With the Tesla Model S earning Car of the Year nods from several leading auto publication, and the company’s subsequent increase in sales and government incentives to push alternative fuels, the impact that silence of electric vehicles has on pedestrians is being considered by a number of car manufacturers. For example, Audi has a sound generation system outside their electric version of the R8. See this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yungwc92gFo
Should these kinds of sounds, artificially generated on the outside of electric (or other silent) vehicles be made to sound like a traditional gasoline engine and exhaust, or should there be some sort of iconic, industry-wide sound developed similar to the chirping sound currently used to assist the sight-impaired at crosswalks? Should sound generation only be done when proximity to collision is detected via peer-to-peer communication with other connected devices, or should it be in an “always on” state? This decision could have a profound impact on how humans perceive silent or near-silent approaching vehicles in the future.
2 thoughts on “Electric vehicle noise generation”
Great topic. Peter D’s already put some work in on it, and I seem to recall he presented some of the thinking at BBQ:
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/11/cartunes.html
there have been some interesting developments since i wrote that piece, which (to my surprise) became one of my more controversial articles (the president of the EFF *hated* the idea so much, he wrote a counter-blog denouncing it!). as kurt noted, some EVs have already implemented simple versions of the idea, and i read an article last year about an academic in Sweden who was doing “sound for electric vehicles” …
but the main point of the article was “why re-invent the wheel, when Wwise/FMOD are specifically designed to produce complex and sophisticated auto-generated sounds? hire a game sound designer to give your silent EV a race track soundtrack!” (ooh, the puns just write themselves!). Hmm, “a set of guidelines and best practices for producing compelling interactive EV audio using standard industry tools” … now that sounds like a pretty good BBQ report!
and speaking of puns, a small request: if y’all do end up talking about this at BBQ (and I will be kicking myself for not attending if you do!), then please dedicate the report to BBQ brother Jeff Essex, who coined the word “cartunes” to describe the idea (like ringtones for cars, get it? 🙂
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