involuntary facial responses rather than self reported feedback, ensuring results reflect genuine, subconscious emotional reactions rather than prompted or consciously controlled expressions.

Data was smoothed over time to avoid brief twitches or road vibrations being recorded as smiles, and measurements were normalised against the distance between the eyes to account for changes in head position.

The system produced a SPH score by calculating the frequency of smiles over the 15-minute driving time. The smiles recorded were them multiplied by four (equivalent of one hour) to give SPH scores - a real time measure of authentic, involuntary positive emotional responses elicited by the driving experience.

Kris Cholmondeley, FIAT UK Managing Director, said: “We always try and give customers as much information as possible about our cars, but we don’t believe that speed alone is what makes driving enjoyable.

“Driving a FIAT has never been about chasing numbers; it’s about how you feel behind the wheel. Smiles Per Hour gives us a meaningful new way to talk about that feeling.”

Dr Duncan Williams added: “This study was designed to measure involuntary emotional response rather than performance. By analysing changes across hundreds of facial landmarks in real world driving conditions, we can detect genuine smiles that indicate authentic enjoyment. Measuring these responses over time allows us to calculate a scientifically robust Smiles Per Hour score for each model.”

About Duncan

Dr Duncan Williams is a cognitive scientist specialising in affective computing - the study of human emotion through technology.

His work focuses on applying computer vision and open source AI systems to measure authentic emotional responses in real world environments. He developed the SPH software in Python using Google AI’s open source MediaPipe face detection and facial landmark libraries.

The system requires only a standard HD USB webcam connected to a laptop, capturing video at 60 frames per second. It is the software and methodology, not the hardware, that makes the SPH metric unique.

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