Short-Throw

Perhaps not today, but it seems some day in the future we may find our plug-in race cars a little too tame sounding.

If you could have your car make any sound, what would it be?



Below is an article from today's Wall Street Journal.

Should the Sound of Silence Be a Bird's Tweet or a Jet's Roar?
To Make Quiet Electric Cars Safer, Engineers Bring Out Bells and Whistles.



By MIKE RAMSEY
DETROIT—If a car zips through a forest, and there's no gasoline combusting under its hood, would it make a sound? Normally, no.

But in a few years, the government will require electric cars and gasoline-electric hybrids to emit some type of noise at low speeds, when their battery-driven motors usually run silent. The promised rules—aimed at making the vehicles safer for vision-impaired pedestrians and others who rely on aural cues—have launched auto makers on a quest for the perfect sound.

The new electric cars are nearly silent, and that's a potential hazard for pedestrians who are blind or visually impaired. The Nissan Leaf has added sounds for when the car starts up and accelerates, or backs up. WSJ's Mike Ramsey reports.
.Among those considered: noises reminiscent of jet engines, bells, birds, flying saucers and revved-up sports cars.

In developing their electric car, the Leaf, Nissan Motor Co. marketers initially saw the false-sound feature as a branding opportunity, a chance to create a distinctive sound, like a Jetsons jet pack, that would identify an approaching vehicle as a Leaf.

But a point man on the project, 49-year-old Nino Pacini of Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., had to rein them in.

"We've had the sound of an internal combustion engine for 100 years," says Mr. Pacini, who has been blind since he was 23 and teaches others how to get around without sight. "And it's fine."

The near-silence of a battery-powered car is a point of pride for many hybrid drivers, an illustration of its ability to run at speeds of 40 mph or more without burning fossil fuel. The quiet ride has been a marketing point for auto makers, who spend millions on insulation and sound-damping technology to make cars quieter.


Nissan Leaf
.It has been used for comic effect, too, such as in an episode of "The Office," where the volatile Andy Bernard, driving a Prius at low speed, sneaks up on his romantic rival and pins him gently against a hedge in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot.

But for visually impaired people, it's no laughing matter. A study authorized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 12 states showed a 50% higher rate of accidents involving pedestrians for hybrids than for standard internal-combustion vehicles. The agency is crafting regulations that will require sounds on battery-powered vehicles by the end of 2016.

For its Volt, which currently has a warning bell that can be activated by the driver, General Motors Co. is considering options for a continuously broadcast sound. "You need to recognize that the sound is a car," says Doug Moore, a senior project engineer for GM. "It can't be things like ring tones or bird chirps."

Toyota Motor Corp. began working on sounds for its hybrids five years ago, initially looking at using the vehicle's horn, having it tweet or make short toots at low speeds, "but you can imagine that might become annoying," says Daniel Smith, a Toyota engineer.

Last month, the company presented its noise at a gathering of the National Federation of the Blind in Orlando. The sound is a hum, but Mr. Smith says, "I've heard people say, it's like, 'Beam me up Scotty'."

Ford Motor Co., which will introduce a fully electric Focus compact next year, is allowing the masses to choose its sound by voting on a Facebook page. Ford doesn't describe the noises, but the four finalists sound, roughly, like an alien spacecraft, a "Star Trek" tractor beam, a muffled jet engine and a normal gasoline engine.

Commenters are lending an ear. "'C'! it's super futuristic but has a nice low frequency component that (to me) is distinctly automotive," said one. The company won't say which sound is pulling ahead.

As with many automotive features these days, "people would like to customize it—one day it would sound like a car, and one day it would sound like a horse," says Dave Finnegan, marketing manager for electric vehicles at Ford. But the goal is that people "can identify that a vehicle is coming."

Sports-car maker Porsche AG found a way to make its electric car both detectable and recognizable, giving the Boxster E prototype the same throaty growl—projected through a speaker—as the gasoline-powered version of the roadster.

"A lot of people buying sports cars like that sound," says Dave Engelman, a spokesman for Porsche.

For the Leaf, Nissan engineers employed a Hollywood sound designer and got help from researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, who analyzed a hundred sounds—mechanical to ethereal, whistling to bells and rings—in search of combinations easiest to detect.

