This may be a transient problem as people get used to new technology. It's like using Filmlook to put scratches and grain on HD video.
The 2013 Lotus Evora, a series hybrid vehicle with an electric motor and a fixed gearbox, took this to the point of silliness. Not only did they provide fake engine sounds, they provided shift paddles and required the driver to shift software-simulated gears. They even provided a momentary loss of power during simulated gear shifting. (http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/22/lotus-pondering-fake-shif...) The driver could select different sounds, or turn all this off and just let the electric motor do its thing, which yielded better acceleration. Here's a demo of all the sound options: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1CzoqEyACQ). Options include simulated straight-6, American V-8, and V-12 engines, plus some turbine-like sounds.
After some snickering from the automotive press, this feature was dropped from later models.
Many electric cars already have an outside noise generator, mandated by law in the EU and US. These switch off above 25 MPH or so, so they don't contribute to freeway noise.
I just had a look at the legislation. It wisely includes that the noise has to sound similar to the engine noise produced by a similarly sized combustion vehicle. I was wondering if we would start to see the equivalent of ringtones for cars (though with some people's ice setups that already sort of exists).
Recently drove a Tesla Model S P85D... best thing about it is that the torque is immediate and silent. Not only can you blow other cars away at lights, you can do it casually, with no noise or fuss. Car is here; put car over there. It's like piloting a UFO.
Don't you see any problem with the silence in terms of safety?
There is a reason bicycles need to have a bell. Because these you also cannot hear when they approach you.
Although, it would be funny seeing a Tesla with a nice little bell and the tacked on law that you have to use it to alarm others in front of you that you are approaching. That'll be a sight to behold.
My car has "cutout valves" on the exhaust which can bypass the muffler (making it louder), and I've noticed an interesting phenomenon: the car actually seems faster (to it's occupants) when it's in the quieter mode. I've dynoed it in both modes, the torque and horsepower curves are nearly identical, so it's not actually faster.
I wouldn't mind some auditory feedback on engine performance, it can be very useful. I definitely don't want it to be simulated noise that's meant to approximate some fictional engine. Making it specific to what it is for and embedding more useful audio clues within it would be good (along with the ability to easily disable).
As someone who's owned a few older cars, the sound is one of the most useful early diagnostic tools. It tells you immediately how the engine is running. Often you can tell the difference between a cold engine and a hot engine running. Losing this entirely isn't necessarily a good thing, but neither is faking it, which is the worst of both worlds, no useful information conveyed (beyond possibly RPMs, depending on implementation) but noise nonetheless.
I was a passenger in a Model S my friend owns the other day. The biggest thing I noticed was that we were able to have a conversation at very normal volume levels. I had never noticed that I always needed to speak up in a car- until I didn't need to.
I drive a Leaf and a Volt, both technically electric cars. The sprinting power of an electric is pretty good, I often take modded civics off the line (stoplight) in the Leaf; the point being that electric cars can quickly move to a spot you don't anticipate them. The Volt has a 'pedestrian warning horn' that, when engaged by the driver, gently and rapidly beeps the horn to draw attention to the Volt. Since it is engaged by the driver, however; it does little if the driver isn't paying attention.
As a cyclist, I enjoy having good situational awareness, and electric cars can definitely be surprising when they pass you. Overall, though I enjoy the super quiet ride, I think we should require some warning noise (engine noise seems like a nice option) to alert other to the oncoming car. It makes it safer for the driver because people are less likely to do something unexpected, and safer for the other people because they have better situational awareness.
Perhaps when automated car drivers are the norm, we can move to silent cars; since they will be more vigilant than a person could ever be.
I'm torn with the noise situation with EVs. On one hand, I obviously recognize the importance of pedestrians being made aware of nearby automobiles, especially those with vision impairment. But on the other hand, I feel that automobiles making constant loud noise is an antipattern. The reason that cars have always made constant loud noise isn't to notify pedestrians—it's because gasoline engines produce a lot of waste noise.
If in a parallel universe the first mass adopted automobiles operated silently, I don't think we would or should have eschewed them or put constant noise-makers on them. I suspect we would have done the same thing we actually did do, even in our world of gasoline automobiles: put a user-activated noise-maker on them and expect and require operators to use that device when appropriate.
As a motor vehicle enthusiast, I think it's important to distinguish "real noises intentionally amplified by physical audio routing" and "electronic recordings or audio processing played through speakers."
I don't object to routing engine noises to the cabin to allow for a loud-feeling vehicle (without necessarily being loud to people outside the car). To me, this isn't fake. The driver experiences real engine noise, with efforts to circumvent sound-deadening that comes in modern cars.
Playing recorded engine noises and/or digitally transforming sound is fake to me. It's a lie. I haven't driven a car that does this, but my guess is that it's noticeably simulated.
Perhaps it's because I have no interest whatsoever in cars, but I have trouble seeing the distinction.
If the idea is that certain sounds are merely the side effect of attributes which are themselves desired for reasons other than their sound, like a powerful engine, then it seems like any intentional design to produce or amplify those sounds are completely useless. What the driver wants is the actual attributes which produce the sound as a side effect, and if those attributes are achievable and verifiable without hearing those certain sounds, then the driver should still be satisfied.
If, on the other hand, certain sounds are desirable on their own, because of aesthetics or whatever, then the driver should be satisfied if those sounds are produced, regardless of how they're produced.
As a fellow driving enthusiast, I agree. When shopping for my last car, the manufacturer's outgoing model had a sport exhaust setting but did not pipe exhaust noise into the cabin. The incoming model did. (Note this is an actual mechanical opening or tube, not BMW-style synthesized noise.)
I ended up with the special-edition outgoing model for other reasons, including greater horsepower, but wouldn't necessarily object to piping in exhaust noise. Playing back recorded engine noise, on the other hand, seems just wrong to me.
Tangentially, a neighbor one street over has a pair of Ferraris that he and his wife track at Laguna Seca. I can always hear when they drive by (rarely, they have other cars they use on a daily basis) and it's a splendid exhaust note.
I feel the same way. I have a 1982 Chevy C10 pickup, and the original owner had put "Flowmaster" pipes on it for a louder, but still natural, sound. With the original engine, it sounded impressive, perhaps more so than the engine actually was.
Not long after I got the truck, the original 305ci engine gave up the ghost (it had over 400,000 miles so it had had a great run) and I had a 350ci engine built for it and installed. None of the pipes were changed, and the exhaust manifold was a factory fit version for that new engine, not custom headers. Still, the sound difference was night and day. Now the truck positively thunders, where it merely growled before. While a lot of its sound can be attributed to the custom pipes and muffler, a lot of it is in the engine too.
To me, it's similar to the difference between a miked acoustic guitar and an acoustic-electric. Either way it's amplification, but the former sounds pure and natural, whereas the latter sounds forced and way too bright, and loses out on the nuances of left-hand technique and right-hand flourishes, as it only picks up the string vibrations themselves instead of the entire ambiance.
This reminds me of the trams in Manchester, which play the recorded sound of a horn through some little tinny speaker. I'm sure it's cheaper than having an actual noise-making device (I think other trams use bells?), but it sounds ridiculous.
If you're going to fake it, you should at least do a good job of it.
In Amsterdam one of the bigger reasons given for the reduction of speeds on some roads is that it reduces the noise pollution. It would seem backwards to require cars to make more noise than they strictly have to. That said in mixed traffic situations it may save some lives, so essentially this proves all those guys that drove without dampers in their exhausts and bumper stickers saying 'loud pipes save lives' right after all.
I think once the background noise of IC engines has disappeared and we can all hear normally again that this will pass, it's just the intermediate period when we can't hear the electric cars over the noise of the rest of the traffic.
Most of this noise is pumped into the car (to make the consumer happy), not out of the car. The two most common systems in use today are the car stereo (either amplifying the real engine's sound or by simply synchronizing a synthesis mechanism to the engine's load conditions) or a "sound pipe" which runs from the engine's air intake into the cabin ventilation system.
This article strangely managed to conflate the two by bringing up external electronic car noisemakers, which are entirely unrelated in both purpose and execution to the noisemaking devices explained throughout the rest of the article.
You'd think some people would want to opt out of the fake/amplified engine noise, so they can drive in peace, listen to their stereo without interference, etc. but i guess making the amplified/fake engine noise an option would defeat the purpose.
This is hardly new. In college, we had a guest lecture from a mechanical engineer at $POPULAR_MOTORCYCLE_MANUFACTURER. He described how his team cooked up a new engine design that achieved some significant performance increase over the old design. Only problem? It didn't sound like a $POPULAR_MOTORCYCLE.
The new engine was delayed for a year while they cooked up a mechanical noisemaker to adjust the sound.
At some point the engine noise just becomes completely arbitrary. Avertisers will buy out your engine noise sounds, as you pass by in your Telsa furniture warehouse salesmen will scream from the engine compartment.
i read this and I want a new car so I can hack the acceleration sounds from Elite: Dangerous into my car. That games sounds design is incredible, here is a quick clip featuring some space acceleration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqIVbT6v5j0
100 years from now cars will still make a vestigial sound that is simply taken for granted and not really considered until some wise-ass at a party starts in "Funny story..."