Mr. Pacini and other blind volunteers, working with the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology, met with Nissan engineers last year to give feedback.

"They had a sound engineer trying to pick a cool sound for us," Mr. Pacini says. "His idea of the sound was more like a Jetsons jet pack. That's too high of a pitch, and as you get older you lose ability to hear high-pitched sounds. And most visually impaired people are older."

Nissan engineers had to be concerned about drivers' reactions as well. "If it became frustrating to the driver, they could cut the wires to the speaker," says Heather Konet, an engineer with Nissan.

In the end, Nissan developed a sound with two main frequencies they call "twin peaks," that will be broadcast from a front-facing speaker mounted in the engine compartment.

The whistling sound shuts off at around 19 mph. Above about 12 mph, tire noise typically becomes loud enough to be heard.

For now, Mr. Pacini is fairly happy with the results. He points out there is no rear-facing speaker to indicate that a car has gone by, another cue blind people rely on to orient themselves. "What they came up with is pretty good," he says. "Not perfect, but pretty good."

And, he adds, the extra sound will help a lot of sighted people as well, including those too consumed with their cellphone conversations to check for traffic when they step off the curb.

"Blind people don't talk on the phone and walk," Mr. Pacini says.

—Neal E. Boudette contributed
to this article.

SIK02SS

Give me F1 sounds on my electric cars

Everett Ogilvie

I want mine to sound like the Intel jingle (bum, bum bum bum BUM), or the ringtone from Crank.

RacePro Engineering

Oops . . . . . I must be on the wrong forum . . . . .

63Corvette

Hi Mike. I hope thaty you are recovered from your eye surgery.
I have raced my 63 Z06 for 40 years, and I like the sound. Hopefully I will still have that sound for the next 40 years or so

Scooter70

I want mine to sound like the cars on The Jetsons.

Jason

When we start in the middle of a Thunder pack we may as well have silent cars. Very hard to hit your upshifts when you can't hear your own car.

Everett Ogilvie

When it becomes an electric car you can have it programmed to give you a little shock when you miss a shift.

VetteDrmr

How about the theme song from Magnum PI? Or, maybe better, the voice of Ms. Potatohead....

SHEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!

ScaryFast

I think if you buy an electric car you should automatically get a shock.

Everett Ogilvie

Is that sticker shock, or a real shock (or both)?

Solofast

I won my class at a Pro Solo once and had to run against Bruce Wentzel's 427 with my stock C4.... I couldn't hear a thing and hit the rev limiter on every 1-2 upshift, very disconcerting...

In college we built a hybrid for the Urban Vehicle Design Competition. I drove the autocross part and the engine ran ***** out the whole time it was running. Very hard to judge how much power you were putting on when the engine was already cranking out all that noise.

I'd like the Jetson's noise, better than a droning kind of hummmmmm. Can you imagine what it's going to sound like when a whole bunch of cars get together? It's gonna make you want to tear your hair out.

Solofast

Wonder if it will become illegal to make your car more quiet, or louder, or to change the sound to make it sound like something else....

I can see it now, you take your car to the inspection station and the guy say's... You're illegal, your car is too quiet... Or even worse, your hummmmmm is out of spec....

Better yet, just shoot me when I have to drive a voltswagen....

0Randy@DRM

The Dukes of Hazard theme would work nicely. Just thinking traffic in NYC with a million cars with that play every time someone stepped on the gas.

There was a movie about this very thing. Vince Vaugh was in it.

Randy

ScaryFast

I was thinking more the Deliverance theme. I have disdain for electric cars, though.

Kubs

For those that have seen the movie "Airplane", I would have mine sound like a prop plane, even though there are no props...

Brent Dalton

Speaking of not being able to hear your shift. At least we have tach's. There is a female motocrosser by the name of Ashley Fiolek who is deaf, imagine trying to shift without any engine sound. She says she relies on the vibration. Oh yeah, she's really good too... she won the gold at the X games this year.
http://www.disaboom.com/auto-enthusi...ross-superstar

vettehardt

I'll just stick a playing card in my spokes!!!

AU N EGL

have to get a biz arz stereo then

parkerracing

I vote for flying sausers (Wait a minuite.... How do they know what they sound like? I KNEW the gub'ment was hidin' sumthin')

I just saw my first Tesla in person. Quite a go/golf kart ($125k!).