We will have to explain the origin of the sound coming out of our car speakers to our kids, like we have to explain the floppy disk icon for saving a file.
Perhaps it should just be used when a pedestrian is near? It's bad enough worrying about cars that are making legal maneuvers, but when an electric car doesn't follow the rules, it's that much more dangerous.
Electric cars do not pollute. We should force electric cars to emit some thick black smoke to ensure people do not get surprised!
I don't know in what world these regulators live in, but in my world 80% of pedestrians are walking listening to an ipod/iphone/iwhatever. We already live in a society where pedestrians do not hear cars.
But let's make sure cars remain a nuisance to anyone trying to sleep in a city!
The cars don't pollute, but odds are that the electricity they run on came from burning coal, and lithium batteries aren't exactly environmentally friendly to manufacture or recycle. The rare elements required for the electric motors and batteries aren't earth-friendly to mine or refine, either.
But the car itself doesn't obviously emit any of this, so the public image it presents is great, hence their popularity. For me, wake me up when we have a diesel electric hybrid, since that's actually a very efficient tech which doesn't necessarily require any batteries and has been around for over 100 years (popular on ships / submarines / trains).
At least some of the remaining 20% are blind, and only have engine noise to work on when trying to work out if its safe for them to cross the road or not. I doubt the simulated engine noise has to be very loud to alert those people to the presence of a vehicle, but it does seem unreasonable to ask them to just take their chances, or listen out for the sound of tires rolling along tarmac.
I don't know in what world these regulators live in, but in my world 80% of pedestrians are walking listening to an ipod/iphone/iwhatever. We already live in a society where pedestrians do not hear cars.
My car has a "sound symposer" feature, and a 6-speed manual transmission. It has a tube coming off the engine, through a butterfly valve, then into the firewall of the car. The butterfly valve opens when the engine is under high load, so that the car is quiet normally, and loud if you get on it (inside).
I really enjoy this feature, and have actually redirected the tubes past the valve so that the sound is always on 100% of the time. This allows me to hear the engine RPMs while shifting, instead of monitoring the RPM gauge. It also reminds me to be more mindful of fuel economy because I can hear when I'm wasting gas.
I can understand a fully electronic sound being annoying - and the feature would annoy me on an electric car like a Tesla... But with the setup that mine has - I think people are just whining and that this article reeks of sensationalism. Also, it can be easily disabled in about five minutes by anybody who can watch some how-to videos on YouTube.
Me too, though I just bought a new (to me) 2007 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon. It's by far the newest, smoothest, quietest vehicle I've ever owned. So much so, it's actually taking me a long time to get used to when I need to change gears because I can't hear or feel what the engine is doing. Often I look at the tacho and am I bit surprised to see it's either revving way lower or higher than I was thinking. Being a 6-speed and geared very differently that other vehicles it's also tricking me up in terms of engine speed vs. road speed.
I drove my last 5-speed 2000 Jeep Wrangler from Alaska to Argentina, and I've owned a stack of stick-shift vehicles before, so it's not like I'm new to this.
I'm sure I'll get the hang of it, sooner or later.
There is some good discussion of synthetic car noises in Norman's "Design of everyday things". Sound is a hard to use interface that could still offer great usability advances if we work out to harness it properly.
I see people asking "why not rely on the horn to alert pedestrians". The horn is the equivalent of shouting "oi" but engine sound is hugely rich source of information. We get: speed, direction, distance, acceleration, attitude (e.g. distinguish aggressive acceleration, panicked deceleration) and type of car (e.g. racer vs. town-car).
Unlike a horn, we get this information at the times a horn would not be used i.e. the driver has not seen us and about to mow us down. Synthetic car noise must alert, orient but not annoy. Norman said the current United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spec for synthetic car noise is 250 pages long.
Weird. I would prefer the engine to be as quiet as possible. The proof of performance is in how the thing drives, not how it sounds. Tweaking the exhaust pipe on a car like the Mustang makes sense, but piping sound in through the speakers? As long as I can turn it off permanently.
I don't know about other communities, but Formula 1 fans go and watch races because of sounds. The new rules in 2014 which introduced the v6 hybrid doesn't have a very loud sound and you can see the media reaction to it. Old cars used to have a v8 engine. Revs limiting is also one of the reason of low sound in 2014.
If you want an comparision between the old sound and new sound, see the below mentioned youtube video
[+] [-] Animats|11 years ago|reply
The 2013 Lotus Evora, a series hybrid vehicle with an electric motor and a fixed gearbox, took this to the point of silliness. Not only did they provide fake engine sounds, they provided shift paddles and required the driver to shift software-simulated gears. They even provided a momentary loss of power during simulated gear shifting. (http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/22/lotus-pondering-fake-shif...) The driver could select different sounds, or turn all this off and just let the electric motor do its thing, which yielded better acceleration. Here's a demo of all the sound options: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1CzoqEyACQ). Options include simulated straight-6, American V-8, and V-12 engines, plus some turbine-like sounds.
After some snickering from the automotive press, this feature was dropped from later models.
Many electric cars already have an outside noise generator, mandated by law in the EU and US. These switch off above 25 MPH or so, so they don't contribute to freeway noise.
[+] [-] JohnTHaller|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ourmandave|11 years ago|reply
This is like changing ringtones on your phone. Can I download a twin turbo?
[+] [-] lotsofmangos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gambiting|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbirkby|11 years ago|reply
The Esprit was historically a 4-pot, so never sounded that great. Until they added the V8 and it was a monster.
[+] [-] pjc50|11 years ago|reply
Quite popular in videogames as well.
[+] [-] joshu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalRobert|11 years ago|reply
Ugg. So they only contribute to the destruction of the street-level soundscape to the detriment of walkers, cyclists, sidewalk cafes, and birds.
[+] [-] mikepalmer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yaeger|11 years ago|reply
There is a reason bicycles need to have a bell. Because these you also cannot hear when they approach you.
Although, it would be funny seeing a Tesla with a nice little bell and the tacked on law that you have to use it to alarm others in front of you that you are approaching. That'll be a sight to behold.
[+] [-] tlrobinson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbenson|11 years ago|reply
As someone who's owned a few older cars, the sound is one of the most useful early diagnostic tools. It tells you immediately how the engine is running. Often you can tell the difference between a cold engine and a hot engine running. Losing this entirely isn't necessarily a good thing, but neither is faking it, which is the worst of both worlds, no useful information conveyed (beyond possibly RPMs, depending on implementation) but noise nonetheless.
[+] [-] mabbo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldeagle|11 years ago|reply
As a cyclist, I enjoy having good situational awareness, and electric cars can definitely be surprising when they pass you. Overall, though I enjoy the super quiet ride, I think we should require some warning noise (engine noise seems like a nice option) to alert other to the oncoming car. It makes it safer for the driver because people are less likely to do something unexpected, and safer for the other people because they have better situational awareness.
Perhaps when automated car drivers are the norm, we can move to silent cars; since they will be more vigilant than a person could ever be.
[+] [-] baddox|11 years ago|reply
If in a parallel universe the first mass adopted automobiles operated silently, I don't think we would or should have eschewed them or put constant noise-makers on them. I suspect we would have done the same thing we actually did do, even in our world of gasoline automobiles: put a user-activated noise-maker on them and expect and require operators to use that device when appropriate.
[+] [-] analog31|11 years ago|reply
The car could have a bell and "on your left" speaker. ;-)
[+] [-] MRSallee|11 years ago|reply
I don't object to routing engine noises to the cabin to allow for a loud-feeling vehicle (without necessarily being loud to people outside the car). To me, this isn't fake. The driver experiences real engine noise, with efforts to circumvent sound-deadening that comes in modern cars.
Playing recorded engine noises and/or digitally transforming sound is fake to me. It's a lie. I haven't driven a car that does this, but my guess is that it's noticeably simulated.
[+] [-] baddox|11 years ago|reply
If the idea is that certain sounds are merely the side effect of attributes which are themselves desired for reasons other than their sound, like a powerful engine, then it seems like any intentional design to produce or amplify those sounds are completely useless. What the driver wants is the actual attributes which produce the sound as a side effect, and if those attributes are achievable and verifiable without hearing those certain sounds, then the driver should still be satisfied.
If, on the other hand, certain sounds are desirable on their own, because of aesthetics or whatever, then the driver should be satisfied if those sounds are produced, regardless of how they're produced.
[+] [-] revisionzero|11 years ago|reply
According to the article, BMW does this, and I can say from first-hand experience in a newer model that it's not noticeably simulated.
[+] [-] declan|11 years ago|reply
I ended up with the special-edition outgoing model for other reasons, including greater horsepower, but wouldn't necessarily object to piping in exhaust noise. Playing back recorded engine noise, on the other hand, seems just wrong to me.
Tangentially, a neighbor one street over has a pair of Ferraris that he and his wife track at Laguna Seca. I can always hear when they drive by (rarely, they have other cars they use on a daily basis) and it's a splendid exhaust note.
[+] [-] witten|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morganvachon|11 years ago|reply
Not long after I got the truck, the original 305ci engine gave up the ghost (it had over 400,000 miles so it had had a great run) and I had a 350ci engine built for it and installed. None of the pipes were changed, and the exhaust manifold was a factory fit version for that new engine, not custom headers. Still, the sound difference was night and day. Now the truck positively thunders, where it merely growled before. While a lot of its sound can be attributed to the custom pipes and muffler, a lot of it is in the engine too.
To me, it's similar to the difference between a miked acoustic guitar and an acoustic-electric. Either way it's amplification, but the former sounds pure and natural, whereas the latter sounds forced and way too bright, and loses out on the nuances of left-hand technique and right-hand flourishes, as it only picks up the string vibrations themselves instead of the entire ambiance.
[+] [-] TillE|11 years ago|reply
If you're going to fake it, you should at least do a good job of it.
[+] [-] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
I think once the background noise of IC engines has disappeared and we can all hear normally again that this will pass, it's just the intermediate period when we can't hear the electric cars over the noise of the rest of the traffic.
[+] [-] bri3d|11 years ago|reply
This article strangely managed to conflate the two by bringing up external electronic car noisemakers, which are entirely unrelated in both purpose and execution to the noisemaking devices explained throughout the rest of the article.
[+] [-] ars|11 years ago|reply
To me a powerful car just has an acceleration whine, and that's all.
It's like a rocket exhaust: the "wilder" it is the weaker it is. A powerful, well tuned, rocket has a very sharp, and clean (i.e. not noisy) flame.
Same with a car - if it's making a lot of noise, it's poorly tuned or designed.
[+] [-] jrochkind1|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|11 years ago|reply
The new engine was delayed for a year while they cooked up a mechanical noisemaker to adjust the sound.
[+] [-] 13|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|11 years ago|reply
Had to think about it for a second, but the static had to have been simulated by a piece of code to pretend that the input had gone missing.
[+] [-] Hortinstein|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jloughry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kylec|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e40|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|11 years ago|reply
I don't know in what world these regulators live in, but in my world 80% of pedestrians are walking listening to an ipod/iphone/iwhatever. We already live in a society where pedestrians do not hear cars.
But let's make sure cars remain a nuisance to anyone trying to sleep in a city!
[+] [-] seanp2k2|11 years ago|reply
But the car itself doesn't obviously emit any of this, so the public image it presents is great, hence their popularity. For me, wake me up when we have a diesel electric hybrid, since that's actually a very efficient tech which doesn't necessarily require any batteries and has been around for over 100 years (popular on ships / submarines / trains).
[+] [-] jon-wood|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|11 years ago|reply
They've got that covered: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/01/24/2_stat...
[+] [-] SyncTheory13|11 years ago|reply
I really enjoy this feature, and have actually redirected the tubes past the valve so that the sound is always on 100% of the time. This allows me to hear the engine RPMs while shifting, instead of monitoring the RPM gauge. It also reminds me to be more mindful of fuel economy because I can hear when I'm wasting gas.
I can understand a fully electronic sound being annoying - and the feature would annoy me on an electric car like a Tesla... But with the setup that mine has - I think people are just whining and that this article reeks of sensationalism. Also, it can be easily disabled in about five minutes by anybody who can watch some how-to videos on YouTube.
[+] [-] georgeecollins|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|11 years ago|reply
I drove my last 5-speed 2000 Jeep Wrangler from Alaska to Argentina, and I've owned a stack of stick-shift vehicles before, so it's not like I'm new to this.
I'm sure I'll get the hang of it, sooner or later.
[+] [-] scroy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NovaS1X|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duncanawoods|11 years ago|reply
I see people asking "why not rely on the horn to alert pedestrians". The horn is the equivalent of shouting "oi" but engine sound is hugely rich source of information. We get: speed, direction, distance, acceleration, attitude (e.g. distinguish aggressive acceleration, panicked deceleration) and type of car (e.g. racer vs. town-car).
Unlike a horn, we get this information at the times a horn would not be used i.e. the driver has not seen us and about to mow us down. Synthetic car noise must alert, orient but not annoy. Norman said the current United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spec for synthetic car noise is 250 pages long.
[+] [-] skywhopper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h43k3r|11 years ago|reply
If you want an comparision between the old sound and new sound, see the below mentioned youtube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS4Dh_EAfJI
News: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/mar/25/bernie-ecc...